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Controlling light’s propagation by light ?!

By Frank Kuo | Posted: 19 January 2011

Light is wave. Well, most of the time, it behaves like so. Due to its wave nature, it is not trivial to confine any light beam to its original shape when it is propagating except a plane wave. Putting in one sentence, light beams tend to diverge. Actually, even a plane wave has edges in reality, so plane waves diverge too. So, what if we can create a light beam that retains its diameter and energy distribution transverse to the direction of propagation through space, a “spatial soliton” as being called by scientific community, wouldn’t that be a great achievement? After all, human beings have been trying to manipulate light for thousands of years. In fact, we can do much more thanks to the efforts of researchers who are fascinated by making this happen.

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