The role of the angular momentum of light in Mie scattering. Excitation of dielectric spheres with Laguerre-Gaussian modes

We present a method to enhance the ripple structure of the scattered electromagnetic field in the visible range through the use of Laguerre-Gaussian beams. The position of these enhanced ripples as well as their linewidths can be controlled using different optical beams and sizes of the spheres.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jqsrt.2012.10.01

Vortex nucleation and evolution in parametric wave mixing

We predict a variety of new phenomena, that includes the spontaneous nucleation of multiple vortex twins, vortex rotation and drift, vortex-antivortex interaction and annihilation, and formation of quasi-aligned patterns of single-charge vortices. We consider cw light propagation in a bulk quadratic nonlinear crystal under conditions for type I second-harmonic generation. We restrict ourselves to up-conversion geometries with material and light conditions that yield negligible depletion of the pump fundamental frequency (FF) beam. Then, the second-harmonic (SH) beam is dictated by an inhomogeneous linear partial differential equation whose general solution can be obtained by means of the Green function approach. In the case of un-seeded geometries (i.e., no SH input light), and in absence of Poynting vector walk-off between the FF and SH beams, sum- and difference-charge arithmetic operations have been predicted and observed experimentally. However, a new range of phenomena is discovered in seeded geometries and with Poynting vector walk-off. In particular, in the case of seeded schemes without walk-off, our numerical and experimental investigations show the spontaneous nucleation of multiple-vortex twins. In such case, the number of vortices present in the SH beam and its total topological charge varies with the propagation distance inside the crystal.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Further examination of the organizational culture scale of artifacts

The construct validity of a 10-item Organizational Culture Scale Focused on Artifacts oriented to measure traditional culture was analyzed under the unidimensionality hypothesis of the scale. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the unidimensional structure, which took into account the method effects associated with reverse-worded items. The results based on the data from a sample of 926 subjects, 79.8% male, mean age of 33.4 years (SD = 12.8), working in different types of companies suggested the proposed unidimensional factor structure, with the elimination of two items from the scale. The resulting 8-item scale was reanalyzed, this time with the data of a second split-sample. Support was found for the scale’s unidimensionality with this second dataset.measuring organizational culture; traditional culture; innovation culture; corporate culture

Angular momentum-induced circular dichroism in non-chiral nanostructures

Circular dichroism (CD), i.e. the differential response of a system to left and right circularly polarized light, is one of the only techniques capable of providing morphological information of certain samples. In biology, for instance, CD spectroscopy is widely used to study the structure of proteins. More recently, it has also been used to characterize metamaterials and plasmonic structures. Typically, CD can only be observed in chiral objects. Here, we present experimental results showing that a non-chiral sample such as a sub-wavelength circular nano-aperture can produce giant CD when a vortex beam is used to excite it. These measurements can be understood by studying the symmetries of the sample and the total angular momentum that vortex beams carry. Our results show that CD can provide a wealth of information about the sample when combined with the control of the total angular momentum of the input field

On the transformations generated by the electromagnetic spin and orbital angular momentum operators

We present a study of the properties of the transversal "spin angular momentum" and "orbital angular momentum" operators. We show that the "spin angular momentum" operators are generators of spatial translations which depend on helicity and frequency and that the "orbital angular momentum" operators generate transformations which are a sequence of this kind of translations and rotations. We give some examples of the use of these operators in light matter interaction problems. Their relationship with the helicity operator allows to involve the electromagnetic duality symmetry in the analysis. We also find that simultaneous eigenstates of the three "spin" operators and parity define a type of standing modes which has been recently singled out for the interaction of light with chiral molecules. With respect to the relationship between "spin angular momentum", polarization, and total angular momentum, we show that, except for the case of a single plane wave, the total angular momentum of the field is decoupled from its vectorial degrees of freedom even in the regime where the paraxial approximation holds. Finally, we point out a relationship between the three "spin" operators and the spatial part of the Pauli-Lubanski four vector

Vortex evolution in parametric wave mixing

We investigate the evolution of vortex wave front dislocations in multiple-wave second-harmonic generation processes in quadratic nonlinear media. Vortices nested in finite-size host beams are shown to nucleate and to annihilate in pairs, and to move across the transverse wave front during the beam evolution. A closed-form model that holds under conditions of negligible-depletion of the pump beam is developed to describe the vortex dynamics in order to predict the number of vortices present in the wave fronts of the beams at any instance of the propagation. Results are compared with numerical simulations of the full governing equations and with experimental observations. Limitations of the model are outlined.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Transformación lineal en contexto geométrico

En este documento se discuten algunas ideas producto de la investigación de Molina (2004) que se trabajaron en un taller de la XXI Reunión Latinoamericana de Matemática Educativa. El tema a discusión, los modelos mentales intuitivos (en el sentido de Fischbein, 1987, 1989) que un grupo de estudiantes manifestó acerca de la Transformación Lineal (TL) en un contexto geométrico

Necessary symmetry conditions for the rotation of light

Two conditions on symmetries are identified as necessary for a linear scattering system to be able to rotate the linear polarisation of light: Lack of at least one mirror plane of symmetry and electromagnetic duality symmetry. Duality symmetry is equivalent to the conservation of the helicity of light in the same way that rotational symmetry is equivalent to the conservation of angular momentum. When the system is a solution of a single species of particles, the lack of at least one mirror plane of symmetry leads to the familiar requirement of chirality of the individual particle. With respect to helicity preservation, according to the analytical and numerical evidence presented in this paper, the solution preserves helicity if and only if the individual particle itself preserves helicity. However, only in the particular case of forward scattering the helicity preservation condition on the particle is relaxed: We show that the random orientation of the molecules endows the solution with an effective rotational symmetry; at its turn, this leads to helicity preservation in the forward scattering direction independently of any property of the particle. This is not the case for a general scattering direction. These results advance the current understanding of the phenomena of molecular optical activity and provide insight for the design of polarisation control devices at the nanoscale.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

AER Neuro-Inspired interface to Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand

Address-Event-Representation (AER) is a communication protocol for transferring asynchronous events between VLSI chips, originally developed for neuro-inspired processing systems (for example, image processing). Such systems may consist of a complicated hierarchical structure with many chips that transmit data among them in real time, while performing some processing (for example, convolutions). The information transmitted is a sequence of spikes coded using high speed digital buses. These multi-layer and multi-chip AER systems perform actually not only image processing, but also audio processing, filtering, learning, locomotion, etc. This paper present an AER interface for controlling an anthropomorphic robotic hand with a neuro-inspired system.Unión Europea IST-2001-34124 (CAVIAR)Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC-2003-08164-C03-02Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC2000-0406-P4- 0