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    Experimental observation of Berry phases in optical Möbius-strip microcavities
    (London [u.a.] : Nature Publ. Group, 2022) Wang, Jiawei; Valligatla, Sreeramulu; Yin, Yin; Schwarz, Lukas; Medina-Sánchez, Mariana; Baunack, Stefan; Lee, Ching Hua; Thomale, Ronny; Li, Shilong; Fomin, Vladimir M.; Ma, Libo; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    The Möbius strip, a fascinating loop structure with one-sided topology, provides a rich playground for manipulating the non-trivial topological behaviour of spinning particles, such as electrons, polaritons and photons, in both real and parameter spaces. For photons resonating in a Möbius-strip cavity, the occurrence of an extra phase—known as the Berry phase—with purely topological origin is expected due to its non-trivial evolution in parameter space. However, despite numerous theoretical investigations, characterizing the optical Berry phase in a Möbius-strip cavity has remained elusive. Here we report the experimental observation of the Berry phase generated in optical Möbius-strip microcavities. In contrast to theoretical predictions in optical, electronic and magnetic Möbius-topology systems where only Berry phase π occurs, we demonstrate that a variable Berry phase smaller than π can be acquired by generating elliptical polarization of resonating light. Möbius-strip microcavities as integrable and Berry-phase-programmable optical systems are of great interest in topological physics and emerging classical or quantum photonic applications.
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    Real-Time IR Tracking of Single Reflective Micromotors through Scattering Tissues
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2019) Aziz, Azaam; Medina-Sánchez, Mariana; Koukourakis, Nektarios; Wang, Jiawei; Kuschmierz, Robert; Radner, Hannes; Czarske, Jürgen W.; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Medical micromotors have the potential to lead to a paradigm shift in future biomedicine, as they may perform active drug delivery, microsurgery, tissue engineering, or assisted fertilization in a minimally invasive manner. However, the translation to clinical treatment is challenging, as many applications of single or few micromotors require real-time tracking and control at high spatiotemporal resolution in deep tissue. Although optical techniques are a popular choice for this task, absorption and strong light scattering lead to a pronounced decrease of the signal-to-noise ratio with increasing penetration depth. Here, a highly reflective micromotor is introduced which reflects more than tenfold the light intensity of simple gold particles and can be precisely navigated by external magnetic fields. A customized optical IR imaging setup and an image correlation technique are implemented to track single micromotors in real-time and label-free underneath phantom and ex vivo mouse skull tissues. As a potential application, the micromotors speed is recorded when moving through different viscous fluids to determine the viscosity of diverse physiological fluids toward remote cardiovascular disease diagnosis. Moreover, the micromotors are loaded with a model drug to demonstrate their cargo-transport capability. The proposed reflective micromotor is suitable as theranostic tool for sub-skin or organ-on-a-chip applications. © 2019 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.