Universal diagrams for te waves guided by thin films bounded by saturable nonlinear media

It is shown that universal V-b diagrams provide a powerful tool when analyzing the stationary waveguiding properties of the TE waves guided by a thin film bounded by a saturable nonlinear substrate or cladding. For a wide class of nonlinearities, the allowed and forbidden regions of these diagrams, for a stationary guided propagation to occur, display a universal pattern, the marginal loci separating different allowed regions from the forbidden ones being simple functions of only the asymmetry measure of the waveguide and the saturation value of the nonlinear permittivity. Relevant information for device design purposes is summarized on a few diagrams, so general waveguiding properties can be immediately read-off from them, and threshold power-independent values of the normalized thickness of the waveguide for a particular kind of guided wave to be allowed are obtained. Qualitative information concerning both the guided power and the stability of guided waves is also included in the diagrams.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Similarity rules for nonlinear Kerr-like slab optical waveguides

It is shown that the stationary waveguiding properties of TE guided waves in a slab optical waveguide with a nonlinear Kerr-like bounding medium can be described in a compact way by means of the usual normalized effective modal index (b) and a set of only four independent normalized parameters: the well-known normalized thickness (V) and asymmetry measure (a) of the waveguide, the generalized aspect ratio between film and substrate refractive indexes, and a guided power measure. From an analysis starting on Buckingham's II-theorem, the similarity rules existing between the above waveguiding structures have been investigated. Allowed and forbidden regions in (b,V,a)-space in order that a guided solution exists have been recognized and classified, with the marginal loci separating different regions being a function of only V and a.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

New type of guided waves in birefringent media

The existence of waves guided by thin dielectric films deposited over a positive birefringent crystal for waveguide parameters below usual cutoff is discussed. This additional kind of guided wave has a hybrid nature and occurs in properly tailored waveguides when a suitable orientation of the crystal optical axis, relative to the waveguide axis, is taken. The dependence of the allowed orientations on various waveguide parameters has been analyzed. Noticeable fast variations, with potential interest for switching applications, have been found.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Ultrasensitive interferometric on-chip microscopy of transparent objects

Light microscopes can detect objects through several physical processes, such as scattering, absorption, and reflection. In transparent objects, these mechanisms are often too weak, and interference effects are more suitable to observe the tiny refractive index variations that produce phase shifts. We propose an on-chip microscope design that exploits birefringence in an unconventional geometry. It makes use of two sheared and quasi-overlapped illuminating beams experiencing relative phase shifts when going through the object, and a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor image sensor array to record the resulting interference pattern. Unlike conventional microscopes, the beams are unfocused, leading to a very large field of view (20 mm(2)) and detection volume (more than 0.5 cm(3)), at the expense of lateral resolution. The high axial sensitivity (<1 nm) achieved using a novel phase-shifting interferometric operation makes the proposed device ideal for examining transparent substrates and reading microarrays of biomarkers. This is demonstrated by detecting nanometer-thick surface modulations on glass and single and double protein layers.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Shaping the ultrafast temporal correlations of thermal-like photons

We show that the temporal correlations between two light beams arising from a broadband thermal-like source can be controlled in the femtosecond regime. Specifically, by introducing spectral phase-only masks in the path of one of the beams, we show that the timing and strength of the photon correlations can be programmed on demand. This example demonstrates that the interbeam second-order coherence function propagates as a phase-sensitive ultrafast wave packet in the path towards the detectors, and is thus, susceptible to be modified by acting on just one of the beams. For quite some time, it has been thought that this could only happen with sources showing time-energy entanglement. Our work shows that such a property is due to the existence of a certain type of correlation, but not necessarily the entanglementPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Frequency doubling of femtosecond pulses in walk-off compensated npp

Summary form only given. N-(4-nitrophenyl)-L-prolinol (NPP) is an organic molecular crystal developped by molecular engineering, that exhibits one of the highest phase-matchable second-order susceptibilities reported so far in the near-infrared spectral range (d/sub eff//spl ap/56 pm/V). However, the large spatial and temporal walk-off existing in NPP can limit severely the usefulness of the material away from the noncritical phase-matching (ncpm) wavelength and for shorter pulses. Here we show that subpicosecond pulses can be efficiently frequency-doubled and mixed in NPP with moderate pump intensities, by employing tilted pulse techniques. These techniques make use of the large Poynting vector walk-off exhibited by NPP crystals outside the ncpm. Such techniques are based on the diffraction of the input pump wave by a grating so that each spectral component is dispersed in a different direction, thus the resulting signal is a tilted pulse.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Optical Doppler shift with structured light

When a light beam with a transverse spatially varying phase is considered for optical remote sensing, in addition to the usual longitudinal Doppler frequency shift of the returned signal induced by the motion of the scatter along the beam axis, a new transversal Doppler shift appears associated to the motion of the scatterer in the plane perpendicular to the beam axis. We discuss here how this new effect can be used to enhance the current capabilities of optical measurement systems, adding the capacity to detect more complex movements of scattersPostprint (published version

Solitary-wave vortices in quadratic nonlinear media

We find families of vortex solitary waves in bulk quadratic nonlinear media under conditions for second-harmonic generation. We show that the vortex solitary waves are azimuthally unstable and that they decay into sets of stable spatial solitons. We calculate the growth rates of the azimuthal perturbations and show how those affect the pattern of output light. © 1998 Optical Society of AmericaPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Soliton content with quadratic nonlinearities

Summary form only given. Quadratic solitons, that form through cascading in materials with second-order nonlinearities, are a topic of current intense investigation. Solitons have been observed in second harmonic generation (SHG) and in parametric amplification schemes, and many of their basic properties are well established. In particular, families of spatial and temporal solitons existing in waveguides and in bulk geometries are known, including those existing in settings with a small Poynting vector walk-off and/or temporal group-velocity mismatch. Under conditions where modulational instabilities can not grow, such families of solitons are stable under propagation and robust against several perturbations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Quantum-inspired protocol for measuring the degree of similarity between spatial shapes

We put forward and demonstrate experimentally a quantum-inspired protocol that allows us to quantify the degree of similarity between two spatial shapes embedded in two optical beams without the need to measure the amplitude and phase across each beam. Instead the sought-after information can be retrieved by measuring the degree of polarization of the combined optical beam, a measurement that is much easier to implement experimentally. The protocol makes use of non-separable optical beams, whose main trait is that different degrees of freedom (polarization and spatial shape here) cannot be described independently. One important characteristic of the method described is that it allows us to compare two unknown spatial shapes.Funding: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (CEX2019-000910-S, PID2020-112670GB-I00, PRE2018-085072); Generalitat de Catalunya; FUNDACIÓ Privada MIR-PUIG; Fundación Cellex; European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme; European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research (20FUN02); Agencia Estatal de Investigación.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version