When
Where
Title
Geometry and Topology in Optical Fields
Abstract
The polarization of light admits elegant geometric descriptions both in the paraxial and nonparaxial regimes. For paraxial fields, the state of polarization can be represented as a point over what is known as the Poincaré sphere, which is an abstract spherical parameter space. We will discuss how certain fields can cover all polarization states according to certain topological rules, so that they can be considered as optical “skyrmions”, in analogy with the topological spin textures of the same name. Several generalizations of the geometric description of polarization will be presented for the nonparaxial regime (for which the electric field oscillations are not constrained to a plane transverse to the main propagation direction). The applications of these representations to superresolution single-molecule orientation and localization fluorescence microscopy will also be presented.
Bio
Miguel A. Alonso is a Professor at the Institut Fresnel and Adjunct Dean of Research for Centrale Méditerranée in Marseille, France. He is also a Professor at The Institute of Optics and Senior Scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, both at the University of Rochester. He held an A*Midex Chair of Excellence with Aix-Marseille Université from 2018 to 2020. He is a Fellow of OPTICA and was the recipient of the 2023 SPIE G.G. Stokes Award. He has served as Associate Editor of Optics Express and Optica, Deputy Editor of Optics Express, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Optics Letters. His research is on various mathematical aspects of optics and physics.
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