RESUMO
Holographic reflection gratings in a polyvinyl alcohol/acrylamide based photopolymer were stored using symmetrical geometry in three different thicknesses of the material. The advantage of symmetrical geometry is that exact expressions for transmittance, reflectance, and electric fields can be obtained analytically. Using these expressions, experimental data were fitted to obtain parameters such as refractive index modulation, spatial period of the grating, optical thickness or shrinkage of the material.
RESUMO
In a recent Letter, the reflectance coefficient was used to resolve the sign choice of the wave vector and refractive index in active media. We argue that such a coefficient loses its physical meaning for active media (at real frequencies) when the field amplification is limited only by gain saturation. In this case, the amplitude reflectance coefficient leads to fictitious noncausal reflected fields when the backward Fourier transform is used.
RESUMO
We rigorously analyze the optical singularities and power flux in the near-field region of the novel superlenses reported in [Science317, 927 (2007)] For this purpose, we derive near-field expressions and a general criterion to classify the optical singularities in the vacuum, which are valid when the (s- or p-polarized) electromagnetic fields are generated by any planar field distribution with Cartesian or azimuthal symmetry. Such general results are particularized to the superlenses [Science317, 927 (2007)], for which we identify a sequence of optical vortices and saddles that arise from evanescent-field interference. While the saddles are always located around the focal region, the vortex locations depend on the source field. The features of the topological connection between vortices and saddles are also discussed.