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Full-Text Articles in Physics
Light Trapping Transparent Electrodes, Mengdi Sun
Light Trapping Transparent Electrodes, Mengdi Sun
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Transparent electrodes represent a critical component in a wide range of optoelectronic devices such as high-speed photodetectors and solar cells. Fundamentally, the presence of any conductive structures in the optical path leads to dissipation and reflection, which adversely affects device performance. Many different approaches have been attempted to minimize such shadowing losses, including the use of transparent conductive oxides (TCOs), metallic nanowire mesh grids, graphene-based contacts, and high-aspect ratio metallic wire arrays. In this dissertation I discuss a conceptually different approach to achieve transparent electrodes, which involves recapturing photons initially reflected by highly conductive electrode lines. To achieve this, light-redirecting …
Development Of Holographic Phase Masks For Wavefront Shaping, Nafiseh Mohammadian
Development Of Holographic Phase Masks For Wavefront Shaping, Nafiseh Mohammadian
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
This dissertation explores a new method for creating holographic phase masks (HPMs), which are phase transforming optical elements holographically recorded in photosensitive glass. This novel hologram recording method allows for the fast production of HPMs of any complexity, as opposed to the traditional multistep process, which includes the design and fabrication of a master phase mask operating in the UV region before the holographic recording step. We holographically recorded transmissive HPMs that are physically robust (they are recorded in a silicate glass volume), can handle tens of kilowatts of continuous wave (CW) laser power, are un-erasable, user defined, require no …
Diffractive Liquid Crystal Optical Elements For Near-Eye Displays, Jianghao Xiong
Diffractive Liquid Crystal Optical Elements For Near-Eye Displays, Jianghao Xiong
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Liquid crystal planar optics (LCPO) with versatile functionalities is emerging as a promising candidate for overcoming various challenges in near-eye displays, like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), while maintaining a small form factor. This type of novel optical element exhibits unique properties, such as high efficiency, large angular/spectral bandwidths, polarization selectivity, and dynamic modulation. The basic molecular configuration of these novel reflective LCPO is analyzed, based on the simulation of molecular dynamics. In contrast to previously assumed planar-twist structure, our analysis predicts a slanted helix structure, which agrees with the measured results. The optical simulation model is established …
Patterned Liquid Crystal Devices For Near-Eye Displays, Kun Yin
Patterned Liquid Crystal Devices For Near-Eye Displays, Kun Yin
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
As a promising next-generation display, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have shown attractive features and attracted broad interests from both academia and industry. Currently, these near-eye displays (NEDs) have enabled numerous applications, ranging from education, medical, entertainment, to engineering, with the help of compact and functional patterned liquid crystal (LC) devices. The interplay between LC patterns and NEDs stimulates the development of novel LC devices with unique surface alignments and volume structures, which in turn feedback to achieve more compact and versatile NEDs. This dissertation will focus on the patterned LC with applications in NEDs. Firstly, we propose …
Spectral Dependence Of Deep Subwavelength Metallic Apertures In The Mid-Wave Infrared, Heath Gemar
Spectral Dependence Of Deep Subwavelength Metallic Apertures In The Mid-Wave Infrared, Heath Gemar
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
For two decades, extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) has amplified exploration into subwavelength systems. Researchers have previously suggested exploiting the spectrally selective electromagnetic field confinement of subwavelength cavities for multispectral detectors. Utilizing the finite-difference frequency domain (FDFD) method, we examine electromagnetic field confinement in both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional scenarios from 2.5 to 6 microns (i.e., mid-wave infrared or MWIR). We explore the trade space of deep subwavelength cavities and its impact on resonant enhancement of the electromagnetic field. The studies provide fundamental understanding of the coupling mechanisms allowing for prediction of resonant spectral behavior based on cavity geometry and material properties. …
Development Of Quantitative Intensity-Based Single-Molecule Assays, Benjamin Croop
Development Of Quantitative Intensity-Based Single-Molecule Assays, Benjamin Croop
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Fluorescence microscopy has emerged as a popular and powerful tool within biology research, owing to its exceptional signal contrast, specificity, and the versatility of the various microscope designs. Fluorescence microscopy has been used to study samples across orders of magnitude in physical scale ranging from tissues to cells, down to single-molecules, and as such has led to breakthroughs and new knowledge in a wide variety of research areas. In particular, single-molecule techniques are somewhat unique in their ability to study biomolecules in their native state, which enables the visualization of short-lived interactions and rare events which can be highly relevant …
Directional Link Management Using In-Band Full-Duplex Free Space Optical Transceivers For Aerial Nodes, A F M Saniul Haq
Directional Link Management Using In-Band Full-Duplex Free Space Optical Transceivers For Aerial Nodes, A F M Saniul Haq
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Free-space optical (FSO) communication has become very popular for wireless applications to complement and, in some cases, replace legacy radio-frequency for advantages like unlicensed band, spatial reuse, and enhanced security. Even though FSO can achieve very high bit-rate (tens of Gbps), range limitation due to high attenuation and weather dependency has always restricted its practical implementation to indoor application like data centers and outdoor application like Project Loon. Building-to-building communication, smart cars, and airborne drones are potential futuristic wireless communication sectors for mobile ad-hoc FSO networking. Increasing social media usage demands high-speed mobile connectivity for applications like video call and …
Multi-Functional Fluorescence Microscopy Via Psf Engineering For High-Throughput Super-Resolution Imaging, Jinhan Ren
Multi-Functional Fluorescence Microscopy Via Psf Engineering For High-Throughput Super-Resolution Imaging, Jinhan Ren
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Image-based single cell analysis is essential to study gene expression levels and subcellular functions with preserving the native spatial locations of biomolecules. However, its low throughput has prevented its wide use to fundamental biology and biomedical applications which require large cellular populations in a rapid and efficient fashion. Here, we report a 2.5D microcopy (2.5DM) that significantly improves the image acquisition rate while maintaining high-resolution and single molecule sensitivity. Unlike serial z-scanning in conventional approaches, volumetric information is simultaneously projected onto a 2D image plane in a single shot by engineering the fluorescence light using a novel phase pattern. The …
Nonlinear Optical Mechanisms In Semiconductors And Enhanced Nonlinearities At Epsilon-Near-Zero, Sepehr Ahmadzadeh Benis
Nonlinear Optical Mechanisms In Semiconductors And Enhanced Nonlinearities At Epsilon-Near-Zero, Sepehr Ahmadzadeh Benis
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Light does not interact with itself in linear optical materials. Such interactions occur only in non-linear optical (NLO) materials and typically require high intensity optical beams to be signifi-cant. The ever-increasing role of NLO, where intense light may change the properties of the me-dium, has created a pressing demand to invent materials for achieving more efficient light-light and light-matter interaction due to their potential capacity to augment and possibly replace cur-rent technologies with more efficient devices. There are numerous applications of NLO devices in fundamental science, technology, health, and defense such as all-optical computation and sig-nal processing, ultrashort laser technology, …
Attosecond Transient Absorption Spectroscopy In The Water Window, Andrew Chew
Attosecond Transient Absorption Spectroscopy In The Water Window, Andrew Chew
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
The push to study the atomic and molecular dynamics at ever smaller time scales has been the main driving force for developing laser systems with ever shorter pulse durations. Thus far, picosecond lasers and femtosecond lasers have been used with great success in femtochemistry to study molecular dynamics such as molecular rotation and vibration, which all occur in the tens to hundreds of femtosecond. To study electron dynamics however, which are on the order of attoseconds, one needs attosecond laser sources to be able to have the time resolution required to probe ultrafast electron dynamics such as AC Stark shifts, …
Novel Fibers And Components For Space Division Multiplexing Technologies, Juan Carlos Alvarado Zacarias
Novel Fibers And Components For Space Division Multiplexing Technologies, Juan Carlos Alvarado Zacarias
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Passive devices and amplifiers for space division multiplexing are key components for future deployment of this technology and for the development of new applications exploring the spatial diversity of light. Some important devices include photonic lantern (PL) mode multiplexers supporting several modes, fan-in/fan-out (FIFO) devices for multicore fibers (MCFs), and multimode amplifiers capable of amplifying several modes with low differential modal gain penalty. All these components are required to overcome the capacity limit of single mode fiber (SMF) communication systems, driven by the growing data capacity demand. In this dissertation I propose and develop different passive components and amplifiers for …
Iterative Optical Diffraction Tomography For Reconstruction Of Multiply-Scattering Objects, Shengli Fan
Iterative Optical Diffraction Tomography For Reconstruction Of Multiply-Scattering Objects, Shengli Fan
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
As a label-free, non-destructive, high-resolution, and quantitative imaging technique, optical diffraction tomography (ODT) has been widely used to image biological samples and microstructures, such as cells, tissues, and optical fibers. The refractive-index (RI) distribution of an object is reconstructed from multi-view measurements of diffracted fields emerging from the object. Typical ODT setups include the object rotating configuration (ORC) and the illumination scanning configuration (ISC). One major limitation of ODT is that it is only applicable to weakly-scattering objects. In this dissertation, novel methods have been developed to overcome the reconstruction difficulty caused by multiple scattering, so as to extend ODT …
Parallelized X-Ray Tracing With Gpu Ray-Tracing Engine, Joseph Ulseth
Parallelized X-Ray Tracing With Gpu Ray-Tracing Engine, Joseph Ulseth
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
X-ray diffraction tomography (XDT) is used to probe material composition of objects, providing improved contrast between materials compared to conventional transmission based computed tomography (CT). In this work, a small angle approximation to Bragg's Equation of diffraction is coupled with parallelized computing using Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to accelerate XDT simulations. The approximation gives rise to a simple yet useful proportionality between momentum transfer, radial distance of diffracted signal with respect to incoming beam's location, and depth of material, so that ray tracing may be parallelized. NVIDIA's OptiX ray-tracing engine, a parallelized pipeline for GPUs, is employed to perform XDT …
Midwave Vs Longwave Infrared Search And Track And Aerosol Scattering Target Acquisition Performance, Steven Butrimas
Midwave Vs Longwave Infrared Search And Track And Aerosol Scattering Target Acquisition Performance, Steven Butrimas
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
The decision on whether to use a mid wave infrared (MWIR) or long wave infrared (LWIR) sensor for a given task can be a formidable verdict. The scope entails facts about the observable source, the atmospheric interactions, and the sensor parameters within the hardware device. Even when all the individual metrics are known, the combination ultimately determines whether a MWIR or LWIR sensor is more appropriate. Despite the vast number of variables at play, the reduction of inputs through focused studies can provide essential insight into MWIR and LWIR comparisons. This dissertation focuses on the roles of point source target …
Heterogeneous Integrated Photonics For Nonlinear Frequency Conversion And Polarization Diversity, Tracy Sjaardema
Heterogeneous Integrated Photonics For Nonlinear Frequency Conversion And Polarization Diversity, Tracy Sjaardema
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Silicon has proven to be one of the materials of choice for many integrated photonic applications. However, silicon photonics is limited by certain material shortcomings. Two shortcomings addressed in this work are zero second-order optical nonlinearity, and the lack of methods available to achieve broadband polarization diversity. Heterogeneous integrated solutions for these shortcomings of silicon photonics are presented in this work. First, nonlinear frequency conversion is demonstrated with thin-film lithium niobate on silicon substrates. The method for reaching the highest-achieved second-harmonic generation conversion efficiency, using active monitoring during periodic poling, is discussed. Additionally, a cascaded approach for generating higher-order harmonics …
High Performance Micro-Scale Light Emitting Diode Display, Fangwang Gou
High Performance Micro-Scale Light Emitting Diode Display, Fangwang Gou
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Micro-scale light emitting diode (micro-LED) is a potentially disruptive display technology because of its outstanding features such as high dynamic range, good sunlight readability, long lifetime, low power consumption, and wide color gamut. To achieve full-color displays, three approaches are commonly used: 1) to assemble individual RGB micro-LED pixels from semiconductor wafers to the same driving backplane through pick-and-place approach, which is referred to as mass transfer process; 2) to utilize monochromatic blue micro-LED with a color conversion film to obtain a white source first, and then employ color filters to form RGB pixels, and 3) to use blue or …
Development Of High-Power Single-Mode Yb-Doped Fiber Amplifiers And Beam Analysis, Steffen Wittek
Development Of High-Power Single-Mode Yb-Doped Fiber Amplifiers And Beam Analysis, Steffen Wittek
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
High-power fiber laser systems enjoy a widespread use in manufacturing, medical, and defense applications as well as scientific research, due to their remarkable power scalability, high electrical to optical efficiency, compactness and ruggedness. However, single-mode fiber power scaling has stagnated in the past years, primarily due to the onset of nonlinear effects such as stimulated Brillouin/Raman scattering and transverse modal instabilities. This thesis addresses the analysis and mitigation of transverse modal instabilities in high-power fiber amplifiers. I describe the high-power fiber amplifier testbed that I set up to test fibers fabricated in house. I will show our results of a …
High-Fidelity Mini-Led And Micro-Led Displays, Yuge Huang
High-Fidelity Mini-Led And Micro-Led Displays, Yuge Huang
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Mini-LED and micro-LED are emerging disruptive display technologies, because they can work as local dimmable backlight to significantly enhance the dynamic range of conventional LCDs, or as sunlight readable emissive displays. However, there are still unresolved issues impairing their display fidelity: 1) motion blur on high-resolution, large-size and high-luminance devices, 2) limited contrast ratio on mini-LED backlit LCD (mLED-LCD), 3) relatively high power consumption, and 4) compromised ambient contrast ratio. This dissertation tackles with each of these issues for achieving high display fidelity. Motion blur is caused by slow liquid crystal response time and image update delays. Low-duty ratio operation …
Multi-Parameter Optical Metrology: Quantum And Classical, Walker Larson
Multi-Parameter Optical Metrology: Quantum And Classical, Walker Larson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
The insights offered by quantum mechanics to the field of optical metrology are many-fold, with non-classical states of light themselves used to make sensors that surpass the sensitivity of sensors using classical states of light. Unfortunately, this advantage, referred to often as "super-sensitivity" is notoriously fragile, and even the slightest experimental imperfections may greatly reduce the efficacy of the non-classical sensors, sometimes completely obviating their advantage. In my thesis I have shown that the performance of an otherwise ideal two-photon interferometer, which exploits entanglement between photons to make super-sensitive measurements of phase, is crippled by the slightest introduction of decoherence …
Fluorescence Microscopy With Tailored Illumination Light, Jialei Tang
Fluorescence Microscopy With Tailored Illumination Light, Jialei Tang
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
Fluorescence microscopy has long been a valuable tool for biological and medical imaging. Control of optical parameters such as the amplitude, phase, polarization and propagation angle of light gives fluorescence imaging great capabilities ranging from single molecule imaging to long-term observation of living organisms. While numerous fluorescence imaging techniques have been developed over the past decades, there is always an inevitable tradeoff among the spatial resolution, imaging speed, contrast, photodamage and the total cost when it comes to choose the appropriate microscope. A main goal of my dissertation research is to develop state-of-the-art microscope systems that exhibit unprecedented performance in …
Transient Mid-Ir Nonlinear Refraction In Air And Nonlinear Optical Properties Of Organometallic Complexes, Salimeh Tofighi
Transient Mid-Ir Nonlinear Refraction In Air And Nonlinear Optical Properties Of Organometallic Complexes, Salimeh Tofighi
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-
This dissertation explores two main topics: Transient nonlinear refraction of air in Mid-IR spectral range and nonlinear optical properties of organometallic complexes. For seeing a vibrational and rotational Raman response the molecule should be Raman active. The first requirement for being a Raman active molecule is that the polarizability of molecule must be anisotropic. Linear symmetric molecules do have rotational Raman spectra. Not all the vibrational mode can be excited by a femtosecond pulse. The pulsewidth of our excitation beam should be less than the half of the vibration period. In this dissertation my excitation pulsewidth is not short enough …