Optics Commons^™

Enhanced Study Of Complex Systems By Unveiling Hidden Symmetries With Dynamical Visibility, Nhat Vu Minh Nguyen

2022 Symposium

One of the great challenges in complex and chaotic dynamics is to reveal its deterministic structures. These temporal dynamical structures are sometimes a consequence of hidden symmetries. Detecting and understanding them can allow the study of complex systems even without knowing the full underlying mathematical description of the system. Here we introduce a new technique, called Dynamical Visibility, that quantifies temporal correlations of the dynamics based upon some symmetry conditions. This visibility measures the departure of the dynamics from internal symmetries. We apply this technique to well-known chaotic systems, such as the logistic map and the circle map, as well …

Uncooled Microbolometer Imaging Systems For Machine Vision, Robert Grimming

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Over the last 20 years, the cost of uncooled microbolometer-based imaging systems has drastically decreased while performance has increased. In the simplest terms, the figure of merit for these types of thermal detectors is given in terms of the τ-NETD product, the combination of the thermal time constant and the noise equivalent temperature difference. Considering these factors, optimal system design parameters are investigated to maximize visual information content. This dissertation focuses on improving scene information in the longwave infrared (LWIR) spectrum that has had its validity and quality degraded by noise, blur, and reflected radiance. Taken together, noise and blur …

Patterned Liquid Crystal Devices For Near-Eye Displays, Kun Yin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

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 …

Diffractive Liquid Crystal Optical Elements For Near-Eye Displays, Jianghao Xiong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

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 …

Development Of Holographic Phase Masks For Wavefront Shaping, Nafiseh Mohammadian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

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 …

A Novel Phase And Spectroscopic Imaging Technique To Evaluate Cellular Functions, Ting Chean Khoo

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis presents the application of Raman spectroscopy, digital holographic microscope (DHM) and transport intensity equation (TIE) in imaging biological samples. Raman spectroscopy is a non-destructive technique that can provide chemical structure, concentration, temperature, and molecular interactions. On the other hand, DHM and TIE provide physical measurements such as height, width, area and volume.We applied Raman spectroscopy to study iron-bound transferrin (Tf) in intact human breast cancer cells. Iron is an essential element required for human life and is highly regulated in the body. As the exact mechanisms of iron-bound Tf in cells are not well known, we developed a …

System Measurements For X-Ray Phase And Diffraction Imaging, Erik Wolfgang Tripi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In medical imaging, X rays are used to look inside the body to find fractures in bones, abnormal masses, cavities in teeth, and so on. What makes X rays so good at looking at these types of structures is the X ray’s penetration power. When imaging soft tissue to search for tumors, X-ray images tend to have difficulty performing well. The reason for this is that the background structures, such as fat or fibro glandular tissue have similar absorption coefficients as the tumor. Mammography tends to have a high false positive rate and can miss tumors entirely as well. There …

Compact Lens Technologies: Curved Image Sensor And Volumetric Imaging Efficiency, Zhao Ma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Compact image systems bring up people's attention in the field of target recognition, surveillance, situation awareness or even photography. Conventional metrics assess image system based on image quality without considering systems' volume. More comprehensive metrics, such as General Image-Quality Equation and the Targeting Task Performance metric, incorporates all image system components from object, lenses to detector and even imaging processing algorithm. All these key factors prohibit these metrics from being applied to image system in a convenient manner. Here, we propose a simple metric, volumetric imaging efficiency, considering both image quality and volume. Only concentrate on optical lenses enables the …

Meltpondnet: A Swin Transformer U-Net For Detection Of Melt Ponds On Arctic Sea Ice, Ivan Sudakow, Vijayan K. Asari, Ruixu Liu, Denis Demchev

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

High-resolution aerial photographs of Arctic region are a great source for different sea ice feature recognition, which are crucial to validate, tune, and improve climate models. Melt ponds on the surface of melting Arctic sea ice are of particular interest as they are sensitive and valuable indicators and are proxy to the processes in the Arctic climate system. Manual analysis of this remote sensing data is extremely difficult and time-consuming due to the complex shapes and unpredictable boundaries of the melt ponds, and that leads to the necessity for automatizing the processes. In this study, we propose a robust and …

Circuit Optimization Techniques For Efficient Ex-Situ Training Of Robust Memristor Based Liquid State Machine, Alex Henderson, Christopher Yakopcic, Cory Merkel, Steven Harbour, Tarek M. Taha, Hananel Hazan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Spiking neural network hardware offers a high performance, power-efficient and robust platform for the processing of complex data. Many of these systems require supervised learning, which poses a challenge when using gradient-based algorithms due to the discontinuous properties of SNNs. Memristor based hardware can offer gains in portability, power reduction, and throughput efficiency when compared to pure CMOS. This paper proposes a memristor-based spiking liquid state machine (LSM). The inherent dynamics of the LSM permit the use of supervised learning without backpropagation for weight updates. To carry out the design space evaluation of the LSM for optimal hardware performance, several …

Charge Dynamics Of Inas Quantum Dots Under Resonant And Above-Band Excitation, Gary R. Lander Jr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Research involving light-matter interactions in semiconductor nanostructures has been an interesting topic of investigation for decades. Many systems have been studied for not only probing fundamental physics of the solid state, but also for direct development of technological advancements. Research regarding self-assembled, epitaxially grown quantum dots (QDs) has proven to be prominent in both regards. The development of a reliable, robust source for the production of quantum bits to be utilized in quantum information protocols is a leading venture in the world of condensed matter and solid-state physics. Fluorescence from resonantly driven QDs is a promising candidate for the production …

Optical Signal Processing With Discrete-Space Metamaterials, Mohammad Moein Moeini

Wayne State University Dissertations

As digital circuits are approaching the limits of Moore’s law, a great deal of efforthas been directed to alternative computing approaches. Among them, the old concept of optical signal processing (OSP) has attracted attention, revisited in the light of metamaterials and nano-photonics. This approach has been successful in realizing basic mathematical operations, such as derivatives and integrals, but it is difficult to be applied to more complex ones. Inspired by digital filters, we propose a radically new OSP approach, able to realize arbitrary mathematical operations over a nano-photonic platform. We demonstrate this concept for the case of spatial differentiation, image …

First And Third Order Susceptibility Of Organic Molecules, Hao-Jung Chang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Illuminating a material with intense laser excitation may change its properties and result in nonlinear absorption (NLA) and nonlinear refraction (NLR). In this dissertation we study the nonlinear absorption of organic compounds, the effect of extremely nondegenerate NLR in semiconductors, and the linear refractive index of organic solvents. In liquids, the refractive index has been studied for decades and different kinds of refractometers have been proposed. However, most of the reported values are in the visible region and only for commonly used solvents. We proposed a new interferometer-based refractometer that allows us to measure the refractive index from the visible …

Third Order Nonlinear Optics In Solids, Nicholas Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Nonlinear optical effects occur when strong electromagnetic waves induce changes in a medium that affect its own propagation or that of another wave. Third order optical nonlinearities scale linearly with irradiance and lead to effects like two-photon absorption and nonlinear refraction. This work focuses on the experimental and theoretical study of two-photon absorption in crystalline solids. We begin by detailing the quantum mechanical states of electrons in solids along with the computational approaches to calculate their band structure. Next, a theoretical model for the linear and nonlinear optical interaction of light with matter is presented in a many-body formalism. This …

Light Trapping Transparent Electrodes, Mengdi Sun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

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 …

Optimization-Based Approaches To Low-Coherence Optical Diffraction Tomography, Seth Smith-Dryden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Quantitative optical phase imaging techniques, such as optical diffraction tomography (ODT), are useful tools for refractive-index profiling. Many of them, however, rely on the weak-scattering assumptions, thus cannot be applied to multiple-scattering objects, or turbid media. In this thesis, I report several approaches for expanding the efficacy of ODT techniques and adapting them to new applications by use of low-coherence broadband illumination. First, I developed a method for ODT reconstruction using regularized convex optimization with a new phase-based fidelity criterion. The new criterion is necessary because objects with very different refractive-index distributions may produce similar diffracted fields (magnitude and principal-phase) …

Hot-Carrier Dynamics And Transport Mechanisms In Inas/Alassb Multiple Quantum Wells, Herath Pathiranage Janaka Chathuranga Piyathilaka

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Semiconductor photovoltaics convert light into electricity through the extraction of photo-excited charge carriers. Among the most important parameters for a photovoltaic cell are good optical absorption in the desired region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and sufficient excited-state lifetimes and mobilities of the photocarriers to allow for charge separation and extraction before recombination. For solar cell applications there are significant challenges to overcome to improve the efficiency of the light-to-electricity conversion. The cells are most commonly made of silicon, which has a nearly perfect bandgap for absorbing the most solar radiation, an indirect bandgap to give a long photocarrier lifetime and …

Characterization And Coherent Spin Selective Manipulation Of Quantum Dot Energy Levels, Tristan Anthony Wilkinson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are promising candidates to fulfill a wide range of applications in real-world quantum computing, communication, and networks. Their excellent optical properties such as high brightness, single-photon purity, and narrow linewidths show potential utility in many areas. In order to realize long term goals of integration into complex and scalable quantum information systems, many current challenges must be overcome. One of these challenges is accomplishment of all necessary computing operations within a QD, which might be enabled by coherent manipulation of single QD energy level structures. In the realm of scalability for quantum devices, a way to …

Multifunctional Resonant Wavefront-Shaping Meta-Optics Based On Multilayer And Multi-Perturbation Nonlocal Metasurfaces, Stephanie C. Malek, Adam C. Overvig, Andrea Alù, Nanfang Yu

Advanced Science Research Center

Photonic devices rarely provide both elaborate spatial control and sharp spectral control over an incoming wavefront. In optical metasurfaces, for example, the localized modes of individual meta-units govern the wavefront shape over a broad bandwidth, while nonlocal lattice modes extended over many unit cells support high quality-factor resonances. Here, we experimentally demonstrate nonlocal dielectric metasurfaces in the near-infrared that offer both spatial and spectral control of light, realizing metalenses focusing light exclusively over a narrowband resonance while leaving off-resonant frequencies unaffected. Our devices attain this functionality by supporting a quasi-bound state in the continuum encoded with a spatially varying geometric …

Vertical Artifacts In High-Resolution Worldview-2 And Worldview-3 Satellite Imagery Of Aquatic Systems, Megan M. Coffer, Peter J. Whitman, Blake A. Schaeffer, Victoria Hill, Richard C. Zimmerman, Wilson B. Salls, Marie C. Lebrasse, David D. Graybill

OES Faculty Publications

Satellite image artefacts are features that appear in an image but not in the original imaged object and can negatively impact the interpretation of satellite data. Vertical artefacts are linear features oriented in the along-track direction of an image system and can present as either banding or striping; banding are features with a consistent width, and striping are features with inconsistent widths. This study used high-resolution data from DigitalGlobeʻs (now Maxar) WorldView-3 satellite collected at Lake Okeechobee, Florida (FL), on 30 August 2017. This study investigated the impact of vertical artefacts on both at-sensor radiance and a spectral index for …

The Aquatic Particle Number Quandry, Alexander B. Bochdansky, Huanqing Huang, Maureen H. Conte

OES Faculty Publications

Optical surveys of aquatic particles and their particle size spectra have become important tools in studies of light propagation in water, classification of water masses, and the dynamics of trophic interactions affecting particle aggregation and flux. Here, we demonstrate that typical settings used in image analysis vastly underestimate particle numbers due to the particle – gel continuum. Applying a wide range of threshold values to change the sensitivity of our detection system, we show that macrogels cannot be separated from more dense particles, and that a true particle number per volume cannot be ascertained; only relative numbers in relation to …

Normative Data On The Foveal Avascular Zone In A Young Healthy Irish Population Using Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography, Susan M. O'Shea, Veronica O'Dwyer, Grainne Scanlon

Articles

Purpose: To establish normative data on the size, shape and vascular profile of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) in a young, healthy, Irish population, using the Cirrus 5000 HD-OCT. Certain diseases may alter FAZ appearance. Normative databases provide normal baseline values for comparison, thus improving diagnostic ability.

Methods: One hundred and fifty-four subjects aged 18–35 years old were recruited. Superficial FAZ area, diameter, circularity, ganglion cell layer, central macular thickness (CMT), vascular perfusion and density were measured using the Cirrus 5000. Axial length was measured with the IOL Master and blood pressure was measured using the Omron sphygmomanometer. …

Quantitative Raman Analysis Of Carotenoid Protein Complexes In Aqueous Solution, Joy Udensi, Ekaterina Loskutova, James Loughman, Hugh Byrne

Datasets

Carotenoids are naturally abundant fat-soluble pigmented compounds, with dietary, antioxidant and vision protection advantages. The dietary carotenoids, Beta Carotene, Lutein and Zeaxanthin, complexed with in bovine serum albumin (BSA) in aqueous solution, were explored using Raman spectroscopy to differentiate and quantify their spectral signatures. UV visible absorption spectroscopy was employed to confirm the linearity of responses over the concentration range employed (0.05-1mg/ml) and, of the 4 source wavelengths, 785nm, 660nm, 532nm, 473nm, 532nm was chosen to provide the optimal response. After preprocessing to remove water and BSA contributions, and correct for self-absorption, a partial least squares model with R^{2 …}

Structural, Electrical And Optical Properties Of Copper Oxide Phase Mixture: An Active Layer Of Solar Cell, Rifat Ara Shams

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Both CuO and Cu2O have been well studied and implemented individually as an active layer of a solar cell from early age of manufacturing. A mixture of these two-phase contents at different ratios can bring variance in absorbance which can present new and diverse aspect in solar cell fabrication with added efficiency. Previous works were successful to vary the phase mixture, and the nanostructures provided very high absorption co-efficient but poor optical response on electrical conductivity. The goal of this research is to find out the optimum parameter for the phase mixture of copper oxide with high absorption coefficient as …

Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning In Optical Information Processing: Introduction To The Feature Issue, Khan Iftekharuddin, Chrysanthe Preza, Abdul Ahad S. Awwal, Michael E. Zelinski

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

This special feature issue covers the intersection of topical areas in artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) and optics. The papers broadly span the current state-of-the-art advances in areas including image recognition, signal and image processing, machine inspection/vision and automotive as well as areas of traditional optical sensing, interferometry and imaging.