RUI: Three-Dimensional Spatial and Polarization Modes in Classical and Quantum Light Fields

Colgate University, Hamilton NY

Investigators

Abstract

General audience abstract: The beam of light coming from a laser is typically brightest in the middle becoming dimmer towards the edges and keeps that basic pattern as it moves through space. It is possible to manipulate such a beam to produce one with much more complicated patterns across and along the beam. The PI and his students will be continuing the exploration of such novel light beams and their applications. Such studies may have an impact in the creation of new types of imaging for medical diagnosis and new ways for increasing the amount of information carried by light in communications. The PI and his team will investigate one type of novel light beam, known as a non-diffracting beam which has the interesting property of not spreading or shrinking, at least over a limited distance. Such beams can be used to simulate physical situations that may be intractable to investigate by other means, or give complementary perspectives to present-day studies. This type of research will offer new approaches for the creation of novel light-based technologies. In this research the PI and co-workers, mostly undergraduates, will use emerging technologies in light manipulation to reshape and study light in new ways. Immediate byproducts beyond the main research include creating new instructional laboratories designed to educate an emerging workforce that must understand the quantum physics used in new technologies. Technical audience abstract: In this study the PI and coworkers aim at manipulating light beams to study scalar and vectorial light patterns in new spatial arrangements of amplitude, phase and polarization, which evolve and redistribute as the light propagates. These patterns are known as non-diffracting beams. The group will study optical singularities in these beams, such as optical vortices and caustics, in arrangements that have not been previously investigated. These new configurations of fields are important because they unravel underlying phenomena that are not easily predicted. A particular problem that will be investigated uses light to simulate quantum mechanical problems due to similarities between the Helmholtz wave equation and the Schrodinger equation. The researchers will also study new polarization patterns in three dimensions that involve rotations of the polarization ellipse that mimic twisted patterns of spins. They will do these investigations classically as well as quantum mechanically via experiments with single photons. At the quantum level, the studies will involve new spatial correlations that involve the propagation dimension. These studies open new paradigms for understanding light-wave patterns and to use them in photonic applications such as imaging, manipulation and communications. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.