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Full-Text Articles in Physics

Thin-Film Lithium Niobate Photonics For Electro-Optics, Nonlinear Optics, And Quantum Optics On Silicon, Ashutosh Rao Jan 2018

Thin-Film Lithium Niobate Photonics For Electro-Optics, Nonlinear Optics, And Quantum Optics On Silicon, Ashutosh Rao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ion-sliced thin-film lithium niobate (LN) compact waveguide technology has facilitated the resurgence of integrated photonics based on lithium niobate. These thin-film LN waveguides offer over an order of magnitude improvement in optical confinement, and about two orders of magnitude reduction in waveguide bending radius, compared to conventional LN waveguides. Harnessing the improved confinement, a variety of miniaturized and efficient photonic devices are demonstrated in this work. First, two types of compact electrooptic modulators are presented – microring modulators, and Mach-Zehnder modulators. Next, two distinct approaches to nonlinear optical frequency converters are implemented – periodically poled lithium niobate, and mode shape …


Mode-Locked Laser Based On Large Core Yb3+-Doped Fiber, Fei Jia Jan 2018

Mode-Locked Laser Based On Large Core Yb3+-Doped Fiber, Fei Jia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thesis reviews principle of laser cavity and gives a general introduction to modelocked laser (MLL). By using Yb3+-doped fiber as gain medium, passive MLL cavity is developed in experiment, aiming to obtain femtosecond pulses with high pump power from 25W to 35W. The gain medium fiber with 65µm core diameter is cleaved with one flat end and another angled. Pump laser with 976nm wavelength is coupled into Yb3+ -doped fiber to excite signal from 1020nm to 1040nm in the core. 9W is threshold for laser setup. After locking all modes, picosecond pulses are output from laser cavity and coupled …


Fiber Optimization For Operation Beyond Transverse Mode Instability Limitations, Joshua Bradford Jan 2018

Fiber Optimization For Operation Beyond Transverse Mode Instability Limitations, Joshua Bradford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transverse Mode Instabilities (TMIs) stand as a fundamental limitation to power and brightness scaling in laser systems based upon optical fiber technologies. This work comprises experimental and theoretical investigations into fiber laser design that should minimize the effects of Stimulated Thermal Rayleigh Scattering. Theoretical discussions and simulations focus on how fiber parameters affect transverse mode coupling. These include core geometry optimization, pump geometry optimization, in addition to the effects of HOM content and losses on the TMI threshold. Experimentally, a high-power laser facility is commissioned with beam quality diagnostics to quantify the thresholds of the onset of modal interferences and …


Thermal And Waveguide Optimization Of Broad Area Quantum Cascade Laser Performance, Matthew Suttinger Jan 2017

Thermal And Waveguide Optimization Of Broad Area Quantum Cascade Laser Performance, Matthew Suttinger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Quantum Cascade Lasers are a novel source of coherent infrared light, unique in their tunability over the mid-infrared and terahertz range of frequencies. Advances in bandgap engineering and semiconductor processing techniques in recent years have led to the development of highly efficient quantum cascade lasers capable of room temperature operation. Recent work has demonstrated power scaling with broad area quantum cascade lasers by increasing active region width beyond the standard ~10 ?m. Taking into account thermal effects caused by driving a device with electrical power, an experimentally fitted model is developed to predict the optical power output in both pulsed …


Photothermal Lensing In Mid-Infrared Materials, Justin Cook Jan 2017

Photothermal Lensing In Mid-Infrared Materials, Justin Cook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A thorough understanding of laser-materials interactions is crucial when designing and building optical systems. An ideal test method would probe both the thermal and optical properties simultaneously for materials under large optical loads where detrimental thermal effects emerge. An interesting class of materials are those used for infrared wavelengths due to their wide spectral transmission windows and large optical nonlinearities. Since coherent sources spanning the mid-wave and long-wave infrared wavelength regions have only become widely available in the past decade, data regarding their thermal and optical responses is lacking in literature. Photothermal Lensing (PTL) technique is an attractive method for …


High Dynamic Range Display Systems, Ruidong Zhu Jan 2017

High Dynamic Range Display Systems, Ruidong Zhu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High contrast ratio (CR) enables a display system to faithfully reproduce the real objects. However, achieving high contrast, especially high ambient contrast (ACR), is a challenging task. In this dissertation, two display systems with high CR are discussed: high ACR augmented reality (AR) display and high dynamic range (HDR) display. For an AR display, we improved its ACR by incorporating a tunable transmittance liquid crystal (LC) film. The film has high tunable transmittance range, fast response time, and is fail-safe. To reduce the weight and size of a display system, we proposed a functional reflective polarizer, which can also help …


Novel Photonic Resonance Arrangements Using Non-Hermitian Exceptional Points, Hossein Hodaei Jan 2017

Novel Photonic Resonance Arrangements Using Non-Hermitian Exceptional Points, Hossein Hodaei

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, non-Hermitian degeneracies also known as exceptional points (EPs) have emerged as a new paradigm for engineering the response of optical systems. EPs can appear in a wide class of open non-Hermitian configurations. Among different types of non-conservative photonic systems, parity-time (PT) symmetric arrangements are of particular interest since they provide an excellent platform to explore the physics of exceptional points. In this work, the intriguing properties of exceptional points are utilized to address two of the long standing challenges in the field of integrated photonics- enforcing single mode lasing in intrinsically multimode cavities and enhancing the sensitivity …


Laser-Induced Crystallization Mechanisms In Chalcogenide Glass Materials For Advanced Optical Functionality, Laura Sisken Jan 2017

Laser-Induced Crystallization Mechanisms In Chalcogenide Glass Materials For Advanced Optical Functionality, Laura Sisken

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Glass-ceramics (GC) are promising candidates for gradient refractive index (GRIN) optics. These multi-phase, composite materials also exhibit improved physical properties as compared to the parent base glass resulting from the formation of a secondary crystalline phase(s). Nanocrystal phase formation in a multi-component chalcogenide glass (ChG), (GeSe2-3As2Se3)(1-x)-(PbSe)x glass where x = 0-40 has been investigated, and the role of the starting material morphology has been correlated to the resulting composite's optical properties including refractive index, transmission, dispersion, and thermo-optic coefficient. Optical property evolution was related to the type and amount of the crystal phases formed, since through control of the local …


Advanced Liquid Crystal Displays With Supreme Image Qualities, Haiwei Chen Jan 2017

Advanced Liquid Crystal Displays With Supreme Image Qualities, Haiwei Chen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Several metrics are commonly used to evaluate the performance of display devices. In this dissertation, we analyze three key parameters: fast response time, wide color gamut, and high contrast ratio, which affect the final perceived image quality. Firstly, we investigate how response time affects the motion blur, and then discover the 2-ms rule. With advanced low-viscosity materials, new operation modes, and backlight modulation technique, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) with an unnoticeable image blur can be realized. Its performance is comparable to an impulse-type display, like cathode ray tube (CRT). Next, we propose two novel backlight configurations to improve an LCD's …


Generation Of High-Flux Attosecond Pulses And Towards Attosecond-Attosecond Pump-Probe Experiments, Yang Wang Jan 2017

Generation Of High-Flux Attosecond Pulses And Towards Attosecond-Attosecond Pump-Probe Experiments, Yang Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

At present, the energy of a single isolated attosecond pulse is limited to nanojoule levels. As a result, an intense femtosecond pulse has always been used in combination with a weak attosecond pulse in time-resolved experiments. To reach the goal of conducting true attosecond pump-attosecond probe experiments, a high flux laser source has been developed that can potentially deliver microjoule level isolated attosecond pulses in the 50 eV range, and a unique experimental end station has been fabricated and implemented that can provide precision control of the attosecond-attosecond pump-probe pulses. In order to scale up the attosecond flux, a unique …


Design Of A Hydrogen-Filled Hollow-Core Fiber Raman Laser, Yangyang Qin Jan 2017

Design Of A Hydrogen-Filled Hollow-Core Fiber Raman Laser, Yangyang Qin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate the design of a Raman fiber laser based on a molecule hydrogen-filled hollow-core fiber with non-touching single ring of capillaries structure. O-hydrogen vibrational frequency shift of 4155 cm-1 and rotational frequency shift of 587 cm-1 were employed to generate Raman scattering from a 1064nm pump source. A thorough exploration was made to show how all Raman fiber laser components made up: gas chamber, hollow-core fibers, windows. The whole process of chamber design, modification and fabrication were demonstrated. Besides, two kinds of anti-resonant hollow-core fibers were studied and tested. The transmission and loss …


System For Metal Coated Fiber Fabrication, Da Zhang Jan 2017

System For Metal Coated Fiber Fabrication, Da Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For many specific applications, such as sensors, aerospace, chemical industry, deep-well oil-field industry, metal-coated fiber shows strong abilities to satisfy people's requirement. With in-line coating technology, we are able to coat Aluminum on the fibers. Using electromagnetic induction, we can easily heat an electrically conducting thing such as a metal with the eddy current. This process is defined as Induction heating. And we will melt the Aluminum by this induction heating during drawing the fibers on the tower. Introduce the fiber tower system. The drawing process of in-line technology is formed of the following steps: Position, Melting, Forming into fibers, …


Noise, Stability, And Linewidth Performance Of 10-Ghz Optical Frequency Combs Generated From The Nested Cavity Architecture, Kristina Bagnell Jan 2017

Noise, Stability, And Linewidth Performance Of 10-Ghz Optical Frequency Combs Generated From The Nested Cavity Architecture, Kristina Bagnell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Optical frequency combs with wide mode spacing and low timing jitter are relied upon for both time domain and frequency domain applications. It has been previously demonstrated that surrounding a low-Q semiconductor laser chip with a long external fiber cavity and inserting a high finesse Fabry–Pérot etalon into this cavity can produce a mode-locked laser with the desired high repetition rate and narrow optical mode linewidths which are of benefit to applications like photonic analog-to-digital conversion and astronomical spectrograph calibration. With this nested cavity architecture, the quality factor of the resonator is effectively determined by the product of the individual …


Enhancement Of Bandwidth And Laser Deflection Angle Of Acousto-Optic Deflectors By Dynamic Two-Dimensional Refractive Index Modulation, Tiansi Wang Jan 2017

Enhancement Of Bandwidth And Laser Deflection Angle Of Acousto-Optic Deflectors By Dynamic Two-Dimensional Refractive Index Modulation, Tiansi Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Acousto-Optic Deflectors (AODs) are inertialess optical solid state devices that have advantages over conventional mechanically controlled mirror-based deflectors in numerous scientific and industrial applications. These applications include fluorescence microscopy, sensing, variable-focus lens, photolithography and laser materials processing. AODs are currently operated with a single piezoelectric transducer that modulates the refractive index only in one direction. This operating principle limits the performance of AODs to a narrow acoustic bandwidth of the transducer and a small angle of laser deflection governed by the Bragg diffraction. To overcome these two limitations, the operation of AODs with phased array ultrasonic transducers is analyzed in …


Filament Wavefront Evolution, Daniel Thul Jan 2017

Filament Wavefront Evolution, Daniel Thul

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Filamentation is a complex process that gives rise to many nonlinear interactions. However, the fundamentals of filament formation and propagation can be explained in terms of two dominant mechanisms: Kerr self-focusing and plasma defocusing. The first to occur, self-focusing, is responsible for an increase in irradiance through beam collapse. This process requires sufficient initial peak power, on the order of gigawatts for near infrared beams in air. Plasma defocusing then arrests the collapse process once the irradiance reaches the ionization threshold of the medium. These two processes balance each other in an extended plasma channel known as a filament. A …


Mode Evolution In Fiber Based Devices For Optical Communication Systems, Bin Huang Jan 2017

Mode Evolution In Fiber Based Devices For Optical Communication Systems, Bin Huang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Space division multiplexing (SDM) is the most promising way of increasing the capacity of a single fiber. To enable the few mode fiber (FMF) or multi-mode fiber (MMF) transmission system, several major challenges have to be overcome. One is the urgent need of ideal mode multiplexer, the second is the perfect amplification for all spatial modes, another one is the modal delay spread (MDS) due to group velocity difference of spatial modes. The main subject of this dissertation is to model, fabricate and characterize the mode multiplexer for FMF transmission. First, we designed a novel resonant mode coupler (structured directional …


Harnessing Spatial Intensity Fluctuations For Optical Imaging And Sensing, Milad Akhlaghi Bouzan Jan 2017

Harnessing Spatial Intensity Fluctuations For Optical Imaging And Sensing, Milad Akhlaghi Bouzan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Properties of light such as amplitude and phase, temporal and spatial coherence, polarization, etc. are abundantly used for sensing and imaging. Regardless of the passive or active nature of the sensing method, optical intensity fluctuations are always present! While these fluctuations are usually regarded as noise, there are situations where one can harness the intensity fluctuations to enhance certain attributes of the sensing procedure. In this thesis, we developed different sensing methodologies that use statistical properties of optical fluctuations for gauging specific information. We examine this concept in the context of three different aspects of computational optical imaging and sensing. …


Picosecond Yb-Doped Fiber Amplifier, Weibin Zhu Jan 2017

Picosecond Yb-Doped Fiber Amplifier, Weibin Zhu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Due to its versatility, rare earth doped fiber amplifier (RDFA) has attracted a lot of researchers worldwide in recent years. Depends on different kinds of rare earth ion, RDFA can be categorized into neodymium doped fiber amplifier (NDFA), erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), thulium doped fiber amplifier (TDFA), and so forth. Among many kinds of RDFA, the ytterbium doped fiber amplifier (YDFA) has received even more interest, especially in high power application, mainly because of its broad gain bandwidth and high conversion efficiency which are due to its relatively simple electronic structure. The purpose of this research is to study …


Enhanced Ablation By Femtosecond And Nanoseond Pulses, Haley Kerrigan Jan 2017

Enhanced Ablation By Femtosecond And Nanoseond Pulses, Haley Kerrigan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Laser ablation of GaAs by a combination of femtosecond and nanosecond pulses is investigated as a means of enhancing material removal by a femtosecond pulse in the filamentation intensity regime. We demonstrate for the first time increased ablation of GaAs by ultrafast laser pulse plasmas augmented by nanosecond pulse radiation from a secondary laser. Material removal during laser ablation is a complex process that occurs via multiple mechanisms over several timescales. Due to different pulse durations, ablation by femtosecond and nanosecond pulses are dominated by different mechanisms. Ablation can be enhanced by optimally combining a femtosecond and nanosecond pulse in …


Electrical Parasitic Bandwidth Limitations Of Oxide-Free Lithographic Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers, Xu Yang Jan 2016

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 Jan 2016

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 …


Multi-Purpose Device For Analyzing And Measuring Ultra-Short Pulses, Naman Anilkumar Mehta Jan 2016

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 …


Advanced Blue Phase Liquid Crystal Displays, Daming Xu Jan 2016

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 Jan 2016

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 Jan 2016

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 …


True Linearized Intensity Modulation For Photonic Analog To Digital Conversion Using An Injection-Locked Mode-Locked Laser, Edris Sarailou Jan 2015

True Linearized Intensity Modulation For Photonic Analog To Digital Conversion Using An Injection-Locked Mode-Locked Laser, Edris Sarailou

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A true linearized interferometric intensity modulator for pulsed light has been proposed and experimentally presented in this thesis. This has been achieved by introducing a mode-locked laser into one of the arms of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and injection-locking it to the input light (which is pulsed and periodic). By modulating the injection-locked laser, and combining its output light with the light from the other arm of interferometer in quadrature, one can achieve true linearized intensity modulator. This linearity comes from the arcsine phase response of the injection-locked mode-locked laser (as suggested by steady-state solution of Adler's equation) when it is …


Liquid Crystal-Based Biosensors For The Detection Of Bile Acids, Sihui He Jan 2015

Liquid Crystal-Based Biosensors For The Detection Of Bile Acids, Sihui He

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bile acids are physiologically important metabolites, which are synthesized in liver as the end products of cholesterol metabolism and then secreted into intestine. They are amphiphilic molecules which play a critical role in the digestion and absorption of fats and fat-soluble vitamins through emulsification. The concentration of bile acids is an indicator for liver function. Individual suffering from liver diseases has a sharp increase in bile acid concentrations. Hence, the concentration level of bile acids has long been used as a biomarker for the early diagnosis of intestinal and liver diseases. Conventional methods of bile acid detection such as chromatography-mass …


High Efficiency And Wide Color Gamut Liquid Crystal Displays, Zhenyue Luo Jan 2015

High Efficiency And Wide Color Gamut Liquid Crystal Displays, Zhenyue Luo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Liquid crystal display (LCD) has become ubiquitous and indispensable in our daily life. Recently, it faces strong competition from organic light emitting diode (OLED). In order to maintain a strong leader position, LCD camp has an urgent need to enrich the color performance and reduce the power consumption. This dissertation focuses on solving these two emerging and important challenges. In the first part of the dissertation we investigate the quantum dot (QD) technology to improve the both the color gamut and the light efficiency of LCD. QD emits saturated color and grants LCD the capability to reproduce color vivid images. …


Entanglement And Coherence In Classical And Quantum Optics, Kumel Kagalwala Jan 2015

Entanglement And Coherence In Classical And Quantum Optics, Kumel Kagalwala

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We explore the concepts of coherence and entanglement as they apply to both the classical and quantum natures of light. In the classical domain, we take inspiration from the tools and concepts developed in foundational quantum mechanics and quantum information science to gain a better understanding of classical coherence theory of light with multiple degrees of freedom (DoFs). First, we use polarization and spatial parity DoFs to demonstrate the notion of classical entanglement, and show that Bell's measure can serve as a useful tool in distinguishing between classical optical coherence theory. Second, we establish a methodical yet versatile approach called …


Conservation Laws And Electromagnetic Interactions, Veerachart Kajorndejnukul Jan 2015

Conservation Laws And Electromagnetic Interactions, Veerachart Kajorndejnukul

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aside from energy, light carries linear and angular momenta that can be transferred to matter. The interaction between light and matter is governed by conservation laws that can manifest themselves as mechanical effects acting on both matter and light waves. This interaction permits remote, precise, and noninvasive manipulation and sensing at microscopic levels. In this dissertation, we demonstrated for the first time a complete set of opto-mechanical effects that are based on nonconservative forces and act at the interface between dielectric media. Without structuring the light field, forward action is provided by the conventional radiation pressure while a backward movement …