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Full-Text Articles in Physics

Development Of A Compact Broadband Optical Parametric Oscillator For Ultra-Sensitive Molecular Detection, Sean O. Crystal Jan 2017

Development Of A Compact Broadband Optical Parametric Oscillator For Ultra-Sensitive Molecular Detection, Sean O. Crystal

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Every gas molecule has a unique absorption spectrum that can be captured using optical spectroscopy to identify an unknown sample's composition. Frequency combs systems can provide an extremely broad mid-infrared spectrum that is very useful for molecular detection. A degenerate optical parametric oscillator (OPO) was built to generate the down-converted and shifted frequency comb spectrum. This system utilizes an ultra-short pulse 1.56µm pump laser and a never before used orientation patterned gallium-phosphide crystal. Periodically polled lithium niobate (PPLN), Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and Gallium Phosphide are all crystals used to accomplish this task. GaP, in comparison to PPLN, has (i) a …


Coherent Beam Combining Of Ultrashort Laser Pulses, Ahmad Azim Jan 2016

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 …