Academic Achievements

Among the most significant contributions are:

(1) The discovery of self-trapping of spatially-incoherent light and of
white Light (first observation + first theories that explained it and made
further predictions)

(2) The discovery of photorefractive spatial solitons (theoretical
prediction + first experimental demonstration)

(3) First experimental observation of Anderson Localization in a perturbed
periodic structure,

(4) Invention of the sparsity-based concept for sub-wavelength imaging and
phase-retrieval, and related structure-based methods for algorithmic
super-resolution.

(5) The discovery of modulation instability and spontaneous pattern
formation in a weakly-correlated (or incoherent) nonlinear wave system
(theoretical prediction + first experimental demonstration).

(6) First experimental observation of two-dimensional solitons in 2D
periodic lattices (first 2D ³discrete/ lattice solitons²).

(7) Discovery of accelerating wave-packets of Maxwell's equations.

(8) First experimental observation of spatial gap solitons

(9) First experimental observation of 3D soliton interaction-collisions,
soliton spiraling, etc.

(10) First experimental observation of multi-mode and of multi-hump solitons

(11) First experimental demonstration of nonlinear photonic quasi-crystals,
and wave dynamics therein.

(12) The theoretical and experimental discovery of incoherent  dark solitons

(13) Theoretical prediction of soliton fractals

(14) Prediction and first observation of random-phase lattice solitons

(15) Demonstration of the world's first quantum-dot photo-detector

(16) Discovery of nonlinear accelerating wave-packets

(17) Theory and experimental demonstration of the relation between nonlinear
self-oscillation and order-disorder phase transition

(18) First experiments on nonlinear wave dynamics in photorefractive
waveguides

(19) First demonstration of controlling laser diode arrays with
phase-conjugate mirrors, and using it for mode-locking the laser arrays.

(20) Prediction + first observation of surface waves in nonlocal nonlinear
media.

(21) First experiments on soliton tunneling.

(22) Prediction + first experiments on symmetry-drive conical diffraction
(conical diffraction in honeycomb lattices).