Orbital angular momentum beam instabilities in engineered nonlinear colloidal media

In this letter, we experimentally demonstrate the evolution of the optical vortex beams of different topological charges propagating in engineered nano-colloidal suspension of negative polarizability with saturable nonlinearities. Due to the high power of the incident beam, the modulation instability leads to an exponential growth of weak perturbations and thus splits the original vortex beam into a necklace beam consisting of several bright spots. The number of observed bright spots is intrinsically determined by the topological charge of the incident beam and agrees well with the predictions of our linear stability analysis and numerical simulations. Besides contributing to the fundamental science of light-matter interactions in engineered soft-matter media, this work opens new opportunities for dynamic optical manipulation and transmission of light through scattering media as well as formation of complex optical patterns and light filamentation in naturally existing colloids such as fog and clouds

Characteristics of broadband lightning emissions associated with terrestrial gamma ray flashes

To characterize lightning processes that produce terrestrial gamma ray flashes (TGFs), we have analyzed broadband (<1 Hz to 30 kHz) lightning magnetic fields for TGFs detected by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) satellite in 2004-2009. The majority (96%) of 56 TGF-associated lightning signals contain single or multiple VLF impulses superposed on a slow pulse that reflects a process raising considerable negative charge within 2-6 ms. Some TGF lightning emissions also contain VLF signals that precede any appreciable slow pulse and that we term precursor sferics. The analyses of 9 TGFs related to lightning discharges with location uncertainty <100 km consistently indicate that TGFs are temporally linked to the early portion of the slow process and associated VLF impulses, and not to precursor sferics. The nearly universal presence of a slow pulse suggests that the slow process plays an important role in gamma ray production. In all cases the slow process raises negative charge with a typical mean current moment of +30 kA km. The resulting charge moment change ranges from small values below +10 C km to a maximum of +200 C km, with an average of +64 C km. The current moment waveform extracted from TGF sferics with single or multiple VLF impulses also shows that the slow process initiates shortly before the major TGF-associated fast discharge. These features are generally consistent with the TGF-lightning sequence reported by Lu et al. (2010), suggesting that the majority of RHESSI TGFs are produced during the upward negative leader progression prevalent in normal polarity intracloud flashes

MAP3Kinase-dependent SnRK2-kinase activation is required for abscisic acid signal transduction and rapid osmotic stress response.

Abiotic stresses, including drought and salinity, trigger a complex osmotic-stress and abscisic acid (ABA) signal transduction network. The core ABA signalling components are snf1-related protein kinase2s (SnRK2s), which are activated by ABA-triggered inhibition of type-2C protein-phosphatases (PP2Cs). SnRK2 kinases are also activated by a rapid, largely unknown, ABA-independent osmotic-stress signalling pathway. Here, through a combination of a redundancy-circumventing genetic screen and biochemical analyses, we have identified functionally-redundant MAPKK-kinases (M3Ks) that are necessary for activation of SnRK2 kinases. These M3Ks phosphorylate a specific SnRK2/OST1 site, which is indispensable for ABA-induced reactivation of PP2C-dephosphorylated SnRK2 kinases. ABA-triggered SnRK2 activation, transcription factor phosphorylation and SLAC1 activation require these M3Ks in vitro and in plants. M3K triple knock-out plants show reduced ABA sensitivity and strongly impaired rapid osmotic-stress-induced SnRK2 activation. These findings demonstrate that this M3K clade is required for ABA- and osmotic-stress-activation of SnRK2 kinases, enabling robust ABA and osmotic stress signal transduction