This thesis covers a set of works pertaining to the generation and the characterization
of structured waves defined by exotic topologies. It first presents a method to
fabricate devices that can be used to arbitrarily shape the wavefronts of optical waves
by means of a geometric phase. These devices can be used to shape the transverse
polarization pattern of a light beam as well. Two new extensions to characterization
schemes known as orbital angular momentum (OAM) sorters are then introduced and
demonstrated. The first extension consists of a sorting scheme able to characterize
both the OAM and the polarization content of an optical wave. As demonstrated,
this feature could be of use in high-dimensional quantum cryptography. The other
extension consists of an OAM sorter for electron waves whose use in materials science
is also demonstrated by employing it to characterize a magnetic structure. A proposal
on how to measure the OAM carried by an electron by minimally perturbing
it is also discussed. The thesis then moves on towards works describing more exotic
types of structured waves. On one hand, it explores the stability of space-varying
polarized light beams upon propagation through a nonlinear medium. Namely, their
propagation is found to be more stable than what is experienced by beams with phase
singularities. On the other hand, the effect of twisting a neutron’s wavefunction is also
explored and is suggested to affect some of its electromagnetic properties. Finally, a
method used to knot the transverse polarization profile of optical beams is presented.
The structure of these optical polarization knots is then accurately characterized to
reconstruct some of its topological features.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/37857 |
| Date | 12 July 2018 |
| Creators | Larocque, Hugo |
| Contributors | Karimi, Ebrahim |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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