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SUMMARY:Topological design of light beams: vortices\, knots\, textures &am
 p\; beyond - Mark Dennis (Birmingham)
DTSTART:20260122T140000Z
DTEND:20260122T153000Z
UID:TALK241315@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Bo Peng
DESCRIPTION:A rich variety of knot-like topological structures can be real
 ized in laboratory light beams such as lasers. The simplest description of
  propagating light is a map from three-dimensional space to the complex nu
 mbers\, where optical vortices (phase singularities\, nodal lines) are cir
 culations of the Poynting vector energy flow.\n\nA variety of knotted and 
 linked vortex filaments can be embedded in propagating beams shaped by com
 puter-controlled holograms\, embedding designs inspired by algebraic geome
 try\, such as Milnor maps. Furthermore\, a huge variety of knots and links
  occur in random waves modelling wave chaos or optical speckle. This echoe
 s Lord Kelvin’s vision of the periodic table of atoms as knotted vortice
 s in the ether.\n\nControlling polarization adds a further layer of topolo
 gy\, creating three-dimensional polarization textures with spatially struc
 tured phase and polarization. Topological particle-like skyrmionic beams r
 ealise the Hopf fibration by wrapping around the optical hypersphere param
 etrizing the full optical state.\n\nMoving beyond the scalar and paraxial 
 regime\, structured nonparaxial vector beams reveal various rich mathemati
 cal structures and point toward an experimentally accessible\, topological
  pre-quantum field theory for light.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 3\, RDC
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