Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Marco Peccianti.
We investigate total internal reflection of optical spatial solitons at the interface between two regions of nematic liquid crystals with different optical densities. Due to nonlinear molecular reorientation, the solitons experience a penetration depth, hence, a lateral shift that depends on the excitation, with lateral shifts from 0.7 to 1.2 mm as input powers increased from 1.6 to 9.3 mW.
We investigate the interaction between two beams differing in wavelength and the properties of dual-frequency spatial solitons in nonlocal birefringent reorientational media. We report the first experimental observations of anisotropic nonlocal vector solitons in unbiased nematic liquid crystals. Model and simulations, based on the paraxiality along the Poynting vectors, include joint walk-off and breathing.
Intense light propagating in a nonlinear medium can generate an ensemble of interacting filaments of light, or spatial solitons. Using nematic liquid crystals, we demonstrate that the filaments exhibit collective behavior typical of complex systems, including the formation of clusters and soundlike vibrations, as well as the reduction of the configurational entropy, controlled by the degree of nonlocality of the medium.
With reference to spatially nonlocal nematic liquid crystals, we develop a theory of optical spatial solitons and modulational instability in anisotropic media with arbitrarily large birefringence. Asymmetric spatial profiles and multivalued features are predicted for self-localized light versus walk-off angle. The results hold valid for generic self-focusing birefringent media and apply to large angle steering of individual and multiple self-trapped optical beams.
We investigate power-controlled angular steering of light filaments produced by transverse modulational instability in an anisotropic nematic liquid-crystal cell.
Spatial nonlocality has a crucial role in the optical response of bulk liquid crystals. With specific reference to one-dimensional modulation instability, we demonstrate the tuning of transverse nonlocality in the nonlinear response of nematics.
In certain materials, the spontaneous spreading of a laser beam (owing to diffraction) can be compensated for by the interplay of optical intensity and material nonlinearity. The resulting non-diffracting beams are called 'spatial solitons' (refs 1-3), and they have been observed in various bulk media. In nematic liquid crystals, solitons can be produced at milliwatt power levels and have been investigated for both practical applications and as a means of exploring fundamental aspects of light interactions with soft matter. Spatial solitons effectively operate as waveguides, and so can be considered as a means of channelling optical information along the self-sustaining filament. But actual steering of these solitons within the medium has proved more problematic, being limited to tilts of just a fraction of a degree. Here we report the results of an experimental and theoretical investigation of voltage-controlled 'walk-off' and steering of self-localized light in nematic liquid crystals. We find not only that the propagation direction of individual spatial solitons can be tuned by several degrees, but also that an array of direction-tunable solitons can be generated by modulation instability. Such control capabilities might find application in reconfigurable optical interconnects, optical tweezers and optical surgical techniques.
We report on the observation and quantitative assessment of self-trapped pulsating beams in a highly nonlocal nonlinear regime. The experiments were conducted in nematic liquid crystals and allow a meaningful comparison with the prediction of a scalar theory in the perturbative limit, while addressing the need for beyond-paraxial analytical treatments.
The nonlocal nonlinearity stemming from molecular reorientation in nematic liquid crystals supports the formation of multiple solitary waves, following the onset of spatial modulational instability from both wide and focused input beams. We report experimental observations of such phenomena at power levels of hundreds of milliwatts in planar cells with a voltage bias.
We report the first observation of modulational instability in nematic liquid crystals encompassing a nonlocal behavior. The experimental results are quantitatively compared with the theory revealing the fundamental features associated to a nonlocal nonlinearity.
We develop a general theory of spatial solitons in a liquid crystalline medium exhibiting a nonlinearity with an arbitrary degree of effective nonlocality. The model accounts the observability of accessible solitons and establishes an important link with parametric solitons.
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit a saturable, non-instantaneous nonlinear response through light-induced reorientation. In such a material, we demonstrate that (2+1)-dimensional spatial solitary waves can be generated at milliwatt power levels not only with a coherent optical beam, but also with incoherent excitations. Self-trapping also allows the efficient guidance of a weak co-polarized probe.