Biography:

Prof. Goutam K Samanta has received B. Tech and M.Tech in Optics and Optoelectronics from the University of Calcutta and Ph.D. in Photonics from the Institute of Photonics Sciences (ICFO),  Barcelona,   Spain,   in  July   2009.  He joined Physical Research  Laboratory,  Ahmedabad,  in  October  2010.  His  research interest includes structured laser beams, nonlinear optics, optical parametric oscillators, quantum communication, and quantum sensing. He has more than 150 technical contributions in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and a post-deadline paper in CLEO 2015, USA. His recent results have been highlighted through the news release by OSA and the research news by OPN. He is the recipient of the Gallieno Denardo Award of the International Commission of Optics and ICTP for his contribution to Optics and Photonics, 2017, and the best thesis award, Indian Laser Association, 2009. He has served as a technical committee member of different national and international conferences, an Editorial board member of the Journal of Optics, UK, a life member of the Indian Laser Association, and a senior member of the Optical Society of America. He also served as a guest lecturer at IIT Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad University. Besides his regular research activities, Prof. Samanta promotes Optics and Photonics among school and college students in different states in India through hands-on experiments. So far, their team has covered more than 50000 students in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra.

Lecture" Spatial structured optical beams: Linear and nonlinear optical studies"

Laser beams of different spatial structures have attracted a great deal of interest in many scientific and technological applications. For example, optical vortices, having phase singularities (phase dislocations) in the wavefront, carry vanishing intensity at the singular point. Due to the screw-like (helical) phase structure around the point of singularity, such beams carry orbital angular momentum (OAM). The OAM associated with optical vortices is important for high-resolution microscopy, quantum information, material processing and particle micro-manipulation, and lithography. Similarly, Airy beam, a non-diffraction waveform, has peculiar properties of self-healing and self-acceleration. Due to such unique properties, the Airy beam finds many applications, including curved plasma wave-guiding, micro-particle manipulation, optically mediated particle clearing, long-distance communication, and nonlinear frequency conversion. In addition to the space degree of freedom for the scalar structured beams, the spatially varying polarization, another degree of freedom of the beams arising as a consequence of the vectorial nature of the electromagnetic field, resulted in a new class of beam known as vector structured beams such as Poincaré beams. This tutorial will discuss our recent results on generating various structured optical beams, including scalar and vector vortex beams, Bessel beams, Airy beams, and hollow Gaussian beams, and their linear and nonlinear optical studies. I will also cover the basics of structured beams, their classification, and nonlinear optics to motivate new researchers.