About this Research Topic
Sixty years ago, Franken et al. observed the first laser-induced nonlinear optics effect — i.e., second-harmonic generation. Since then, nonlinear optics rapidly became a vital subfield of modern optics and photonics that is reaching branches across a wide variety of research fields. Crucially, it provides a flexible and powerful way to manipulate the longitudinal (or temporal) mode of beams/photons exiting a laser cavity. Driven by the recent advances in the field of structured light during the last two decades, shaping light’s transverse (or spatial) modes via nonlinear optical methods, ranging from single-photon level coupling to ultrafast and intense-field region, has received an increasing amount of attention.
In this new Research Topic, the core idea is to explore the use of nonlinear interactions to generate and transform beams/photons with properly engineered spatial modes. During the exploration, it has inspired lots of new concepts including both fundamental physics and engineering technology, for example, high dimension quantum memory and three-dimensional nonlinear photonic crystals.
The main goal of this Research Topic is to provide a specialized platform for researchers dedicated to this field where they can share their new results, viewpoints, and perspectives to the nonlinear optics community, as well as to provide a roadmap of this field. We welcome submissions that study the shaping and control of structured light using nonlinear optical methods, as well as the shape of matter waves via nonlinear light-matter interactions.
This Research Topic welcomes unpublished results in the form of Original Research and Review papers from researchers all over the world. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
(a) New physics revealed by nonlinear optical phenomena involving structured light fields;
(b) Generation, manipulation, and characterization of high-dimensional photonic states via nonlinear interactions;
(c) Novel up- and down-conversion enabled by using structured light;
(d) Novel approaches for manipulating and characterizing the spatial structure of matter waves via nonlinear interactions;
(e) Novel devices for shaping light enabled by nonlinear materials with artificial microstructure.
Keywords: nonlinear optical interactions, spatial modes, shaping light fields
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
