Controlling light-with-light without nonlinearity

According to Huygens' superposition principle, light beams traveling in a linear medium will pass though one another without mutual disturbance. Indeed, it is widely held that controlling light signals with light requires intense laser fields to facilitate beam interactions in nonlinear media, where the superposition principle can be broken. We demonstrate here that two coherent beams of light of arbitrarily low intensity can interact on a metamaterial layer of nanoscale thickness in such a way that one beam modulates the intensity of the other. We show that the interference of beams can eliminate the plasmonic Joule losses of light energy in the metamaterial or, in contrast, can lead to almost total absorbtion of light. Applications of this phenomenon may lie in ultrafast all-optical pulse-recovery devices, coherence filters and THz-bandwidth light-by-light modulators

Design and Fabrication Concepts of a Compact Undulator with Laser-Structured 2G-HTS Tapes

To produce small-scale high-field undulators for table-top free electron lasers (FELs), compact designs have been proposed using high temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes, which show both large critical current densities and high critical magnetic fields with a total tape thickness of about 50 μm and a width of up to 12 mm. Instead of winding coils, a meander structure can be laser-scribed directly into the superconductor layer, guiding the current path on a quasi-sinusoidal trajectory. Stacking pairs of such scribed tapes allows the generation of the desired sinusoidal magnetic fields above the tape plane, along the tape axis. Two practically feasible designs are presented, which are currently under construction at KIT: A coil concept wound from a single structured tape with a length of 15 m, which is a progression of a design that has been presented already in the past, as well as a novel stacked and soldered design, made from 25 cm long structured tapes, soldered in a zig-zag-pattern. In this contribution the designs are briefly recapped and the experimental progress is presented

Patient-specific RF safety assessment in MRI: Progress in creating surface-based human head and shoulder models

The interaction of electromagnetic (EM) fields with the human body during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is complex and subject specific. MRI radiofrequency (RF) coil performance and safety assessment typically includes numerical EM simulations with a set of human body models. The dimensions of mesh elements used for discretization of the EM simulation domain must be adequate for correct representation of the MRI coil elements, different types of human tissue, and wires and electrodes of additional devices. Examples of such devices include those used during electroencephalography, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and transcranial direct current stimulation, which record complementary information or manipulate brain states during MRI measurement. The electrical contact within and between tissues, as well as between an electrode and the skin, must also be preserved. These requirements can be fulfilled with anatomically correct surface-based human models and EM solvers based on unstructured meshes. Here, we report (i) our workflow used to generate the surface meshes of a head and torso model from the segmented AustinMan dataset, (ii) head and torso model mesh optimization for three-dimensional EM simulation in ANSYS HFSS, and (iii) several case studies of MRI RF coil performance and safety assessment

Controlling waves in space and time for imaging and focusing in complex media

In complex media such as white paint and biological tissue, light encounters nanoscale refractive-index inhomogeneities that cause multiple scattering. Such scattering is usually seen as an impediment to focusing and imaging. However, scientists have recently used strongly scattering materials to focus, shape and compress waves by controlling the many degrees of freedom in the incident waves. This was first demonstrated in the acoustic and microwave domains using time reversal, and is now being performed in the optical realm using spatial light modulators to address the many thousands of spatial degrees of freedom of light. This approach is being used to investigate phenomena such as optical super-resolution and the time reversal of light, thus opening many new avenues for imaging and focusing in turbid medi

Adaptive tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy

Tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy, such as tip-enhanced photoluminescence (TEPL) and tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS), generally suffers from inconsistent signal enhancement and difficulty in polarization-resolved measurement. To address this problem, we present adaptive tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy optimizing the nano-optical vector-field at the tip apex. Specifically, we demonstrate dynamic wavefront shaping of the excitation field to effectively couple light to the tip and adaptively control for enhanced sensitivity and polarization-controlled TEPL and TERS. Employing a sequence feedback algorithm, we achieve similar to 4.4x10(4)-fold TEPL enhancement of a WSe2 monolayer which is >2x larger than the normal TEPL intensity without wavefront shaping. In addition, with dynamical near-field polarization control in TERS, we demonstrate the investigation of conformational heterogeneity of brilliant cresyl blue molecules and the controllable observation of IR-active modes due to a large gradient field effect. Adaptive tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy thus provides for a systematic approach towards computational nanoscopy making optical nano-imaging more robust and widely deployable. Tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy suffers from inconsistent signal and difficulty in polarization-resolved measurement. Here, the authors present adaptive tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy, which enables the additional signal enhancement and near-field polarization control via dynamic wavefront shaping

Digital plasmonics: from concept to microscopy

Plasmonische microscopie is een nieuwe manier van microscopisch onderzoek waarbij het mogelijk is om elektromagnetische straling te focussen. Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPP) zijn oppervlaktegolven die zich tussen een geleider en een isolator bevinden. Bergin Gjonaj gebruikte fase-gestructureerde lichtbronnen om actief controle uit te kunnen oefenen op de verbreiding van SPP-golven. Op die manier is het mogelijk om een nauwkeurige focus te krijgen en om deze focus over de metaalfilm te laten scannen. Gjonaj laat zien dat met een plasmonische lens (of microscoop) een grotere resolutie te bereiken is dan mogelijk is met conventionele microscopie. De toename in resolutie komt door de korter golflengte van een plasmon in vergelijking met de golflengte van het inkomende licht