Riccardo Sapienza

Author(s): Sidney R. Nagel

Soft condensed matter refers to materials where the constituent building blocks are larger than atoms but smaller than the system itself. The large size of the constituent particles makes these soft materials distinctive from hard condensed matter systems. Soft matter is easily deformable, dissipative, disordered, nonlinear, far from equilibrium, thermal and entropic, slow, observable, susceptible to external fields, patterned, nonlocal, interfacial elastic, memory retaining, and active. This article surveys soft-matter science and discusses different classes of systems including colloids; emulsions; foams; glassy, granular, and jammed matter; liquid crystals; polymers; adaptive mechanical metamaterials; and active matter.

[Rev. Mod. Phys. 89, 025002] Published Wed Apr 12, 2017

Title: Analytical description of the transverse Anderson localization of light
Author(s): Schirmacher, Walter; Leonetti, Marco; Ruocco, Giancarlo
Source: JOURNAL OF OPTICS, 19 (4): APR 2017
Document Type: Article

Aleksandar Lukic, Sebastian Dochow, Hyeonsoo Bae, Gregor Matz, Ines Latka, Bernhard Messerschmidt, Michael Schmitt, Jürgen Popp
We present a compact multimodal fiber probe that enables the simultaneous recording of nonlinear imaging modalities like coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS), second harmonic generation (SHG), and two-photon excited auto-fluorescence (TPEF) for biomedical applications. The probe is based on ... [Optica 4, 496-501 (2017)]

Author(s): Daqing Wang, Hrishikesh Kelkar, Diego Martin-Cano, Tobias Utikal, Stephan Götzinger, and Vahid Sandoghdar

Efficient interactions between photons and atoms are an essential ingredient for future quantum networks. A new experiment uses an optical resonator to create enhanced coupling between light and a single organic dye molecule.

[Phys. Rev. X 7, 021014] Published Wed Apr 26, 2017

Author(s): Ivan Latella and Philippe Ben-Abdallah

A giant thermal magnetoresistance is predicted for the electromagnetic transport of heat in magneto-optical plasmonic structures. In chains of InSb-Ag nanoparticles at room temperature, we find that the resistance can be increased by almost a factor of 2 with magnetic fields of 2 T. We show that thi...

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 173902] Published Tue Apr 25, 2017

Author(s): Tianhua Feng, Yi Xu, Wei Zhang, and Andrey E. Miroshnichenko

We introduce the concept of tunable ideal magnetic dipole scattering, where a nonmagnetic nanoparticle scatters light as a pure magnetic dipole. High refractive index subwavelength nanoparticles usually support both electric and magnetic dipole responses. Thus, to achieve ideal magnetic dipole scatt...

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 173901] Published Tue Apr 25, 2017

Author(s): Aymeric Delteil, Zhe Sun, Stefan Fält, and Atac Imamoğlu

Researchers have transferred quantum information from one quantum dot to another dot 5 m away using photonic qubits as the relay.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 177401] Published Tue Apr 25, 2017

Diffusion relaxes density fluctuations toward a uniform random state whose variance in regions of volume v=ℓd scales as σρ2≡⟨ρ2(ℓ)⟩−⟨ρ⟩2∼ℓ−d. Systems whose fluctuations decay faster, σρ2∼ℓ−λ with d

We derive four laws relating the absorptivity and emissivity of thermal emitters. Unlike the original Kirchhoff radiation law derivations, these derivations include diffraction, and so are valid also for small objects, and can also cover nonreciprocal objects. The proofs exploit two recent approaches. First, we express all fields in terms...

Author(s): J. Sperling, W. R. Clements, A. Eckstein, M. Moore, J. J. Renema, W. S. Kolthammer, S. W. Nam, A. Lita, T. Gerrits, W. Vogel, G. S. Agarwal, and I. A. Walmsley

Criteria are formulated and experimentally verified for optical measurement schemes that probe nonclassical properties of light and are independent of the detector architecture used.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 163602] Published Fri Apr 21, 2017

Milad I. Akhlaghi, Aristide Dogariu
Tracking trajectories of objects is conventionally achieved by direct beam probing or by sequential imaging of the target during its evolution. However, these strategies fail quickly when the direct line of sight is inhibited. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate real-time tracking of ... [Optica 4, 447-453 (2017)]

Author(s): Sanjib Ghosh, Christian Miniatura, Nicolas Cherroret, and Dominique Delande

We show that the coherent forward scattering (CFS) interference peak amplitude sharply jumps from zero to a finite value upon crossing a metal-insulator transition. Extensive numerical simulations reveal that the CFS peak contrast obeys the one-parameter scaling hypothesis and gives access to the cr...

[Phys. Rev. A 95, 041602(R)] Published Fri Apr 14, 2017

Nonlinear dynamics and chaos in an optomechanical beam

Nature Communications, Published online: 11 April 2017; doi:10.1038/ncomms14965

In optomechanics, optical nonlinearities are usually regarded as detrimental and efforts are made to minimize their effects. Here, the authors study the complex dynamics, including chaos, arising from the coupling of such optical nonlinearities with the mechanical modes of a silicon nanobeam cavity.

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com
title: "The March" - originally published 4/17/2017 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

Author(s): Tomer Goldfriend, Haim Diamant, and Thomas A. Witten

A new theory suggests that sedimenting particles of irregular shape will drift horizontally as they fall, a result that may resolve a long-standing puzzle.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 158005] Published Fri Apr 14, 2017

Author(s): Adrian J. Menssen, Alex E. Jones, Benjamin J. Metcalf, Malte C. Tichy, Stefanie Barz, W. Steven Kolthammer, and Ian A. Walmsley

Two independent groups have provided the first experimental demonstration of genuine three-photon interference.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 153603] Published Mon Apr 10, 2017

Author(s): Sascha Agne, Thomas Kauten, Jeongwan Jin, Evan Meyer-Scott, Jeff Z. Salvail, Deny R. Hamel, Kevin J. Resch, Gregor Weihs, and Thomas Jennewein

Two independent groups have provided the first experimental demonstration of genuine three-photon interference.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 153602] Published Mon Apr 10, 2017

Author(s): Aleksei V. Chechkin, Flavio Seno, Ralf Metzler, and Igor M. Sokolov

Brownian motion—the random movement of microscopic particles in a fluid—usually gives rise to a Gaussian probability of finding a particle at a particular place at a specific time. But in some situations, this probability behaves differently. A new mathematical model shows how to reconcile this behavior with other hallmarks of Brownian motion.

[Phys. Rev. X 7, 021002] Published Wed Apr 05, 2017

Nature Physics 13, 363 (2017). doi:10.1038/nphys4002

Authors: Seung-Yeol Jeon, Hyungho Kwon & Kahyun Hur

Wave transport is one of the most interesting topics related to quasicrystals. This is due to the fact that the translational symmetry strongly governs the transport properties of every form of wave. Although quasiperiodic structures with or without disorder have been studied, a clear mechanism for wave transport in three-dimensional quasicrystals including localization is missing. To study the intrinsic quasiperiodic effects on wave transport, the time invariance of the lattice structure and the loss-free condition must be controlled. Here, using finite-difference methods, we study the diffusive-like transport and localization of photonic waves in a three-dimensional icosahedral quasicrystal without additional disorder. This result appears at odds with the well-known theory of wave localization (Anderson localization), but we found that in quasicrystals the short mean free path of the photonic waves makes localization possible.

Author(s): Davide Forcella, Claire Prada, and Rémi Carminati

The importance of spatial nonlocality in the description of negative refraction in electromagnetic materials has been put forward recently. We develop a theory of negative refraction in homogeneous and isotropic media, based on first principles, and that includes nonlocality in its full generality. ...

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 134301] Published Fri Mar 31, 2017

Author(s): Christoph Hamsen, Karl Nicolas Tolazzi, Tatjana Wilk, and Gerhard Rempe

A photon low pass filter is realized using a single atom strongly coupled to an optical cavity.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 133604] Published Fri Mar 31, 2017

Author(s): Carl M. Bender, Dorje C. Brody, and Markus P. Müller

A Hamilonian with PT-symmetry invariant properties is investigated as a candidate for an operator that has eigenvalues corresponding to the nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function.

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 130201] Published Thu Mar 30, 2017

Author(s): A. Prain, S. Vezzoli, N. Westerberg, T. Roger, and D. Faccio

Quantum field theory predicts that a spatially homogeneous but temporally varying medium will excite photon pairs out of the vacuum state. However, this important theoretical prediction lacks experimental verification due to the difficulty in attaining the required nonadiabatic and large amplitude c...

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 133904] Published Wed Mar 29, 2017

Author(s): T. Czerniuk, D. Wigger, A. V. Akimov, C. Schneider, M. Kamp, S. Höfling, D. R. Yakovlev, T. Kuhn, D. E. Reiter, and M. Bayer

A picosecond acoustic pulse can be used to control the lasing emission from semiconductor nanostructures by shifting their electronic transitions. When the active medium, here an ensemble of (In,Ga)As quantum dots, is shifted into or out of resonance with the cavity mode, a large enhancement or supp...

[Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 133901] Published Mon Mar 27, 2017