Would a raindrop impacting on a coarse beach behave differently from that impacting on a desert of fine sand? We study this question by a series of model experiments, where the packing density of the granular target, the wettability of individual grains, the grain size, the impacting liquid, and the impact speed are varied. We find that by increasing the grain size and/or the wettability of individual grains the maximum droplet spreading undergoes a transition from a capillary regime towards a viscous regime, and splashing is suppressed. The liquid-grain mixing is discovered to be the underlying mechanism. An effective viscosity is defined accordingly to quantitatively explain the observations.

Phase matching is a necessary condition for achieving high-efficiency optical-frequency conversion. To date, practical means of accomplishing phase matching in homogeneous crystals remain limited, despite considerable efforts. Herein, we report a new class of methods aimed at achieving quasiperfect phase matching, based on controllable birefringence produced via the linear electro-optic effect, termed “voltage-tuning phase matching.” The wave vectors of the induced polarization and the generated fields can be matched and maintained along the direction of propagation by introducing an external electric field. We analyze the validity and feasibility of this method theoretically and demonstrate it experimentally by applying the linear electro-optic effect and fourth-harmonic generation simultaneously in a partially deuterated ${\mathrm{KH}}_2{\mathrm{PO}}_4$ crystal. Quasiperfect phase matching is achieved systematically over a temperature range of the initial phase-matching temperature $\pm 2°\mathrm{C}$. Moreover, this method can overcome the limitation of the birefringence in traditional technologies and provides new functionalities for conventional nonlinear materials as well as low-birefringence and isotropic materials. This technology may significantly impact the study of optical-frequency conversion and has promise for a broad range of applications in nonlinear optics.

Solitons propagating in media with higher-order dispersion will shed radiation known as resonant radiation, with applications in frequency broadening, deep UV sources for spectroscopy, and fundamental studies of soliton physics. Using a recently proposed equation that models the behavior of ultrashort optical pulses in nonlinear media using the analytic signal, we find that the resonant radiation associated with the third-harmonic generation term of the equation is parametrically stimulated with an unprecedented gain. Resonant radiation levels, typically only a small fraction of the soliton, are now as intense as the soliton itself. The mechanism is universal and works also in normal dispersion and with harmonics higher than the third. We report experimental hints of this superresonant radiation stimulated by the fifth harmonic in diamond.

Intensity maxima and zeros of speckle patterns obtained behind a diffuser are experimentally interchanged by applying a spiral phase delay of charge $\pm 1$ to the impinging coherent beam. This transform arises from the expectation that tightly focused beams, which have a planar wave front around the focus, are so changed into vortex beams and vice versa. The statistics of extrema locations and the intensity distribution of the so-generated “complementary” patterns are characterized by numerical simulations. It is demonstrated experimentally that the incoherent superposition of the three “complementary speckle patterns” yield a synthetic speckle grain size enlarged by a factor of $\sqrt{3}$. A cyclic permutation of optical vortices and intensity maxima is unexpectedly observed and discussed.

We report on the focalization of Bogoliubov–de Gennes excitations of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in the defocusing regime (Gross-Pitaevskii equation for repulsive Bose-Einstein condensates) with a spatially modulated periodic potential. Exploiting the modification of the dispersion relation induced by the modulation, we demonstrate the existence of localized structures of the Bogoliubov–de Gennes excitations, in both the linear and nonlinear regimes (linear and nonlinear “bullets”). These traveling Bogoliubov–de Gennes bullets, localized both spatially and temporally in the comoving reference frame, are robust and propagate remaining stable, without spreading or filamentation. The phenomena reported in this Letter could be observed in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates in the presence of a spatially periodic potential induced by an optical lattice.

We show that the dynamics of systems with a time-dependent delay is fundamentally affected by the functional form of the retarded argument. Associating with the latter an iterated map, the access map, and a corresponding Koopman operator, we identify two universality classes. Members in the first are equivalent to systems with a constant delay. The new, second class is characterized by the mode-locking behavior of their access maps and by an asymptotically linear, instead of a logarithmic, scaling of the Lyapunov spectrum. The membership depends in a fractal manner only on the parameters of the delay.

We employ random matrix theory in order to investigate coherent perfect absorption (CPA) in lossy systems with complex internal dynamics. The loss strength ${\gamma }_{\mathrm{CPA}}$ and energy $E_{\mathrm{CPA}}$, for which a CPA occurs, are expressed in terms of the eigenmodes of the isolated cavity—thus carrying over the information about the chaotic nature of the target—and their coupling to a finite number of scattering channels. Our results are tested against numerical calculations using complex networks of resonators and chaotic graphs as CPA cavities.

The modulation and multimode instabilities are the main mechanisms which drive spontaneous spatial and temporal pattern formation in a vast number of nonlinear systems ranging from biology to laser physics. Using an Er-doped fiber laser as a test bed, here for the first time we demonstrate both experimentally and theoretically a new type of a low-threshold vector-resonance-multimode instability which inherits features of multimode and modulation instabilities. The same as for the multimode instability, a large number of longitudinal modes can be excited without mode synchronization. To enable modulation instability, we modulate the state of polarization of the lasing signal with the period of the beat length by an adjustment of the in-cavity birefringence and the state of polarization of the pump wave. As a result, we show the regime’s tunability from complex oscillatory to periodic with longitudinal mode synchronization in the case of resonance matching between the beat and cavity lengths. Apart from the interest in laser physics for unlocking the tunability and stability of dynamic regimes, the proposed mechanism of the vector-resonance-multimode instability can be of fundamental interest for the nonlinear dynamics of various distributed systems.

We pattern the wave front of a high harmonic beam by intersecting the intense driving laser pulse that generates the high harmonic with a weak control pulse. To illustrate the potential of wave-front control, we imprint a Fresnel zone plate pattern on a harmonic beam, causing the harmonics to focus and defocus. The quality of the focus that we achieve is measured using the spectral wave-front optical reconstruction by diffraction method. We will show that it is possible to enhance the peak intensity by orders of magnitude without a physical optical element in the path of the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) beam. Through perturbative wave-front control, XUV beams can be created with a flexibility approaching what technology allows for visible and infrared light.

We experimentally demonstrate coherent control of a quantum system, whose dynamics is chaotic in the classical limit. Interaction of diatomic molecules with a periodic sequence of ultrashort laser pulses leads to the dynamical localization of the molecular angular momentum, a characteristic feature of the chaotic quantum kicked rotor. By changing the phases of the rotational states in the initially prepared coherent wave packet, we control the rotational distribution of the final localized state and its total energy. We demonstrate the anticipated sensitivity of control to the exact parameters of the kicking field, as well as its disappearance in the classical regime of excitation.

Chirality is an asymmetric property widely found in nature. Here, we propose and demonstrate experimentally the spontaneous emergence of chirality in an on-chip ultrahigh-$Q$ whispering-gallery microresonator, without broken parity or time-reversal symmetry. This counterintuitive effect arises due to the inherent Kerr-nonlinearity-modulated coupling between clockwise and counterclockwise propagating waves. Above an input threshold of a few hundred microwatts, the initial chiral symmetry is broken spontaneously, and the counterpropagating output ratio exceeds $20:1$ with bidirectional inputs. The spontaneous chirality in an on-chip microresonator holds great potential in studies of fundamental physics and applied photonic devices.

We examine both theoretically and experimentally the breakup of a pendant drop loaded with an insoluble surfactant. The experiments show that a significant amount of surfactant is trapped in the resulting satellite droplet. This result contradicts previous theoretical predictions, where the effects of surface tension variation were limited to solutocapillarity and Marangoni stresses. We solve numerically the hydrodynamic equations, including not only those effects but also those of surface shear and dilatational viscosities. We show that surface viscosities play a critical role to explain the accumulation of surfactant in the satellite droplet.

We study gap solitons which appear in the topological gap of 1D bosonic dimer chains within the mean-field approximation. We find that such solitons have a nontrivial texture of the sublattice pseudospin. We reveal their chiral nature by demonstrating the anisotropy of their behavior in the presence of a localized energy potential.

We analyze the transition from convective to absolute dynamical instabilities in a nonlinear optical system forming patterns, i.e., a photorefractive crystal in a single feedback configuration. We demonstrate that the convective regime is directly related to the bistability area in which the homogeneous steady state coexists with a pattern solution. Outside this domain, the system exhibits either a homogeneous steady state or an absolute dynamical regime. We evidence that the bistability area can be greatly increased by adjusting the mirror tilt angle and/or by applying an external background illumination on the photorefractive crystal.