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Full-Text Articles in Physics

Ultra High Density Spectral Beam Combining By Thermal Tuning Of Volume Bragg Gratings In Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass, Derrek Drachenberg Jan 2011

Ultra High Density Spectral Beam Combining By Thermal Tuning Of Volume Bragg Gratings In Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass, Derrek Drachenberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High power lasers with diffraction limited beam quality are desired for many applications in defense and manufacturing. A lot of applications require laser beams at the 100 kW power level along with divergence close to the diffraction limit. The figure of merit for a beam used in such applications should be radiance which determines the laser power delivered to a remote target. One of the primary limiting factors is thermal distortion of a laser beam caused by excessive heat generated in the laser media. Combination of multiple laser beams is usually considered as a method to mitigate these limitations. Spectral …


Theoretical Study Of Beam Transformations By Volume Diffraction, Sergiy V. Mokhov Jan 2011

Theoretical Study Of Beam Transformations By Volume Diffraction, Sergiy V. Mokhov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Laser beams can be manipulated by volume diffractive elements in addition to conventional optical elements like mirrors, lenses, and beam splitters. Conventional optical elements can be described by applying the basic laws of reflection and refraction at the surfaces of the elements. Even diffraction by surface gratings utilizes relatively simple mathematics. This is to be contrasted with the volume diffraction, which requires coupled wave theory in the slowly varying envelope approximation (SVEA) to obtain accurate results. Efficient spatially distributed diffraction of laser beams is possible due to the high coherence of laser light, and it occurs at specific resonant Bragg …


Characterization Of The Nonlinear Refractive Index Of Carbon Disulfide Over An Extended Spectral And Temporal Range, Marcus Seidel Jan 2011

Characterization Of The Nonlinear Refractive Index Of Carbon Disulfide Over An Extended Spectral And Temporal Range, Marcus Seidel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intensity dependent refractive index change of a medium is frequently described in terms of the product n₂ · I where n₂ is the nonlinear refractive index and I the light intensity. The nonlinear refractive index is often treated as constant which is a reasonable assumption if the light interacts only with bound electrons. In the case of carbon disulfide (CS₂) however, nuclear motions contribute to n₂. These motions occur on the sub picosecond time scale and thus become especially relevant for ultrashort laser pulses. The neat liquid CS₂ is studied because it exhibits a large nonlinear refractive index in …


Perceptual Image Quality Of Launch Vehicle Imaging Telescopes, Joshua K. Lentz Jan 2011

Perceptual Image Quality Of Launch Vehicle Imaging Telescopes, Joshua K. Lentz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A large fleet (in the hundreds) of high quality telescopes are used for tracking and imaging of launch vehicles during ascent from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center. A maintenance tool has been development for use with these telescopes. The tool requires rankings of telescope condition in terms of the ability to generate useful imagery. It is thus a case of ranking telescope conditions on the basis of the perceptual image quality of their imagery. Perceptual image quality metrics that are well-correlated to observer opinions of image quality have been available for several decades. However, these are …


Few-Cycle Pulses Amplification For Attosecond Science Applications Modeling And Experiments, Michael Hemmer Jan 2011

Few-Cycle Pulses Amplification For Attosecond Science Applications Modeling And Experiments, Michael Hemmer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of mode-locked oscillators providing pulses with durations as short as a few electric-field cycles in the near infra-red has paved the way toward electric-field sensitive physics experiments. In addition, the control of the relative phase between the carrier and the pulse envelope, developed in the early 2000’s and rewarded by a Nobel price in 2005, now provides unprecedented control over the pulse behaviour. The amplification of such pulses to the millijoule level has been an on-going task in a few world-class laboratories and has triggered the dawn of attoscience, the science of events happening on an attosecond timescale. …


Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of High-Transparency Deep Ultra-Violet Contacts Using Surface Plasmon Coupling In Subwavelength Aluminum Meshes, Clarisse Mazuir Jan 2011

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of High-Transparency Deep Ultra-Violet Contacts Using Surface Plasmon Coupling In Subwavelength Aluminum Meshes, Clarisse Mazuir

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present work aims at enhancing the external quantum efficiencies of ultra-violet (UV) sensitive photodetectors (PDs) and light emitting diodes (LEDs)for any light polarization. Deep UV solid state devices are made out of AlGaN or MgZnO and their performances suffer from the high resistivity of their p-doped regions. They require transparent p-contacts; yet the most commonly used transparent contacts have low transmission in the UV: indium tin oxide (ITO) and nickel-gold (Ni/Au 5/5 nms) transmit less than 50% and 30% respectively at 300 nm. Here we investigate the use of surface plasmons (SPs) to design transparent p-contacts for AlGaN devices …


Multilayered Planar Periodic Subwavelength Microstructures For Generating And Detecting Circularly Polarized Thermal Infrared Radiation, Samuel Lanning Wadsworth Jan 2011

Multilayered Planar Periodic Subwavelength Microstructures For Generating And Detecting Circularly Polarized Thermal Infrared Radiation, Samuel Lanning Wadsworth

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Generation and detection of circularly-polarized (CP) radiation in the 8- to 12-μm band of the infrared (IR) spectrum is crucial for polarization sensing and imaging scenarios. There is very little naturally occurring CP radiation in the long-wave IR band, so that useful functionalities may be obtained by exploiting preferential radiation and transmission characteristics of engineered metamaterials. Conventional CP devices in the IR utilize birefringent crystals, which are typically bulky and expensive to manufacture. The operation of these devices is generally optimized at a single wavelength. Imaging in the long-wave IR is most often broadband, so that achromatic CP-device behavior is …


Electromagnetic Propagation Anomalies In Waveguiding Structures And Scattering Systems, Alessandro Salandrino Jan 2011

Electromagnetic Propagation Anomalies In Waveguiding Structures And Scattering Systems, Alessandro Salandrino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The effects related to diffraction and interference are ubiquitous in phenomena involving electromagnetic wave propagation, and are accurately predicted and described within the framework of classical electrodynamics. In the vast majority of the cases the qualitative features of the evolution of a propagating wave can be inferred even without detailed calculations. A field distribution will spread upon propagation, will accumulate phase along the direction of power flow, will exert mechanical forces upon scattering objects in the direction of propagation etc. When such predictions fail, counterintuitive effects and new functionalities can be engineered. In this work a series of exceptional cases …


Computationally Efficient Digital Backward Propagation For Fiber Nonlinearity Compensation, Likai Zhu Jan 2011

Computationally Efficient Digital Backward Propagation For Fiber Nonlinearity Compensation, Likai Zhu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The next generation fiber transmission system is limited by fiber nonlinearity. A distributed nonlinearity compensation method, known as Digital Backward Propagation (DBP), is necessary for effective compensation of the joint effect of dispersion and nonlinearity. However, in order for DBP to be accurate, a large number of steps are usually required for long-haul transmission, resulting in a heavy computational load. In real time DBP implementation, the FIR filters can be used for dispersion compensation and account for most of the computation per step. A method of designing a complementary filter pair is proposed. The individual errors in the frequency response …


Low Noise, Narrow Optical Linewidth Semiconductor-Based Optical Comb Source And Low Noise Rf Signal Generation, Ibrahim Tuna Ozdur Jan 2011

Low Noise, Narrow Optical Linewidth Semiconductor-Based Optical Comb Source And Low Noise Rf Signal Generation, Ibrahim Tuna Ozdur

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently optical frequency combs and low noise RF tones are drawing increased attention due to applications in spectroscopy, metrology, arbitrary waveform generation, optical signal processing etc. This thesis focuses on the generation of low noise RF tones and stabilized optical frequency combs. The optical frequency combs are generated by a semiconductor based external cavity mode-locked laser with a high finesse intracavity etalon. In order to get the lowest noise and broadest bandwidth from the mode-locked laser, it is critical to know the free spectral range (FSR) of the etalon precisely. First the etalon FSR is measured by using the modified …


Infrared Phased-Array Antenna-Coupled Tunnel Diodes, Brian Alan Slovick Jan 2011

Infrared Phased-Array Antenna-Coupled Tunnel Diodes, Brian Alan Slovick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Infrared (IR) dipole antenna-coupled metal-oxide-metal (MOM) tunnel diodes provide a unique detection mechanism that allows for determination of the polarization and wavelength of an optical field. By integrating the MOM diode into a phased-array antenna, the angle of arrival and degree of coherence of received IR radiation can be determined. The angular response characteristics of IR dipole antennas are determined by boundary conditions imposed by the surrounding dielectric or conductive environment on the radiated fields. To explore the influence of the substrate configuration, single dipole antennas are fabricated on both planar and hemispherical lens substrates. Measurements demonstrate that the angular …


Low Noise And Low Repetition Rate Semiconductor-Based Mode-Locked Lasers, Dimitrios Mandridis Jan 2011

Low Noise And Low Repetition Rate Semiconductor-Based Mode-Locked Lasers, Dimitrios Mandridis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The topic of this dissertation is the development of low repetition rate and low noise semiconductor-based laser sources with a focus on linearly chirped pulse laser sources. In the past decade chirped optical pulses have found a plethora of applications such as photonic analogto-digital conversion, optical coherence tomography, laser ranging, etc. This dissertation analyzes the aforementioned applications of linearly chirped pulses and their technical requirements, as well as the performance of previously demonstrated chirped pulse laser sources. Moreover, the focus is shifted to a specific application of the linearly chirped pulses, timestretched photonic analog-to-digital conversion (TS ADC). The challenges of …