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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Ultrafast Mechanisms Of Nonlinear Refraction And Two-Photon Photochromism, Peng Zhao
Ultrafast Mechanisms Of Nonlinear Refraction And Two-Photon Photochromism, Peng Zhao
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Derived from a material's third-order nonlinearity, nonlinear refraction (NLR) occurs at any wavelength in any material, and may exhibit noninstantaneous dynamics depending on its physical origins. The main subject of this dissertation is to investigate the underlying mechanisms responsible for the NLR response in different phases of matter, e.g. liquids, gases, and semiconductors, by extensively using our recently developed ultrafast Beam Deflection (BD) technique. An additional subject includes the characterization of a novel two-photon photochromic molecule. In molecular liquids, the major nonlinear optical (NLO) response can be decomposed into a nearly instantaneous bound-electronic NLR (Kerr effect), originating from the real …
Hybrid Integrated Photonic Platforms And Devices, Jeffrey Chiles
Hybrid Integrated Photonic Platforms And Devices, Jeffrey Chiles
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Integrated photonics has the potential to revolutionize optical systems by achieving drastic reductions in their size, weight and power. Remote spectroscopy, free-space communications and high-speed telecommunications are critical applications that would benefit directly from these advancements. However, many such applications require extremely wide spectral bandwidths, leading to significant challenges in their integration. The choice of integrated platform influences the optical transparency and functionality which can be ultimately achieved. In this work, several new platforms and technologies have been developed to meet these needs. First, the silicon-on-lithium-niobate (SiLN) platform is discussed, on which the first compact, integrated electro-optic modulator in the …
Electrical Parasitic Bandwidth Limitations Of Oxide-Free Lithographic Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers, Xu Yang
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Nowadays, Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) are the most popular optical sources in short-reach data communications. In the commercial oxide VCSEL technology, an oxide aperture is created inside resonant cavity in realizing good mode and current confinement, however, high electrical resistance comes along with forming the oxide aperture and the electrical parasitic bandwidth becomes the main limitation in modulation speed. In this report, electrical bandwidths of oxide-free lithographic VCSELs have been studied along with their general lasing properties. Due to the new ways of fabricating the aperture, record low resistances have been achieved in oxide-free lithographic VCSELs with various sizes, while …
Broad Bandwidth Optical Frequency Combs From Low Noise, High Repetition Rate Semiconductor Mode-Locked Lasers, Anthony Klee
Broad Bandwidth Optical Frequency Combs From Low Noise, High Repetition Rate Semiconductor Mode-Locked Lasers, Anthony Klee
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Mode-locked lasers have numerous applications in the areas of communications, spectroscopy, and frequency metrology. Harmonically mode-locked semiconductor lasers with external ring cavities offer a unique combination of benefits in that they can produce high repetition rate pulse trains with low timing jitter, achieve narrow axial mode linewidths, have the potential for entire monolithic integration on-chip, feature high wall-plug efficiency due to direct electrical pumping, and can be engineered to operate in different wavelength bands of interest. However, lasers based on InP/InGaAsP quantum well devices which operate in the important telecom C-band have thus far been relatively limited in bandwidth as …
Design And Engineering Of Ultrafast Amplifier Systems, Benjamin Webb
Design And Engineering Of Ultrafast Amplifier Systems, Benjamin Webb
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Recently, the design and engineering of ultrafast laser systems have led to an extraordinary increase in laser power and performance which have brought about advances in many fields such as medicine, material processing, communications, remote sensing, spectroscopy, nonlinear optics, and atomic physics. In this work, several ultrafast amplification techniques -- including chirped-pulse amplification (CPA), optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA), and divided-pulse amplification (DPA) -- are described and demonstrated in the design and construction of two ultrafast laser facilities. An existing Ti:Sapphire laser system was completely redesigned with an increased power of 10 TW for experiments capable of generating hundreds of …
Monolithically Integrated Inp-Based Unidirectional Circulators Utilizing Non-Hermiticity And Nonlinearity, Parinaz Aleahmad
Monolithically Integrated Inp-Based Unidirectional Circulators Utilizing Non-Hermiticity And Nonlinearity, Parinaz Aleahmad
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The need to integrate critical optical components on a single chip has been an ongoing quest in both optoelectronics and optical communication systems. Among the possible devices, elements supporting non-reciprocal transmission are of great interest for applications where signal routing and isolation is required. In this respect, breaking reciprocity is typically accomplished via Faraday rotation through appropriate magneto-optical arrangements. Unfortunately, standard light emitting optoelectronic materials like for example III-V semiconductors, lack magneto-optical properties and hence cannot be directly used in this capacity. To address these issues, a number of different tactics have been attempted in the last few years. These …
Coupling Of Laser Beams For Filament Propagation, Daniel Kepler
Coupling Of Laser Beams For Filament Propagation, Daniel Kepler
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Laser filamentation is a nonlinear process involving high-energy, ultrashort pulses that create narrow, non-diffracting structures over many times the Raleigh length. While many of the characteristics of filaments can vary greatly depending on the physical parameters used to create them, they share several defining features: a high intensity core, a lower intensity cladding of photons that serves as an energy reservoir to the core, and spectral broadening into a supercontinuum. While there have been many studies on the creation and control of multiple filaments from one laser pulse and a few studies on the interaction of two single filaments, many …
Multi-Purpose Device For Analyzing And Measuring Ultra-Short Pulses, Naman Anilkumar Mehta
Multi-Purpose Device For Analyzing And Measuring Ultra-Short Pulses, Naman Anilkumar Mehta
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Intensity auto correlator is device to measure pulse widths of ultrashort pulses on the order of picoseconds and femtoseconds. I have built an in-house, compact, portable, industry standard intensity auto correlator for measuring ultrashort pulse-widths. My device is suitable for pulse-widths from 500 ps to 50 fs. The impetus for developing this instrument stemmed from our development of a multicore-fiber laser for high power laser applications, which also produces very short pulses that cannot be measured with an oscilloscope. As techniques for measuring short pulse-widths have been well studied, what made my journey exciting was the process of taking an …
Plasma Temperature Measurements In The Context Of Spectral Interference, Brandon Seesahai
Plasma Temperature Measurements In The Context Of Spectral Interference, Brandon Seesahai
Honors Undergraduate Theses
The path explored in this thesis is testing a plasma temperature measurement approach that accounts for interference in a spectrum. The Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (AES) technique used is called Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and involves focusing a laser pulse to a high irradiance onto a sample to induced a plasma. Spectrally analyzing the plasma light provides a "finger print" or spectrum of the sample. Unfortunately, spectral line broadening is a type of interference encountered in a LIBS spectrum because it blends possible ionic or atomic transitions that occur in plasma. To make use of the information or transitions not …
Coherent Beam Combining Of Ultrashort Laser Pulses, Ahmad Azim
Coherent Beam Combining Of Ultrashort Laser Pulses, Ahmad Azim
Honors Undergraduate Theses
Ultrashort pulsed lasers have become critical to understanding light-matter interactions in new regimes such as generation of attosecond pulses, laser filamentation, and intense relativistic processes. Development of more powerful and energetic ultrafast lasers is required for advancing these fields of study. Several petawatt class systems now exist with more in development to further scale peak power and extend the frontier of ultrafast laser technology. Another relevant solution to the scaling of energy and power of ultrashort pulses is coherent beam combining (CBC). CBC is useful for not only scaling of laser parameters but also to mitigate parasitic nonlinear processes associated …
Advanced Blue Phase Liquid Crystal Displays, Daming Xu
Advanced Blue Phase Liquid Crystal Displays, Daming Xu
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have become indispensable in our daily lives. Their widespread applications range from smartphones, laptops, TVs to navigational devices, data projectors and wearable displays. Over past decades, massive efforts have been invested in device development, material characterization and manufacturing technology. As a result, the performance of LCDs, such as viewing angle, contrast ratio, color gamut and resolution, have been improved significantly. Nonetheless, there are still urgent needs for fast response time and low power consumption. Fast response time helps reduce motion image blurs and enable color sequential displays. The latter is particularly attractive since …
Sensing Using Specialty Optical Fibers, Amy Van Newkirk
Sensing Using Specialty Optical Fibers, Amy Van Newkirk
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Fiber optic based sensing is a growing field with many applications in civil and aerospace engineering, oil and gas industries, and particularly in harsh environments where electronics are not able to function. Optical fibers can be easily integrated into structures, are immune to electromagnetic interference, can be interrogated from remote distances, and can be multiplexed for distributed measurements. Because of these properties, specialty fiber designs and devices are being explored for sensing temperature, strain, pressure, curvature, refractive index, and more. Here we show a detailed analysis of a multicore fiber (MCF) for sensing, including its design and optimization in simulation, …
Intrinsic Modulation Response Modeling And Analysis For Lithographic Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers, Mingxin Li
Intrinsic Modulation Response Modeling And Analysis For Lithographic Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers, Mingxin Li
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) have been greatly improved and successfully commercialized over the past few decades owing to their ability to provide both mode and current confinement that enables low energy consumption, high efficiency and high modulation speed. However, further improvement of oxide VCSELs is limited by the nature of the oxide aperture because of self-heating, internal strain and difficulties in precise size control. In this dissertation, VCSELs using lithographic approach are demonstrated to overcome the limitations of oxide VCSELs, in which an intra-cavity phase shifting mesa is applied to define the device size and provide optical mode and electrical …
Fabrication And Characterization Of Spatially-Variant Self-Collimating Photonic Crystals, Jennefir Digaum
Fabrication And Characterization Of Spatially-Variant Self-Collimating Photonic Crystals, Jennefir Digaum
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Spatially-variant photonic crystals (SVPCs) created using materials having a low refractive index are shown to be capable of abruptly controlling light beams with high polarization selectivity. SVPCs are photonic crystals for which the orientation of the unit cell is controllably varied throughout the lattice to control the flow of light. Multi-photon lithography in a photo polymer was used to fabricate three-dimensional SVPCs that direct the flow of light around a 90 degree bend. The optical performance of the SVPCs was characterized using a scanning optical-fiber system that introduced light onto the input face of a structure and measured the intensity …
Laser Filament Interaction With Aerosols And Clouds, Cheonha Jeon
Laser Filament Interaction With Aerosols And Clouds, Cheonha Jeon
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
A high powered ultrashort laser pulse can propagate as a diffraction-free self-channeled structure called a filament, created by a combination of nonlinear processes. With its ability to convey extremely high intensity beams to distant targets, many applications such as remote sensing, cloud seeding, and discharge guiding are potentially possible. However, one of the main challenges of outdoor field applications is the laser propagation through the atmosphere where pressure fluctuations and concentrations of aerosols may be present. The rationale behind the work presented in this dissertation is to evaluate the robustness of the filamentation, measure the interaction losses as well as …