作为生物体的本质属性，物质的手性表征在生理学和药理学领域有着重要的意义。当电磁波与手性材料作用时，会出现旋光效应、圆二色性和手性光力等特殊的光学活性现象，并成为材料手性检测的强大工具。由于手性分子的结构远小于激发光的波长，因此分子自身的手性光学效应通常很弱，极大限制了检测技术的精度。近年来，纳米光子技术的进步有望增强纳米尺度下光与物质之间原本很弱的手性光学效应，使得手性的高灵敏度、高分辨率检测成为可能。回顾了手性光学的发展及其在生物分子检测等方面的应用，讨论了基于等离子耦合圆二色性和超手性近场在圆二色性增强方面的策略，介绍了基于横向手性光力的物质构型分选和基于结构光场光力效应的手性结构表征方法，并对该领域未来进一步的发展进行了展望。

Photonic structures with topological edge states and resonance loops are both important in optical communication systems, but they are usually two separate structures. In order to obtain a photonic system combining properties from both, we design multiple-layer nested photonic topological structures. The nested topological loops not only have topological protection immune to structural disorder and defects, but also possess both the properties of unidirectional propagation and loop resonance. Through mode analysis and simulations, we find that the transport can form diverse circulation loops. Each loop has its own resonance frequencies and can be solely excited in the nested layered structure through choosing its resonance frequencies. As a result, this work shows great application prospects in the area of reconfigurable photonic circuits.

All-optical magnetization switching with features of low-power consumption and high writing speed is a promising road map to satisfy the demand for volume data storage. To promote denser and faster magnetic recording technologies, herein, all-optical helicity-dependent switching (AO-HDS) in multi-layer magnetic recording is proposed based on the chromatic aberration of an optical lens (Thorlabs’s N-BK7 plano-convex uncoated lens). The power of the incident beams and the thickness of the multi-layer magnetic recording film are designed carefully. Besides, the uniformity of this multi-layer magnetic recording is optimized. At last, a prototype system of information multiplexing based on this multi-layer magnetic recording technology is constructed as well. Flexible and controllable magnetization reversals in different layers are also demonstrated by tuning the wavelength and helicity of working beams. We believe that such a prototype system can pave the way for increasing the storage density in an effective and low-cost mode.

We investigate femtosecond laser trapping dynamics of two-photon absorbing hollow-core nanoparticles with different volume fractions and two-photon absorption (TPA) coefficients. Numerical simulations show that the hollow-core particles with low and high-volume fractions can easily be trapped and bounced by the tightly focused Gaussian laser pulses, respectively. Further studies show that the hollow-core particles with and without TPA can be identified, because the TPA effect enhances the radiation force, and subsequently the longitudinal force destabilizes the trap by pushing the particle away from the focal point. The results may find direct applications in particle sorting and characterizing the TPA coefficient of single nanoparticles.

Understanding the nonlinear optical effect of novel materials plays a crucial role in the fields of photonics and optoelectronics. Herein, we theoretically and experimentally investigate the simultaneous presence of third-order locally refractive nonlinearity and thermally induced nonlocal nonlinearity saturation. We present analytical expressions for the closed-aperture Z-scan trace and the number of spatial self-phase modulation (SSPM) rings, which allows one to unambiguously and conveniently separate the contributions of local and nonlocal nonlinear refraction in the case that both effects occur simultaneously. As a test, we study both the local and thermally induced nonlocal nonlinear refraction in fullerene/toluene solution by performing continuous-wave Z-scan and SSPM measurements at two different wavelengths. This work enriches the understanding of the physical mechanism of the optical nonlinear refraction effect in solution dispersions of nanomaterials, which can be exploited for nonlinear photonic devices.

Optical trapping techniques hold great interest for their advantages that enable direct handling of nanoparticles. In this work, we study the optical trapping effects of a diffraction-limited focal field possessing an arbitrary photonic spin and propose a convenient method to manipulate the movement behavior of the trapped nanoparticles. In order to achieve controllable spin axis orientation and ellipticity of the tightly focused beam in three dimensions, an efficient method to analytically calculate and experimentally generate complex optical fields at the pupil plane of a high numerical aperture lens is developed. By numerically calculating the optical forces and torques of Rayleigh particles with spherical/ellipsoidal shape, we demonstrate that the interactions between the tunable photonic spin and nanoparticles lead to not only 3D trapping but also precise control of the nanoparticles’ movements in terms of stable orientation, rotational orientation, and rotation frequency. This versatile trapping method may open up new avenues for optical trapping and their applications in various scientific fields.

The principle of optical trapping is conventionally based on the interaction of optical fields with linear-induced polarizations. However, the optical force originating from the nonlinear polarization becomes significant when nonlinear optical nanoparticles are trapped by femtosecond laser pulses. Herein we develop the time-averaged optical forces on a nonlinear optical nanoparticle using high-repetition-rate femtosecond laser pulses, based on the linear and nonlinear polarization effects. We investigate the dependence of the optical forces on the magnitudes and signs of the refractive nonlinearities. It is found that the self-focusing effect enhances the trapping ability, whereas the self-defocusing effect leads to the splitting of the potential well at the focal plane and destabilizes the optical trap. Our results show good agreement with the reported experimental observations and provide theoretical support for capturing nonlinear optical particles.

A vectorial optical field generator (VOF-Gen) based on two reflective phase-only liquid crystal spatial light modulators enables the creation of an arbitrary optical complex field. In this work, the capabilities of the VOF-Gen in terms of manipulating the spatial distributions of phase, amplitude, and polarization are experimentally demonstrated by generating a radially polarized optical field consisted of five annular rings, the focusing properties of which are also numerically studied with vectorial diffraction theory. By carefully adjusting the relative amplitude and phase between the adjacent rings, an optical needle field with purely longitudinal polarization can be produced in the focal region of a high numerical aperture lens. The versatile method presented in this work can be easily extended to the generation of a vectorial optical field with any desired complex distributions.