Generalized laws of refraction and reflection at interfaces between different photonic artificial gauge fields

Artificial gauge fields the control over the dynamics of uncharged particles by engineering the potential landscape such that the particles behave as if effective external fields are acting on them. Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in artificial gauge fields generated either by the geometry or by time-dependent modulation, as they have been enablers of topological phenomena and synthetic dimensions in many physical settings, e.g., photonics, cold atoms, and acoustic waves. Here, we formulate and experimentally demonstrate the generalized laws of refraction and reflection at an interface between two regions with different artificial gauge fields. We use the symmetries in the system to obtain the generalized Snell law for such a gauge interface and solve for reflection and transmission. We identify total internal reflection (TIR) and complete transmission and demonstrate the concept in experiments. In addition, we calculate the artificial magnetic flux at the interface of two regions with different artificial gauge fields and present a method to concatenate several gauge interfaces. As an example, we propose a scheme to make a gauge imaging system—a device that can reconstruct (image) the shape of an arbitrary wavepacket launched from a certain position to a predesigned location.

Estimating the parameters of the seabed using the spatial characteristics of ocean ambient noise

When solving traditional underwater problems, the boundary condition is always used to calculate the sound field. In practice, however, it is hard to get the boundary conditions of the seabed. So geoacoustics inversion is needed to acquire the parameters of the seabed. In this paper, a method estimating seabed parameters by using the spatial characteristics of ocean ambient noise is demonstrated without using matched-field processing. For the reason of the limit of the resolution of conventional beamforming (CBF), a method of synthetic array processing (SAP) is used because of some characters of cross-spectrum density matrix (CSDM). The result shows that the method of synthetic array processing enhanced the resolution of critical angle to some degree. By comparing the true bottomloss calculated by OASR, the result of traditional beamforming and the synthetic array processing, the result of synthetic array processing is closer to the true bottomloss than the result of traditional beamforming. After ensuring a range of critical angle, the sound speed of the seabed can be estimated by using Snell law. And then, an experimental data collected in Qingdao, China, 2016 is used to prove the validity of the method of synthetic array processing and estimate the local seabed parameters.

P-SV wave diffusion in fluid-saturated medium

Propagating P-SV waves in the fluid-saturated mediums are categorized to fall into two distinct groups: insoluble and soluble mediums. These waves are known as surface Rayleigh waves. By introducing these waves with slowness in accordance to Snell Law, the diffusive and rotating waves are obtained. The results bear out that the propagating P-SV waves in soluble medium share similar diffusion characteristic as of insoluble medium while the discussions on fluid density in the mediums show that high density fluid promotes diffusive characteristic while low density fluid endorses nondiffusive P-SV waves. There is a compressed zone during the propagation of P-SV waves in medium saturated with high density fluids.

Helmholtz Bright Spatial Solitons and Surface Waves at Power-Law Optical Interfaces

We consider arbitrary angle interactions between spatial solitons and the planar boundary between two optical materials with a single power-law nonlinear refractive index. Extensive analysis has uncovered a wide range of new qualitative phenomena in non-Kerr regimes. A universal Helmholtz-Snell law describing soliton refraction is derived using exact solutions to the governing equation as a nonlinear basis. New predictions are tested through exhaustive computations, which have uncovered substantially enhanced Goos-Hänchen shifts at some non-Kerr interfaces. Helmholtz nonlinear surface waves are analyzed theoretically, and their stability properties are investigated numerically for the first time. Interactions between surface waves and obliquely incident solitons are also considered. Novel solution behaviours have been uncovered, which depend upon a complex interplay between incidence angle, medium mismatch parameters, and the power-law nonlinearity exponent.