Structured Light
Chairs
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Robert Fickler |
 |
Gianluca Ruffato |
Synopsis
The field of photonics that studies light with non-trivial shapes in its degrees of freedom - i.e., time, space, and polarization - is nowadays termed structured light. From an initial focus on individually manipulating the light’s structure in space or time, the field has evolved to include two or all three degrees of freedom simultaneously, thereby generating light with complex scalar or vectorial three-dimensional shapes. With the increasing ability to generate, manipulate, and measure complex light fields, the areas of application have also expanded to include fundamental studies as well as technological applications in laser science, microscopy, imaging, optical communications, quantum photonics, and topology, to name a few. With this session, we aim to review the latest developments in the field by bringing together experts from all domains exploring structured light.
Topics
- Generation, manipulation and detection of structured light beams
- Vortex and vector beams, orbital angular momentum, spatio-temporal vortices, caustics and topological light
- Applications of structured light, including material processing, microscopy and imaging, optical tweezing and trapping, optical communications etc
- Quantum optics and technologies with structured light
- Interactions of structured light with matter
- Nonlinear optics with structured light and matter
- Propagation in complex or scattering media
- Methods and devices for structured light: flat optics and metasurfaces, photonic integrated circuits, AI-assisted design and optimization techniques, etc