Synthesis and Properties of Dipyridylcyclopentenes

A short and general route to the substituted dipyridylcyclopentenes was explored and several new compounds belonging to this new group of diarylethenes were synthesized. The study of their photochromic and thermochromic properties shows that the rate of the thermal ring opening is strongly dependent on the polarity of the solvent.

Dynamical tunneling in optical cavities

The lifetime of whispering gallery modes in a dielectric cavity with a metallic inclusion is shown to fluctuate by orders of magnitude when size and location of the inclusion are varied. We ascribe these fluctuations to tunneling transitions between resonances quantized in different regions of phase space. This interpretation is confirmed by a comparison of the classical phase space structure with the Husimi distribution of the resonant modes. A model Hamiltonian is introduced that describes the phenomenon and shows that it can be expected in a more general class of systems.Comment: 8 pages LaTeX with 5 postscript figure

Temporal solitons in optical microresonators

Dissipative solitons can emerge in a wide variety of dissipative nonlinear systems throughout the fields of optics, medicine or biology. Dissipative solitons can also exist in Kerr-nonlinear optical resonators and rely on the double balance between parametric gain and resonator loss on the one hand and nonlinearity and diffraction or dispersion on the other hand. Mathematically these solitons are solution to the Lugiato-Lefever equation and exist on top of a continuous wave (cw) background. Here we report the observation of temporal dissipative solitons in a high-Q optical microresonator. The solitons are spontaneously generated when the pump laser is tuned through the effective zero detuning point of a high-Q resonance, leading to an effective red-detuned pumping. Red-detuned pumping marks a fundamentally new operating regime in nonlinear microresonators. While usually unstablethis regime acquires unique stability in the presence of solitons without any active feedback on the system. The number of solitons in the resonator can be controlled via the pump laser detuning and transitions to and between soliton states are associated with discontinuous steps in the resonator transmission. Beyond enabling to study soliton physics such as soliton crystals our observations open the route towards compact, high repetition-rate femto-second sources, where the operating wavelength is not bound to the availability of broadband laser gain media. The single soliton states correspond in the frequency domain to low-noise optical frequency combs with smooth spectral envelopes, critical to applications in broadband spectroscopy, telecommunications, astronomy and low phase-noise microwave generation.Comment: Includes Supplementary Informatio

Effective photon-photon interaction in a two-dimensional "photon fluid"

We formulate an effective theory for the atom-mediated photon-photon interactions in a two-dimensional ``photon fluid'' confined in a Fabry-Perot resonator. With the atoms modelled by a collection of anharmonic Lorentz oscillators, the effective interaction is evaluated to second order in the coupling constant (the anharmonicity parameter). The interaction has the form of a renormalized two-dimensional delta-function potential, with the renormalization scale determined by the physical parameters of the system, such as density of atoms and the detuning of the photons relative to the resonance frequency of the atoms. For realistic values of the parameters, the perturbation series has to be resummed, and the effective interaction becomes independent of the ``bare'' strength of the anharmonic term. The resulting expression for the non-linear Kerr susceptibility, is parametrically equal to the one found earlier for a dilute gas of two-level atoms. Using our result for the effective interaction parameter, we derive conditions for the formation of a photon fluid, both for Rydberg atoms in a microwave cavity and for alkali atoms in an optical cavity.Comment: 25 pages (revtex4), including 2 figure

Metastable resistivity of La0.8Ca0.2MnO3 manganite thin films

Transport properties of La0.8Ca0.2MnO3 thin films 15 and 130 nm thick have been investigated and confronted with the properties of bulk single crystals of the same composition. It has been found that low-temperature resistivity of the films is sensitive to electric current and/or field treatment and thermal history of the sample. Thin films exhibit a variety of metastable resistive states and spontaneously evolve toward high-resistivity state in which the films exhibit highly nonlinear transport behavior at low temperatures. Nonlinear V-I characteristics are well described by indirect tunneling model. The memory of the resistivity can be, at least partly, erased by a heat treatment at temperatures above the memory erasing temperature. The memory erasing temperature for thin films, T=450 K, is significantly higher than that of single crystals. The results are interpreted in the context of strain driven phase separation. Coexistence of two ferromagnetic phases with different orbital orders and different conductivities is influenced by strains due to thermal cycling and current flow.published_or_final_versio

Ultrathin plasmonic chiral phase plate

A thin free-standing gold membrane with complex plasmonic structures engraved on both sides is shown to perform as an ultrathin phase plate. Specifically, we demonstrate the generation of a far-field vortex beam propagating at a desired angle. The angular momentum of the beam is generated by the groove helicity, together with the geometric phase arising from a plasmonic spin–orbit interaction. The radial chirp of the back-side structure is used to modify the emission angle via a specific momentum matching condition

Higher-order optical resonance node detection of integrated disk microresonator

We have demonstrated higher-order optical resonance node detection by using an integrated disk microresonator from through port of the coupling bus waveguide. In addition to the fundamental mode, the disk resonator has higher-order whispering gallery modes. The excited second-order higher-order mode has a node at the position where the electromagnetic energy of the fundamental mode is close to a maximum. This high resolution measurement of optical resonance mode profile has a variety of applications for optical sensing and detection. The self-referencing characteristics of the two optical resonance modes have potential to achieve optical detection independent of external perturbation, such as temperature change

Semiclassical theory of the emission properties of wave-chaotic resonant cavities

We develop a perturbation theory for the lifetime and emission intensity for isolated resonances in asymmetric resonant cavities. The inverse lifetime $\Gamma$ and the emission intensity $I(\theta)$ in the open system are expressed in terms of matrix elements of operators evaluated with eigenmodes of the closed resonator. These matrix elements are calculated in a semiclassical approximation which allows us to represent $\Gamma$ and $I(\theta)$ as sums over the contributions of rays which escape the resonator by refraction.Comment: 4 pages, 2 color figure