Spatial distribution of phase singularities in optical random vector waves
Abstract
Phase singularities are dislocations widely studied in optical fields as well as in other areas of physics. With experiment and theory we show that the vectorial nature of light affects the spatial distribution of phase singularities in random light fields. While in scalar random waves phase singularities exhibit spatial distributions reminiscent of particles in isotropic liquids, in vector fields their distribution for the different vector components becomes anisotropic due to the direct relation between propagation and field direction. By incorporating this relation in the theory for scalar fields by Berry and Dennis, we quantitatively describe our experiments.
Citation
De Angelis , L , Alpeggiani , F , Di Falco , A & Kuipers , L 2016 , ' Spatial distribution of phase singularities in optical random vector waves ' , Physical Review Letters , vol. 117 , no. 9 , 093901 . https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.093901
Publication
Physical Review Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0031-9007Type
Journal item
Rights
© 2016, American Physical Society. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at journals.aps.org / https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.093901
Description
We acknowledge funding from ERC Advanced, Investigator Grant (no. 240438-CONSTANS). ADF acknowledges support from EPSRC (EP/L017008/1).Collections
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