Spontaneous knotting of self-trapped waves
The nonlinear phase of the self-trapped light beam breaks the wave
front into a sequence of optical vortex loops around the soliton, which,
through the soliton's orbital angular momentum and spatial twist,
tangle on propagation to form links and knots. We anticipate similar
spontaneous knot topology to be a universal feature of waves whose phase
front is twisted and nonlinearly modulated, including superfluids and
trapped matter waves.
http://www.nature.com/srep/ 2012/121025/srep00771/full/ srep00771.html
The nonlinear phase of the self-trapped light beam breaks the wave front into a sequence of optical vortex loops around the soliton, which, through the soliton's orbital angular momentum and spatial twist, tangle on propagation to form links and knots. We anticipate similar spontaneous knot topology to be a universal feature of waves whose phase front is twisted and nonlinearly modulated, including superfluids and trapped matter waves.
http://www.nature.com/srep/
No comments:
Post a Comment