Adaptative lensing driven by the radiation pressure of a continuous-wave laser wave upon a near-critical liquid-liquid interface

The bending of a liquid interface by the radiation pressure of a ew laser wave is generally weak To strongly enhance the coupling, we investigate lensing in a near-critical phase-separated liquid mixture. By continuously tuning the softness of the meniscus by varying the temperature, we observed huge stationary interface deformations at low beam power that led to an important variation of the resultant soft lensing. We also illustrate the crucial role played by temperature in this process to demonstrate its potential use in lens adaptation. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.