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Quantum plasmonics extends cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) concepts to the nanoscale, benefiting from the strongly subwavelength confinement of the plasmon modes supported by metal nanostructures. In this work, we describe in detail collective strong coupling to a plasmonic nanocavity. Similarities and differences to cQED are emphasized. We notably observe that the Rabi splitting can strongly deviate from the standard N e ΔΩ 1 law, where N e is the number of emitters and ΔΩ 1 is the Rabi splitting for a single emitter. In addition, we discuss the collective Lamb shift and the role of quantum corrections to the emission spectra.

We derive an exact and robust stimulated Raman process for nonlinear quantum systems driven by pulsed external fields. The external fields are designed with closed-form expressions from the inverse engineering of a given efficient and stable dynamics. This technique allows one to induce a controlled population inversion which surpasses the usual nonlinear stimulated Raman adiabatic passage efficiency.

Hybrid molecule-plasmonic nanostructures have demonstrated their potential for surface enhanced spectroscopies, sensing, or quantum control at the nanoscale. In this Letter, we investigate the strong coupling regime and explicitly describe the hybridization between the localized plasmons of a metal nanoparticle and the excited state of a quantum emitter, offering a simple and precise understanding of the energy exchange in full analogy with cavity quantum electrodynamics treatment and a dressed atom picture. Both near-field emission and far-field radiation are discussed, revealing the richness of such optical nanosources.

Recent research has been focused on the ability to manipulate a light beam in such a way to hide, namely to cloak, an event over a finite time or localization in space. The main idea is to create a hole or a gap in the spatial or time domain so as to allow for an object or data to be kept hidden for a while and then to be restored. By enlarging the field of applications of this concept to telecommunications, researchers have recently reported the possibility to hide transmitted data in an optical fibre. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of perpetual temporal spying and blinding process of optical data in fibre-optic transmission line based on polarization bypass. We successfully characterize the performance of our system by alternatively copying and then concealing 100% of a 10-Gb s(-1) transmitted signal.

Wherever the polarization properties of a light beam are of concern, polarizers and polarizing beamsplitters (PBS) are indispensable devices in linear-, nonlinear- and quantum-optical schemes. By the very nature of their operation principle, transformation of incoming unpolarized or partially polarized beams through these devices introduces large intensity variations in the fully polarized outcoming beam(s). Such intensity fluctuations are often detrimental, particularly when light is post-processed by nonlinear crystals or other polarization-sensitive optic elements. Here we demonstrate the unexpected capability of light to self-organize its own state-of-polarization, upon propagation in optical fibers, into universal and environmentally robust states, namely right and left circular polarizations. We experimentally validate a novel polarizing device - the Omnipolarizer, which is understood as a nonlinear dual-mode polarizing optical element capable of operating in two modes - as a digital PBS and as an ideal polarizer. Switching between the two modes of operation requires changing beam's intensity.

We show that the concept of dynamical monodromy plays a natural fundamental role in the spatiotemporal dynamics of counterpropagating nonlinear wave systems. By means of an adiabatic change of the boundary conditions imposed to the wave system, we show that Hamiltonian monodromy manifests itself through the spontaneous formation of a topological phase singularity (2π- or π-phase defect) in the nonlinear waves. This manifestation of dynamical Hamiltonian monodromy is illustrated by generic nonlinear wave models. In particular, we predict that its measurement can be realized in a direct way in the framework of a nonlinear optics experiment.

We study the influence of third-order dispersion effects on the propagation of an incoherent nonlinear wave in an optical fiber system. The wave spectrum is shown to exhibit a highly asymmetric deformation characterized by a lateral spectral shoulder and the subsequent formation of an unexpected constant spectral pedestal. A kinetic approach to the problem reveals the existence of an invariant that explains in detail the essential properties of such asymmetric spectral evolution of the wave.

We consider the counterpropagating interaction of a signal and a pump beam in an isotropic optical fiber. On the basis of recently developed mathematical techniques, we show that an arbitrary state of polarization of the signal beam can be converted into any other desired state of polarization. On the other hand, an unpolarized signal beam may be repolarized into two specific states of polarization, without loss of energy. Both processes of repolarization and polarization conversion may be controlled by adjusting the polarization state of the backward pump.

We study the spatiotemporal dynamics of the Hamiltonian four-wave interaction in its counterpropagating configuration. The numerical simulations reveal that, under rather general conditions, the four-wave system exhibits a relaxation process toward a stationary state. Considering the Hamiltonian system associated to the stationary state, we provide a global geometrical view of all the stationary solutions of the system. The analysis reveals that the stationary state converges exponentially toward a pinched torus of the Hamiltonian system in the limit of an infinite nonlinear medium. The singular torus thus plays the role of an attractor for the spatiotemporal wave system. The topological properties of the singular torus confer a robust character to the stationary solution when the boundary conditions or the length of the nonlinear medium are modified. Furthermore, an adiabatic approach of the boundary conditions reveals that singular tori also play a major role for the description of the spatiotemporal dynamics of the wave system.

We show that the peculiar topological properties inherent to singular tori play a major role in the spatiotemporal dynamics of counterpropagating nonlinear waves. Under rather general conditions, these Hamiltonian wave systems exhibit a relaxation process towards a stationary state. We show that this stationary state converges exponentially towards the singular torus of the associated Liouville-integrable Hamiltonian system in the limit of an infinite medium. The singular torus then appears as an attractor for the infinite dimensional dynamical system, a feature which is illustrated by several key models of spatiotemporal wave interactions.

The authors show that polar molecules can be adiabatically aligned and oriented by laser pulses more efficiently when the laser frequencies are vibrationally resonant. The aligned molecules are found in a superposition of vibrational pendular states, each associated with the alignment of the rotor in one vibrational state. The authors construct the dressed potential associated with this mechanism. Values of detunings and field amplitudes are given to optimize the degree of alignment and orientation for the CO molecule.

We show that a linear molecule subjected to a short specific elliptically polarized laser field yields post-pulse revivals exhibiting alignment alternatively located along the orthogonal axis and the major axis of the ellipse. The effect is experimentally demonstrated by measuring the optical Kerr effect along two different axes. The conditions ensuring an optimal field-free alternation of high alignments along both directions are derived.

We show that a combination of a half-cycle pulse and a short nonresonant laser pulse produces a strongly enhanced postpulse orientation. Robust transients that display both efficient and long-lived orientation are obtained. The mechanism is analyzed in terms of optimal oriented target states in finite Hilbert subspaces and shows that hybrid pulses can prove useful for other control issues.

We show that a field of frequency omega combined with its second harmonic 2omega driving a double-well potential allows us to localize the wave packet by adiabatic passage, starting from the delocalized ground state. The relative phase of the fields allows us to choose the well of localization. We can suppress (and restore) the tunneling subsequently by switching on (and off) abruptly the fields at well-defined times. The mechanism relies on the fact that the dynamics is driven to an eigenstate of the Floquet Hamiltonian which is a localized state.

We report a direct nonintrusive observation of alignment and planar delocalization of CO2 after an intense linearly polarized femtosecond laser pulse excitation. The effects are measured by a polarization technique involving a perturbative probe that itself does not induce appreciable alignment. We show that this technique allows one to measure a signal proportional to -1/3, with theta the angle between the molecular axis and the laser polarization. Simulations that support this analysis allow one to characterize the experimentally observed alignment and planar delocalization quantitatively.

We show that two overlapping linearly polarized laser pulses of frequencies omega and its second harmonic 2omega can strongly orient linear polar molecules, by adiabatic passage along dressed states. The resulting robust orientation can be interpreted as a laser-induced localization in the effective double well potential created by the fields, which induces a preliminary molecular alignment. The direction of the orientation can be selected by the relative phase of the fields.

We construct an approximate renormalization transformation that combines Kolmogorov-Arnol'd-Moser and renormalization-group techniques, to analyze instabilities in Hamiltonian systems with three degrees of freedom. This scheme is implemented both for isoenergetically nondegenerate and for degenerate Hamiltonians. For the spiral mean frequency vector, we find numerically that the iterations of the transformation on nondegenerate Hamiltonians tend to degenerate ones on the critical surface. As a consequence, isoenergetically degenerate and nondegenerate Hamiltonians belong to the same universality class, and thus the corresponding critical invariant tori have the same type of scaling properties. We numerically investigate the structure of the attracting set on the critical surface and find that it is a strange nonchaotic attractor. We compute exponents that characterize its universality class.

The relation between the spectrum of a generalized quasienergy operator and the stability of quantum systems driven by quasiperiodic time-dependent forces is discussed.