We study the effect of an external magnetic field on coherent backscattering of light from a cold rubidium vapor. We observe that the backscattering enhancement factor can be increased with $B$. This surprising behavior shows that the coherence length of the system can be increased by adding a magnetic field, in sharp contrast with usual situations. This is mainly due to the lifting of the degeneracy between Zeeman sublevels. We find good agreement between our experimental data and a full Monte Carlo simulation, taking into account the magneto-optical effects and the geometry of the atomic cloud.

We demonstrate coherence resonance in a dynamical system without external noise. The experimental evidence is reported in the low frequency fluctuations of a chaotic diode laser with optical feedback. The phenomenon is also verified numerically using the Lang-Kobayashi equations for a single solitary mode laser, without noise terms. Fast deterministic dynamics plays the role of an effective exciting noise, narrowing the resonance in the autonomous slow power drop cycles of the laser. This new result is the natural extension of deterministic stochastic resonance and noise induced coherence resonance predicted and observed in recent years.

We present results of experiments on Rayleigh-Bénard convection in liquid ${}^4\mathrm{H}\mathrm{e}$ at several temperatures. We show visually that with carefully defined boundary conditions the basic convection state consists of parallel rolls which are aligned in one of two directions, the angle thus defined as being temperature dependent and we attempt to explain this behavior. We also show directly the skew-varicose instability acting on the basic state and correlate it with fluctuations in the temperature difference across the fluid layer.

We show the formation of ultraslow optical solitons in a lifetime broadened four-state atomic medium under Raman excitation. With appropriate conditions we demonstrate, both analytically and numerically, that both bright and dark ultraslow optical solitons can occur in such a highly resonant medium with remarkable propagation characteristics. This work may open other research opportunities in condensed matter and may result in a substantial impact on technology.

Experiments were conducted to study light propagation in a light waveguide loop consisting of linearly and circularly moving segments. We found that any segment of the loop contributes to the total phase difference between two counterpropagating light beams in the loop. The contribution is proportional to a product of the moving velocity $\mathit{v}$ and the projection of the segment length $\Delta \mathit{l}$ on the moving direction, $\Delta \varphi =4\pi \mathit{v}·\Delta \mathit{l}/c\lambda$. It is independent of the type of motion and the refractive index of waveguides. The finding includes the Sagnac effect of rotation as a special case and suggests a new fiber optic sensor for measuring linear motion with nanoscale sensitivity.

We address the dynamics of higher-order solitons in optical lattices, and predict their self-splitting into the set of their single-soliton constituents. The splitting is induced by the potential introduced by the lattice, together with the imprinting of a phase tilt onto the initial multisoliton states. The phenomenon allows the controllable generation of several coherent solitons linked via their Zakharov-Shabat eigenvalues. Application of the scheme to the generation of correlated matter waves in Bose-Einstein condensates is discussed.

We determine the probability distribution for the field inside a random distribution of electric or magnetic dipoles. Although the average contribution from any spherical shell around the probe position vanishes, at the center of a spherical distribution of parallel dipoles, the Levy stable distribution of the field is symmetric around a nonvanishing field amplitude. Omission of contributions from a small volume around the probe leads to a field distribution with a vanishing mean, which, in the limit of vanishing excluded volume, converges to the shifted distribution.

A comprehensive model has been proposed to account for the large enhancement of thermal conductivity in nanofluids and its strong temperature dependence, which the classical Maxwellian theory has been unable to explain. The dependence of thermal conductivity on particle size, concentration, and temperature has been taken care of simultaneously in our treatment. While the geometrical effect of an increase in surface area with a decrease in particle size, rationalized using a stationary particle model, accounts for the conductivity enhancement, a moving particle model developed from the Stokes-Einstein formula explains the temperature effect. Predictions from the combined model agree with the experimentally observed values of conductivity enhancement of nanofluids.

We investigate the problem of falling paper by solving the two dimensional Navier-Stokes equations subject to the motion of a free-falling body at Reynolds numbers around ${10}^3$. The aerodynamic lift on a tumbling plate is found to be dominated by the product of linear and angular velocities rather than velocity squared, as appropriate for an airfoil. This coupling between translation and rotation provides a mechanism for a brief elevation of center of mass near the cusplike turning points. The Navier-Stokes solutions further provide the missing quantity in the classical theory of lift, the instantaneous circulation, and suggest a revised model for the fluid forces.

We show that the group velocities of light pulses can be decelerated dramatically by the use of a dispersive phase-coupling effect through a wave mixing process. We have observed experimentally such a phase-coupling-induced ultraslow light propagation with a group velocity as low as $0.05\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$ in a photorefractive ${\mathrm{B}\mathrm{i}}_{12}{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{O}}_{20}$ crystal at room temperature. Moreover, the ultraslow light is amplified in the ${\mathrm{B}\mathrm{i}}_{12}{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{O}}_{20}$ crystal because of the unidirectional energy transfer from a coupling beam to the ultraslow light. This technique to produce ultraslow light propagation is valid for all nonlinear wave mixing processes with a dispersive phase-coupling effect.

A new type of conical second-harmonic generation was discovered in a 2D ${\chi }^{(2)}$ photonic crystal—a hexagonally poled ${\mathrm{L}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{T}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{O}}_3$ crystal. It reveals the presence of another type of nonlinear interaction—a scattering involved optical parametric generation in a nonlinear medium. Such a nonlinear interaction can be significantly enlarged in a modulated ${\chi }^{(2)}$ structure by a quasi-phase-matching process. The conical beam records the spatial distribution of the scattering signal and discloses the structure information and symmetry of the 2D ${\chi }^{(2)}$ photonic crystal.

A self-pulsing effect termed quantum echoes has been observed in experiments with an open superconducting and a normal conducting microwave billiard whose geometry provides soft chaos, i.e., a mixed phase space portrait with a large stable island. For such systems a periodic response to an incoming pulse has been predicted. Its period has been associated with the degree of development of a horseshoe describing the topology of the classical dynamics. The experiments confirm this picture and reveal the topological information.

Two dimensional resonators with a smooth strictly convex boundary are known to possess a whispering gallery region supporting modes concentrated near the boundary. A new class of asymmetric resonant cavities is introduced, where a whispering gallery-like region is found deep inside the resonator. The construction of such resonators is a novel application of the geometric control methods. The results of numerical simulations and experiments are presented.

Finite time correlations of the velocity in a surface flow are found to be important for the formation of clusters of Lagrangian tracers. The degree of clustering characterized by the Lyapunov spectrum of the flow is numerically shown to be in qualitative agreement with the predictions for the white-in-time compressible Kraichnan flow, but to deviate quantitatively. For intermediate values of compressibility the clustering is surprisingly weakened by time correlations.

Nonlinear optical effects for frequency conversion require a phase-matching condition to efficiently generate a coherent field at the new wavelength. We find that the phase-matching condition can be replaced by a resonance condition when the nonlinear effect takes place in a waveguide directional coupler. We apply this theory to second-harmonic generation and find a theoretical conversion efficiency of 100%, equivalent to the perfect phase-matching condition. An example of the design of such waveguide directional coupler is presented.

We study the effects of mutual and external chaotic phase synchronization in ensembles of bursting oscillators. These oscillators (used for modeling neuronal dynamics) are essentially multiple time scale systems. We show that a transition to mutual phase synchronization takes place on the bursting time scale of globally coupled oscillators, while on the spiking time scale, they behave asynchronously. We also demonstrate the effect of the onset of external chaotic phase synchronization of the bursting behavior in the studied ensemble by a periodic driving applied to one arbitrarily taken neuron. We also propose an explanation of the mechanism behind this effect. We infer that the demonstrated phenomenon can be used efficiently for controlling bursting activity in neural ensembles.

A force-free granular gas is considered with an impact-velocity-dependent coefficient of restitution as it follows from the model of viscoelastic particles. We analyze structure formation in this system by means of three independent methods: molecular dynamics, numerical solution of the hydrodynamic equations, and linear stability analysis of these equations. All these approaches indicate that structure formation occurs in force-free granular gases only as a transient process.

Quantum kicked rotor was recently realized in experiments with cold atomic gases and standing optical waves. As predicted, it exhibits dynamical localization in the momentum space. Here we consider the weak-localization regime concentrating on the Ehrenfest time scale. The latter accounts for the spread time of a minimal wave packet and is proportional to the logarithm of the Planck constant. We show that the onset of the dynamical localization is essentially delayed by four Ehrenfest times, and give quantitative predictions suitable for an experimental verification.

We have identified experimentally secondary instability mechanisms that restrict the stable band of wave numbers for ideal hexagons in Bénard-Marangoni convection. We use “thermal laser writing” to impose long wave perturbations of ideal hexagonal patterns as initial conditions and measure the growth rates of the perturbations. For $ϵ=0.46$ our results suggest a longitudinal phase instability limits stable hexagons at a high wave number while a transverse phase instability limits low wave number hexagons.

We describe a new type of artificial nonlinear optical material composed of a one-dimensional metal-dielectric photonic crystal. Because of the resonant nature of multiple Bragg reflections, the transmission within the transmission band can be quite large, even though the transmission through the same total thickness of bulk metal would be very small. This procedure allows light to penetrate into the highly nonlinear metallic layers, leading to a large nonlinear optical response. We present experimental results for a $\mathrm{C}\mathrm{u}/{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{O}}_2$ crystal which displays a strongly enhanced nonlinear optical response (up to $12X$) in transmission.