Temporal widths of an attosecond (asec) XUV radiation pulse train, formed by the superposition of higher order harmonics, have been recently determined utilizing a 2nd order autocorrelation measurement. An assessment of the validity of the approach, for the broadband XUV radiation of asec pulses, is implemented through ab initio calculations modeling the spectral and temporal response of the two-XUV-photon He ionization detector employed. The measured width of the asec bursts is discussed in terms of the spectral phases of the individual harmonics, as well as in terms of the spatially modulated temporal width of the radiation, and is found in reasonable agreement with the expected duration.

We report the first observation of stationary necklacelike solitons. Such necklace structures were realized when a high-order vortex beam was launched appropriately into a two-dimensional optically induced photonic lattice. Our theoretical results obtained with continuous and discrete models show that the necklace solitons resulting from a charge-4 vortex have a $\pi$ phase difference between adjacent “pearls” and are formed in an octagon shape. Their stability region is identified.

We report on the observation of nonlocalized modes or necklace states of light waves in disordered systems in the Anderson localized regime. The samples consist of positional-disordered binary multilayer systems. Anderson localized modes manifest themselves as narrow high-transmission peaks in the transmission spectrum, whereas the average of the logarithm of the transmission coefficient decreases linearly with thickness. Optical necklace states are observed as modes with a characteristic multiresonance time response and relatively fast decay time.

We report the first observation of subradiance in plasmonic nanocrystals. Amplitude- and phase-resolved ultrafast transmission experiments directly reveal the coherent coupling between surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) induced by periodic variations in the dielectric function. This interaction results in the formation of plasmonic band gaps and coupled SPP eigenmodes with different symmetries, as directly shown by near-field imaging. In antisymmetric modes, radiative SPP damping is strongly suppressed, increasing the SPP lifetime from 30 fs to more than 200 fs. The findings are analyzed within a coupled resonance model.

We provide analytical and numerical evidence that the classical mixing systems, which lack exponential sensitivity on initial conditions, exhibit universal decay of the Loschmidt echo which turns out to be a function of a single scaled time variable ${\delta }^{2/5}t$, where $\delta$ is the strength of perturbation. The role of dynamical instability and entropy production is discussed.

We demonstrate analytically and numerically that focusing of high harmonics produced by the reflection of a few-femtosecond laser pulse from a concave plasma surface opens a new way to unprecedentally high intensities. The key features allowing the boosting of the focal intensity are the harmonics coherency and the small exponent of the power-law decay of the harmonics spectrum. Using similarity theory and direct particle-in-cell simulations, we find that the intensity at the focus scales as $I_{\mathrm{C}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{F}}\propto a_0^3{I}_0$, where $a_0$ and $I_0\propto a_0^2$ are the dimensionless relativistic amplitude and the intensity of the incident laser pulse. The scaling suggests that due to the coherent harmonic focusing (CHF), the Schwinger intensity limit can be reached using lasers with $I_0\approx {10}^{22}\mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{c}\mathrm{m}}^2$. The pulse duration at the focus scales as ${\tau }_{\mathrm{C}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{F}}\propto 1/a_0^2$ and reaches the subattosecond range.

By probing the resonances between a photonic band and an external laser field and their nonlinear changes in angle-resolved reflectivity, we show experimental evidence that the nonlinear optical changes in a two-dimensional photonic crystal waveguide with a Kerr nonlinearity are critically dependent on the dispersion nature and the group velocity of the photonic bands. The results agree well with the behavior predicted from band structures, indicating that the design of nonlinear optical properties of material systems is realistically possible by band dispersion and group velocity engineering.

We present the first direct experimental evidence of the local properties of optical vortices in a random laser speckle field. We have observed the Berry anisotropy ellipse describing the anisotropic squeezing of phase lines close to vortex cores and quantitatively verified the Dennis angular momentum rule for its phase. Some statistics associated with vortices, such as density, anisotropy ellipse eccentricity, and its relation to zero crossings of real and imaginary parts of the random field, are also investigated by experiments.

We have demonstrated a 10 Hz Ni-like Mo x-ray laser operating at 18.9 nm with 150 mJ total pump energy by employing a novel pumping scheme. The grazing-incidence scheme is described, where a picosecond pulse is incident at a grazing angle to a Mo plasma column produced by a slab target irradiated by a 200 ps laser pulse. This scheme uses refraction of the short pulse at a predetermined electron density to increase absorption to pump a specific gain region. The higher coupling efficiency inherent to this scheme allows a reduction in the pump energy where 70 mJ long pulse energy and 80 mJ short pulse energy are sufficient to produce lasing at a 10 Hz repetition rate. Under these conditions and by optimizing the delay between the pulses, we achieve strong amplification and close to saturation for 4 mm long targets.

We investigate resonant nonlinear optical interactions and demonstrate induced transparency in acetylene molecules in a hollow-core photonic-band-gap fiber at $1.5\mu \mathrm{m}$. The induced spectral transmission window is used to demonstrate slow-light effects, and we show that the observed broadening of the spectral features is due to collisions of the molecules with the inner walls of the fiber core. Our results illustrate that such fibers can be used to facilitate strong coherent light-matter interactions even when the optical response of the individual molecules is weak.

An exact equation describing freely propagating stationary flames with arbitrary values of the gas expansion coefficient is obtained. This equation respects all conservation laws at the flame front, and provides a consistent nonperturbative account of the effect of vorticity produced by the curved flame on the front structure. It is verified that the new equation is in agreement with the approximate equations derived previously in the case of weak gas expansion.

We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically the existence of excitable optical waves in semiconductor microcavities. Although similar to those observed in biological and chemical systems, these excitable optical waves are self-confined. This is due to a new dynamical scenario, where a stationary Turing pattern controls the propagation of waves in an excitable medium, thus bringing together the two paradigms of dynamical behavior (waves and patterns) in active media.

By immersing a compliant yet self-supporting sheet into flowing water, we study a heavy, streamlined, and elastic body interacting with a fluid. We find that above a critical flow velocity a sheet aligned with the flow begins to flap with a Strouhal frequency consistent with animal locomotion. This transition is subcritical. Our results agree qualitatively with a simple fluid dynamical model that predicts linear instability at a critical flow speed. Both experiment and theory emphasize the importance of body inertia in overcoming the stabilizing effects of finite rigidity and fluid drag.

We demonstrate, through numerical simulations, the generation of stable vortex lattices in light condensates. This can be achieved by propagating several concentric laser beams with nested vortices of different topological charges in an optical material with a cubic-quintic nonlinearity. We have considered several initial conditions, and in all the cases the net topological charges of the resulting lattice is equal to the topological charge of the initial outer vortex. The lattice exhibits rotation similar to vortex motion in superfluids. These vortex arrays could be used to implement all-optical photonic crystal fibers. Our results also apply to Bose-Einstein condensates in the presence of three-body elastic interactions.

We find that the classical failure criteria, i.e., maximum normal stress criterion, Tresca criterion, Mohr-Coulomb criterion, and von Mises criterion, cannot satisfactorily explain the tensile fracture behavior of the bulk metallic glass (BMG) materials. For a better description, we propose an ellipse criterion as a new failure criterion to unify the four classical criteria above and apply it to exemplarily describe the tensile fracture behavior of BMGs as well as a variety of other materials. It is suggested that each of the classical failure criteria can be unified by the present ellipse criterion depending on the difference of the ratio $\alpha ={\tau }_0/{\sigma }_0$.

The orbits of fluid particles in two dimensions effectively act as topological obstacles to material lines. A spacetime plot of the orbits of such particles can be regarded as a braid whose properties reflect the underlying dynamics. For a chaotic flow, the braid generated by the motion of three or more fluid particles is computed. A “braiding exponent” is then defined to characterize the complexity of the braid. This exponent is proportional to the usual Lyapunov exponent of the flow, associated with separation of nearby trajectories. Measuring chaos in this manner has several advantages, especially from the experimental viewpoint, since neither nearby trajectories nor derivatives of the velocity field are needed.

The power law $1/f^{\alpha }$ in the power spectrum characterizes the fluctuating observables of many complex natural systems. Considering the energy levels of a quantum system as a discrete time series where the energy plays the role of time, the level fluctuations can be characterized by the power spectrum. Using a family of quantum billiards, we analyze the order-to-chaos transition in terms of this power spectrum. A power law $1/f^{\alpha }$ is found at all the transition stages, and it is shown that the exponent $\alpha$ is related to the chaotic component of the classical phase space of the quantum system.

Phase synchronization is an important phenomenon that occurs in a wide variety of complex oscillatory processes. Measuring phase synchronization can therefore help to gain fundamental insight into nature. In this Letter we point out that synchronization analysis techniques can detect spurious synchronization, if they are fed with a superposition of signals such as in electroencephalography or magnetoencephalography data. We show how techniques from blind source separation can help to nevertheless measure the true synchronization and avoid such pitfalls.

We investigate mixing in a viscoelastic and shear-thinning fluid—a very common combination in polymers and suspensions. We find that competition between elastic and viscous forces generates self-similar mixing, lobe transport, and other characteristics of chaos. The mechanism by which chaos is produced is evaluated both in experiments and in a simple model. We find that chaotic flow is generated by spontaneous oscillations, the magnitude and frequency of which govern the extent of chaos and mixing.

We show the real-space observation of fast and slow pulses propagating inside a photonic crystal waveguide by time-resolved near-field scanning optical microscopy. Local phase and group velocities of modes are measured. For a specific optical frequency we observe a localized pattern associated with a flat band in the dispersion diagram. During at least $3\mathrm{p}\mathrm{s}$, movement of this field is hardly discernible: its group velocity would be at most $c/1000$. The huge trapping times without the use of a cavity reveal new perspectives for dispersion and time control within photonic crystals.