We study two photon absorption (TPA) induced surface relief formation in an azo-polymer thin film by illumination of picosecond near-infrared optical vortex pulses with the corresponding intensity of >5 GW/cm2 at the focal plane.
We discover, for the first time, that the optical vortex creates an unexpected flower-shaped surface relief with 3-8 petals along an azimuthal direction, corresponding to the topological charge of the incident optical vortex. This surface relief manifests the modulational instability associated with nonlinear light-matter interaction in the azo-polymer film.
We report on the generation of a spinning twin-mode with two bright spots in a biomaterial, bacteriorhodopsin (bR), suspension pumped by an optical vortex. The spinning direction of the twin-mode is fully assigned by the handedness of the incident optical vortex. This phenomenon occurs owing to the spatial soliton effects in the bR suspension.
We demonstrate the formation of chiral surface relief of azo-polymers by irradiation of picosecond 1-μm optical vortex with a pulse width of 8ps via two-photon absorption. Optical vortex induced TPA enables us to create the chiral surface structures only within an extremely narrow defocusing tolerance with high three-dimensional (longitudinal and transverse) spatial resolution beyond the diffraction limit and without undesired outer rings of Airy pattern.
We report on the first demonstration of picosecond optical vortex-induced chiral surface relief in an azo-polymer film due to two-photon absorption isomerization. The chiral surface relief exhibits an extremely narrow defocusing tolerance without undesired outer rings due to the Airy pattern of highly focused light. Such chiral surface relief reflects a z-polarized electric field with an azimuthal helical phase caused by spin–orbital angular momentum coupling.
Light may carry both orbital angular momentum (AM) and spin AM. The former is a consequence of its helical wavefront, and the latter is a result of its rotating transverse electric field. Intriguingly, the light–matter interaction with such fields shows that the orbital AM of light causes a physical “twist” in a range of materials, including metal, silicon, azopolymer, and even liquid-phase resin. This process may be aided by the light’s spin AM, resulting in the formation of various helical structures. The exchange between the AM of light and matter offers not only unique helical structures at the nanoscale but also entirely novel fundamental phenomena with regard to the light–matter interaction. This will lead to the future development of advanced photonics devices, including metamaterials for highly sensitive detectors as well as reactions for chiral chemical composites. Here, we focus on interactions between the AM of light and azopolymers, which exhibit some of the most diverse structures and phenomena observed. These studies result in helical surface relief structures in azopolymers and will leverage next-generation applications with light fields carrying optical AM.
Optical vortex possesses an annular intensity profile and an optical orbital angular momentum arising from its helical wavefront. In particular, it is noteworthy that optical vortex can twist the irradiated materials, such as silicon, metal, and polymer, to form chiral structures.
In this paper, we report on a spatial symmetry breaking of optical vortex propagating through bacteriorhodopsin (bR) suspensions. A 1 µm picosecond optical vortex mode propagated through bR suspensions (concentration: ~10 µM diluted in a 16 % NaCl solution) was broken into a twin mode with two bright spots. Also, the twin mode rotated towards a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction assigned by the handedness of the incident optical vortex mode. The rotation speed of the twin mode was measured to be 0.05 cycle/second. It was worth mentioning that such symmetry breaking of the optical vortex mode manifests an interaction between a helical wavefront and a helical bacteriorhodopsin. In fact, this phenomenon was never observed by using a NaCl solution without bacteriorhodopsin.
KEYWORDS: Optical vortices, Structured light, Diffraction, Chemical species, Quantum dots, Absorption, Gaussian beams, Scanning electron microscopy, Linear polarizers, Scientific research
Optical beams with Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) can potentially be used to probe forbidden transitions. However, the size of the vortex beam has to be comparable to that of an atom, molecule or an artificial atom. We propose and demonstrate a de-magnifying hyperlens allowing reducing the size of the vortex beam to the nanometer scale.
We discover that 1.06 μm picosecond vortex pulses induce chiral mass-transport to form a single-armed chiral surface relief in azo-polymer through two photon absorption process. The surface relief exhibits a diameter of a 2.5μm, i.e. 0.7 times of diffraction limit.
We discovered that a helical surface relief can be created in azo-polymer film merely by the irradiation of circularly-polarized
light without any orbital angular momentum. The chirality of the surface relief was also determined by the
handedness of the circular polarized light.
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