Pulse generation scheme for flying electromagnetic doughnuts

Abstract

Transverse electromagnetic plane waves are fundamental solutions of Maxwells equations. It is less known that a radically different type of solutions has been described theoretically, but has never been realized experimentally, that exist only in the form of short burst of electromagnetic energy propagating in free-space at the speed of light. They are distinguished from transverse waves by a doughnut-like configuration of electric and magnetic fields with a strong field component along the propagation direction. Here, we demonstrate numerically that such Flying Doughnuts can be generated from conventional pulses using a singular metamaterial converter designed to manipulate both the spatial and spectral structure of the input pulse. The ability to generate Flying Doughnuts is of fundamental interest, as they shall interact with matter in unique ways, including non-trivial field transformations upon reflection from interfaces and the excitation of toroidal response and anapole modes in matter, thus offering new opportunities for telecommunications, sensing, and spectroscopy.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Nikitas Papasimakis: orcid.org/0000-0002-6347-6466

ORCID for Nikolai Zheludev: orcid.org/0000-0002-1013-6636

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics