Abstract

Light propagation in gradient media and curved spaces induce intriguing phenomena, such as focusing and self-imaging, thus delivering a wide range of applications. However, these systems are limited to excitations without orbital angular momentum, which may produce unforeseen results. Here, we demonstrate the reconstructions (or called imaging to some extent) of optical vortices (OVs) in two-dimensional (2D) gradient media and three-dimensional (3D) curved spaces. We present the evolution of OVs in two types of generalized Maxwell fisheye (GMFE) lenses from the perspective of geometrical and wave optics, and use coherent perfect absorbers (CPAs) to better recover the OVs in the converging position. Furthermore, we also demonstrate such phenomena in two types of 3D compact closed manifolds—sphere and spindle—which are also called geodesic lenses. Surprisingly, the results we obtained in 3D curved spaces can be seen as a strong verification of the Poincaré–Hopf theorem. Our work provides a new, to the best of our knowledge, platform to investigate the evolution of OVs on curved surfaces.

© 2023 Optica Publishing Group

Propagation of higher-order spatiotemporal vortices

Miguel A. Porras
Opt. Lett. 48(2) 367-370 (2023)

Reversible lateral optical force on phase-gradient metasurfaces for full control of metavehicles

Tianyue Li, Jack J. Kingsley-Smith, Yanhui Hu, Xiaohao Xu, Shaohui Yan, Shuming Wang, Baoli Yao, Zhenlin Wang, and Shining Zhu
Opt. Lett. 48(2) 255-258 (2023)

Accelerating Airy beams with particle-like polarization topologies and free-space bimeronic lattices

Justas Berškys and Sergej Orlov
Opt. Lett. 48(5) 1168-1171 (2023)

Ultra-broadband dual-polarization and arbitrary ratio power splitters based on Bezier curve optimized multimode interference

Shi Zhao, Shangtong Han, Mingyu Zhu, Jingye Chen, and Yaocheng Shi
Opt. Lett. 48(5) 1331-1334 (2023)

Optical memory for arbitrary perfect Poincaré states in an atomic ensemble

Lei Zeng, Ying-Hao Ye, Ming−Xin Dong, Wei-Hang Zhang, En-Ze Li, Da-Chuang Li, Dong-Sheng Ding, and Bao-Sen Shi
Opt. Lett. 48(2) 477-480 (2023)