We report the optimal focusing of acoustic vortex beams by using flat lenses based on a Fresnel-spiral diffraction grating. The flat lenses are designed by spiral-shaped Fresnel zone plates composed of one or several arms. The constructive and destructive interferences of the diffracted waves by the spiral grating result in sharp acoustic vortex beams, following the focal laws obtained in analogy with the Fresnel zone plate lenses. In addition, we show that the number of arms determines the topological charge of the vortex, allowing the precise manipulation of the acoustic wave field by flat lenses. The experimental results in the ultrasonic regime show excellent agreement with the theory and full-wave numerical simulations. A comparison with beam focusing by Archimedean spirals also showing vortex focusing is given. The results of this work may have potential applications for particle trapping, ultrasound therapy, imaging, or underwater acoustic transmitters.

Photonic crystals are well known for their celebrated photonic band-gaps—the forbidden frequency ranges, for which the light waves cannot propagate through the structure. The frequency (or chromatic) band-gaps of photonic crystals can be utilized for frequency filtering. In analogy to the chromatic band-gaps and the frequency filtering, the angular band-gaps and the angular (spatial) filtering are also possible in photonic crystals. In this article, we review the recent advances of the spatial filtering using the photonic crystals in different propagation regimes and for different geometries. We review the most evident configuration of filtering in Bragg regime (with the back-reflection—i.e., in the configuration with band-gaps) as well as in Laue regime (with forward deflection—i.e., in the configuration without band-gaps). We explore the spatial filtering in crystals with different symmetries, including axisymmetric crystals; we discuss the role of chirping, i.e., the dependence of the longitudinal period along the structure. We also review the experimental techniques to fabricate the photonic crystals and numerical techniques to explore the spatial filtering. Finally, we discuss several implementations of such filters for intracavity spatial filtering.

Fano-like resonant coupling of electromagnetic radiation with planar waveguiding modes of nanostructured thin films is proposed and realized experimentally. Different from conventional Fano coupling to compact resonators with the discrete spectrum, we report Fano-like coupling to infinitely extended planar waveguiding modes of the spatially unbound system. We fabricated the films by the ion beam sputtering method on nano-modulated substrates. The observed Fano-like process shows extremely strong sensitivity with respect to the wavelength and especially to the incidence angle of the radiation and can potentially be used for frequency and spatial filtering of light in transmission/reflection through/from such nanostructured thin films.

Spontaneous pattern formation in a variety of spatially extended nonlinear systems always occurs through a modulation instability, sometimes called Turing instability: the homogeneous state of the system becomes unstable with respect to growing modulation modes. Therefore, the manipulation of the modulation instability is of primary importance in controlling and manipulating the character of spatial patterns initiated by that instability. We show that a spatio-temporal periodic modulation of the potential of spatially extended systems results in a modification of its pattern forming instability. Depending on the modulation character the instability can be partially suppressed, can change its spectrum (for instance the long wave instability can transform into short wave instability), can split into two, or can be completely eliminated. The latter result is of special practical interest, as it can be used to stabilize the intrinsically unstable system. The result bears general character, as it is shown here on a universal model of the Complex Ginzburg-Landau equation in one and two spatial dimensions (and time). The physical mechanism of the instability suppression can be applied to a variety of intrinsically unstable dissipative systems, like self-focusing lasers, reaction-diffusion systems, as well as in unstable conservative systems, like attractive Bose Einstein condensates.

The control of spatial propagation properties of narrow light beams such as divergence, focusing or imaging are main objectives in optics and photonics. In this letter, we propose and demonstrate experimentally a flat focusing mirror, based on an especially designed dielectric structure without any optical axis. More generally, it also enables imaging any light pattern in reflection. The flat focusing mirror with a transversal invariance can largely increase the applicability of structured photonic materials for light beam propagation control in small-dimension photonic circuits.

Broad aperture semiconductor lasers usually suffer from low spatial quality of the emitted beams. Due to the highly compact character of such lasers, the use of conventional intracavity spatial filters is problematic. We demonstrate that extremely compact photonic crystal spatial filters, incorporated into a laser resonator, can improve the beam spatial quality and, correspondingly, increase the brightness of the emitted radiation. We report the decrease in the M² value from 47 down to 28 due to photonic crystal spatial intracavity filtering and the increase in the brightness by a factor of 1.5, giving a proof of principle of intracavity photonic crystal spatial filtering in broad area semiconductor lasers.