The University of Napoli, often referred to as the University of Naples Federico II, was established in 1224 and is one of the world’s oldest universities, founded by a head of state. It is a major public research university in Naples, Italy, with three semi-independent divisions and multiple campuses, known for its influential alums and international collaborations. In collaboration with Parthenope University, NECLA researchers focused on leveraging multimodal data—encompassing both vision and language—for learning from unlabeled sources. Our joint efforts contributed to improved data efficiency and robustness in AI systems, particularly for complex tasks such as image captioning and cross-modal retrieval.

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Optical orbital angular momentum analogy to the Stern-Gerlach experiment

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Symmetry breaking has been shown to reveal interesting phenomena in physical systems. A notable example is the fundamental work of Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach [Stern and Zerlach, Z. Physik 9, 349 (1922)] nearly 100 years ago demonstrating a spin angular momentum (SAM) deflection that differed from classical theory. Here we use non-separable states of SAM and orbital angular momentum (OAM), known as vector vortex modes, to demonstrate how a classical optics analogy can be used to reveal this nonseparability, reminiscent of the work carried out by Sternand Gerlach. We show that by implementing a polarization insensitive device to measure the OAM, the SAM states can be deflected to spatially resolved positions.

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