Ukraine and singular optics

Abstract

The mostly theoretical viewpoint, in which light is understood in terms of its singularities – caustics, phase vortices and lines of circular and linear polarisation – was developed in Bristol in the 1970s and 1980s. Starting in the 1990s, research by physicists in Ukraine, principally by Marat Soskin, stimulated the development of ‘singular optics’ as a thriving area of experimental and theoretical physics worldwide.

Keywords

• caustics
• interference
• polarisation
• waves