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Novel Optical Properties Of Metal Nanostructures Based On Surface Plasmons, Haining Wang Jan 2013

Novel Optical Properties Of Metal Nanostructures Based On Surface Plasmons, Haining Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Surface plasmons have been attracted extensive interests in recent decades due to the novel properties in nanometer sized dimensions. My work focused on the novel optical properties of metal nanostructures based on surface plasmons using theoretical simulation methods. In the first part, we investigated metal nanofilms and nanorods and demonstrated that extremely low scattering efficiency, high absorption efficiency and propagation with long distance could be obtained by different metal nanostructures. With a perforated silver film, we demonstrated that an extremely low scattering cross section with an efficiency of less than 1% can be achieved at tunable wavelengths with tunable widths. …


Fast-Response Liquid Crystals For Photonic And Display Applications, Jie Sun Jan 2013

Fast-Response Liquid Crystals For Photonic And Display Applications, Jie Sun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Liquid crystal devices are attractive for many applications such as information displays, spatial light modulators and adaptive optics, because their optical properties are electrically tunable. However, response time of liquid crystal devices is a serious concern for many applications especially for those who require large phase modulation (≥2π). This is because a thick LC layer is usually needed to achieve a large phase shift while the response time of a nematic LC is highly determined by the cell gap.


Light-Matter Interactions Of Plasmonic Nanostructures, Jennifer Reed Jan 2013

Light-Matter Interactions Of Plasmonic Nanostructures, Jennifer Reed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Light interaction with matter has long been an area of interest throughout history, spanning many fields of study. In recent decades, the investigation of light-matter interactions with nanostructures has become an intense area of research in the field of photonics. Metallic nanostructures, in particular, are of interest due to the interesting properties that arise when interacting with light. The properties are a result of the excitation of surface plasmons which are the collective oscillation of the conduction electrons in the metal. Since the conduction electrons can be thought of as harmonic oscillators, they are quantized in a similar fashion. Just …


Optically Isotropic Liquid Crystals For Display And Photonic Applications, Jin Yan Jan 2013

Optically Isotropic Liquid Crystals For Display And Photonic Applications, Jin Yan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For the past few decades, tremendous progress has been made on liquid crystal display (LCD) technologies in terms of stability, resolution, contrast ratio, and viewing angle. The remaining challenge is response time. The state-of-the-art response time of a nematic liquid crystal is a few milliseconds. Faster response time is desirable in order to reduce motion blur and to realize color sequential display using RGB LEDs, which triples the optical efficiency and resolution density. Polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal (PS-BPLC) is a strong candidate for achieving fast response time because its self-assembled cubic structure greatly reduces the coherence length. The response …


Inverse Problems In Multiple Light Scattering, John Broky Jan 2013

Inverse Problems In Multiple Light Scattering, John Broky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The interaction between coherent waves and material systems with complex optical properties is a complicated, deterministic process. Light that scatters from such media gives rise to random fields with intricate properties. It is common perception that the randomness of these complex fields is undesired and therefore is to be removed, usually through a process of ensemble averaging. However, random fields emerging from light matter interaction contain information about the properties of the medium and a thorough analysis of the scattered light allows solving specific inverse problems. Traditional attempts to solve these kinds of inverse problems tend to rely on statistical …


Scaling The Spectral Beam Combining Channels In A Multiplexed Volume Bragg Grating, Daniel Ott, Ivan Divliansky, Brian Anderson, George Venus, Leonid Glebov Jan 2013

Scaling The Spectral Beam Combining Channels In A Multiplexed Volume Bragg Grating, Daniel Ott, Ivan Divliansky, Brian Anderson, George Venus, Leonid Glebov

Faculty Bibliography 2010s

In order to generate high power laser radiation it is often necessary to combine multiple lasers into a single beam. The recent advances in high power spectral beam combining using multiplexed volume Bragg gratings recorded in photo-thermo-refractive glass are presented. The focus is on using multiple gratings recorded within the same volume to lower the complexity of the combining system. Combining of 420 W with 96% efficiency using a monolithic, multiplexed double grating recorded in PTR glass is demonstrated. A multiplexed quadruple grating that maintains high efficiency and good beam quality is demonstrated to pave a way for further scaling …


Metrology Of Volume Chirped Bragg Gratings Recorded In Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass For Ultrashort Pulse Stretching And Compressing, Christopher Lantigua Jan 2013

Metrology Of Volume Chirped Bragg Gratings Recorded In Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass For Ultrashort Pulse Stretching And Compressing, Christopher Lantigua

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chirped Bragg gratings (CBGs) recorded in photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass provide a very efficient and robust way to stretch and compress ultra-short laser pulses. These gratings offer the ability to stretch pulses from hundreds of femtoseconds, to the order of 1 ns and then recompress them. However, in order to achieve pulse stretching of this magnitude, 100 mm thick CBGs are needed. Using these CBGs to both stretch, and re-compress the pulse thus requires propagation through 200 mm of optical glass. This therefore demands perfect control of the glass homogeneity, as well as the holographic recording process of the CBG. In …


Mesoscale Light-Matter Interactions, Kyle Douglass Jan 2013

Mesoscale Light-Matter Interactions, Kyle Douglass

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mesoscale optical phenomena occur when light interacts with a number of different types of materials, such as biological and chemical systems and fabricated nanostructures. As a framework, mesoscale optics unifies the interpretations of the interaction of light with complex media when the outcome depends significantly upon the scale of the interaction. Most importantly, it guides the process of designing an optical sensing technique by focusing on the nature and amount of information that can be extracted from a measurement. Different aspects of mesoscale optics are addressed in this dissertation which led to the solution of a number of problems in …