Experimental demonstration of Luneburg waveguides

TL;DR

This paper reports the first experimental realization of Luneburg waveguides, demonstrating their potential for sensing and nonlinear optics through wavelength and polarization-dependent performance analysis.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental demonstration of Luneburg waveguides, validating theoretical designs and exploring their optical properties.

Findings

Wavelength-dependent performance characterized

Polarization-dependent behavior observed

Potential applications in sensing and nonlinear optics

Abstract

Transformation optics gives rise to numerous unusual optical devices, such as novel metamaterial lenses and invisibility cloaks. Very recently Mattheakis et al. have suggested theoretical design of an optical waveguide based on a network of Luneburg lenses, which may be useful in sensing and nonlinear optics applications. Here we report the first experimental realization of such Luneburg waveguides. We have studied wavelength and polarization dependent performance of the waveguides.