Extraordinary optical transmission and vortex excitation by periodic arrays of Fresnel zone plates

Extraordinary optical transmission and good focusing properties of a two-dimensional scattering structure is presented. The structure is made of Fresnel zone plates periodically arranged along two orthogonal directions. Each plate consists of two ring-shaped waveguides supporting modes that match the symmetry of a circularly polarized incident plane wave. High field concentration at the focal plane is obtained with short transverse and long longitudinal foci diameters. Optical vortex excitation in a paraxial region of the transmitted field is also observed and analysed in terms of cross-polarisation coupling. The structure presented may appear useful in visualization, trapping and precise manipulations of nanoparticles.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure

Geometrical Optics of Beams with Vortices: Berry Phase and Orbital Angular Momentum Hall Effect

We consider propagation of a paraxial beam carrying the spin angular momentum (polarization) and intrinsic orbital angular momentum (IOAM) in a smoothly inhomogeneous isotropic medium. It is shown that the presence of IOAM can dramatically enhance and rearrange the topological phenomena that previously were considered solely in connection to the polarization of transverse waves. In particular, the appearance of a new-type Berry phase that describes the parallel transport of the beam structure along a curved ray is predicted. We derive the ray equations demonstrating the splitting of beams with different values of IOAM. This is the orbital angular momentum Hall effect, which resembles Magnus effect for optical vortices. Unlike the recently discovered spin Hall effect of photons, it can be much larger in magnitude and is inherent to waves of any nature. Experimental means to detect the phenomena is discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Properties of Physical Systems: Transient Singularities on Borders and Surface Transitive Zones

Certain alternative properties of physical systems are describable by supports of arguments of response functions (e.g. light cone, borders of media) and expressed by projectors; corresponding equations of restraints lead to dispersion relations, theorems of counting, etc. As supports are measurable, their absolutely strict borders contradict the spirit of quantum theory and their quantum evolution leading to appearance of subtractions or certain needed flattening would be considered. Flattening of projectors introduce transitive zones that can be examined as a specification of adiabatic hypothesis or the Bogoliubov regulatory function in QED. For demonstration of their possibilities the phenomena of refraction and reflection of electromagnetic wave are considered; they show, in particular, the inevitable appearing of double electromagnetic layers on all surfaces that formerly were repeatedly postulated, etc. Quantum dynamics of projectors proves the neediness of subtractions that usually are artificially adding and express transient singularities and zones in squeezed forms.Comment: 12 p

Cross-polarized normal mode patterns at a dielectric interface

Basic features of narrow optical beam interactions with a dielectric interface are analysed. As it was recently shown, two types of paraxial beams – elegant Hermite-Gaussians of linear polarization and elegant Laguerre-Gaussians of circular polarization – can be treated as vector normal modes of the interface [1]. In this contribution the problem of normal modes is discussed with special attention paid for the case of beam oblique incidence. Excitation of higher-order modes by cross-polarization coupling is described and it is shown that this process critically depends on a propagation direction of the incident beam. Besides the expected changes of mode indices induced by generalised transmission and reflection matrices, the new phenomenon of optical vortex spectral splitting at the interface is revealed and off-axis spectral placements of the splitted vortices are determined. Results of numerical simulations given here for beam reflection entirely confirm theoretical predictions even for beams beyond the range of paraxial approximation