The 100 most-cited articles in Optics Express, 2021

This Roadmap article on digital holography provides an overview of a vast array of research activities in the field of digital holography. The paper consists of a series of 25 sections from the prominent experts in digital holography presenting various aspects of the field on sensing, 3D imaging and displays, virtual and augmented reality, microscopy, cell identification, tomography, label-free live cell imaging, and other applications. Each section represents the vision of its author to describe the significant progress, potential impact, important developments, and challenging issues in the field of digital holography.

In this paper, we propose a switchable bi-functional metamaterial device based on a hybrid gold-vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ) nanostructure. Utilizing the property of a metal-to-insulator transition in VO 2 , perfect absorption and asymmetric transmission (AT) can be thermally switched for circularly polarized light in the near-infrared region. When VO 2 is in the metallic state, the designed metamaterial device behaves as a chiral-selective plasmonic perfect absorber, which can result in an optical circular dichroism (CD) response with a maximum value ∼ 0.7. When VO 2 is in the insulating state, the proposed metamaterial device exhibits a dual-band AT effect. The combined hybridization model and electromagnetic field distributions are presented to explain the physical mechanisms of chiral-selective perfect absorption and AT effect, respectively. The influences of structure parameters on CD response and AT effect are also discussed. Moreover, the proposed switchable bi-functional device is robust against the incident angle for obtaining perfect absorption and strong CD response as well…

Recent years have witnessed the unprecedented progress of deep learning applications in digital holography (DH). Nevertheless, there remain huge potentials in how deep learning can further improve performance and enable new functionalities for DH. Here, we survey recent developments in various DH applications powered by deep learning algorithms. This article starts with a brief introduction to digital holographic imaging, then summarizes the most relevant deep learning techniques for DH, with discussions on their benefits and challenges. We then present case studies covering a wide range of problems and applications in order to highlight research achievements to date. We provide an outlook of several promising directions to widen the use of deep learning in various DH applications.

The purpose of this work is to propose a simple, portable, and sensitive biosensor structure based on singlemode fiber-multicore fiber-multimode fiber-singlemode fiber (SMF-MCF-MMF-SMF) for the detection of creatinine in the human body. Chemical etching has been used to modify the diameter of the sensing probe to approximately 90 μm in order to generate strong evanescent waves (EWs). The sensor probe is functionalized with graphene oxide (GO), gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), molybdenum disulfide nanoparticles (MoS 2 -NPs), and creatininase (CA) enzyme. The concentration of creatinine is determined using fiber optic localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). While EWs are used to enhance the LSPR effect of AuNPs, two-dimensional (2D) materials (GO and MoS 2 -NPs) are used to increase biocompatibility, and CA is used to increase probe specificity. Additionally, HR-TEM and UV-visible spectroscopy are used to characterize and measure the nanoparticle (NP) morphology and absorption spectrum, respectively. SEM is used to characterize the NPs immobilized on the surface of the fiber probe. The…

Lithium niobate (LN) devices have been widely used in optical communication and nonlinear optics due to its attractive optical properties. The emergence of the thin-film lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) improves performances of LN-based devices greatly. However, a high-efficient fiber-chip optical coupler is still necessary for the LNOI-based devices for practical applications. In this paper, we demonstrate a highly efficient and polarization-independent edge coupler based on LNOI. The coupler, fabricated by a standard semiconductor process, shows a low fiber-chip coupling loss of 0.54 dB/0.59 dB per facet at 1550 nm for TE/TM light, respectively, when coupled with an ultra-high numerical aperture fiber (UHNAF) of which the mode field diameter is about 3.2 μm. The coupling loss is lower than 1dB/facet for both TE and TM light in the wavelength range of 1527 nm to 1630 nm. A relatively large tolerance for optical misalignment is also proved, due to the coupler's large mode spot size up to 3.2 μm. The coupler shows a promising stability in high optical power and temperature…

An absorber based on hybrid metamaterial with vanadium dioxide and graphene has been proposed to achieve dynamically switchable dual-broadband absorption property in the terahertz regime. Due to the phase transition of vanadium dioxide and the electrical tunable property of graphene, the dynamically switchable dual-broadband absorption property is implemented. When the vanadium dioxide is in the metallic phase, the Fermi energy level of graphene is set as zero simultaneously, the high-frequency broadband from 2.05 THz to 4.30 THz can be achieved with the absorptance more than 90%. The tunable absorptance can be realized through thermal control on the conductivity of the vanadium dioxide. The proposed device acts as a low-frequency broadband absorber if the vanadium dioxide is in the insulating phase, for which the Fermi energy level of graphene varies from to 0.1 eV to 0.7 eV. The low-frequency broadband possesses high absorptance which is maintained above 90% from 1.10 THz to 2.30 THz. The absorption intensity can be continuously adjusted from 5.2% to 99.8% by electrically…

A dynamically adjustable ultra-wideband metamaterial perfect absorber (MPA) is proposed which consists of three resonance rings based on vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ) and a metal ground layer separated by a dielectric spacer. The simulation results show that the terahertz (THz) absorption bandwidth of more than 90% absorptance reaches 3.30 THz, which covers from 2.34 to 5.64 THz, under different incident polarization angles. The range is better than that of previous VO 2 -based reports. Moreover, when the conductivity of VO 2 changes from 200 S/m to 2×10 5 S/m, the absorption peak intensity can be adjusted continuously from 4% to 100%. The key is to optimize the geometric structure through interference cancellation and impedance matching theory, to achieve better absorption bandwidth and efficiency. Besides, the terahertz absorber has a wide-angle absorption effect both in TE and TM waves. Thus, the designed absorber may have many potential applications in modulating, sensing and imaging technology.

Alanine aminotransferase (ALT), a critical component of human blood, is inextricably associated with liver injury. The current study develops a novel biosensor based on the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) principle for the detection of ALT analytes at concentrations ranging from 0 to 1000 Units per liter (U/L). According to the authors' knowledge, this is the first time an optical fiber structure with a taper-in-taper structure has been developed for biosensing applications. It is fabricated using the three-electrode semi-vacuum taper technique and is characterized using a combiner manufacturing system. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), molybdenum disulfide nanoparticles (MoS 2 -NPs), and cerium oxide nanoparticles (CeO 2 -NPs) are immobilized on the sensing region to improve the sensing performance. Prior to application, these nanoparticles are characterized using a high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) and a UV-Visible spectrophotometer. AuNPs promote the LSPR phenomenon, whereas MoS 2 -NPs/CeO 2 -NPs contribute to the sensor probe's biocompatibility and…

Nano-structure based metamaterial absorbers have been getting enormous interest owing to their widespread applications in solar cells, thermal emitters and integrated photonic devices. This paper presents a novel and ultrathin broadband metamaterial absorber comprised of a hexagonal nano-ring shaped fractal structure. The designed fractal metamaterial absorber (FMA) is composed of a three-layer device having a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) configuration. Based on the numerical simulations, the proposed FMA manifests more than 97% absorptivity for the operating wavelength from 820 to 2520 nm. However, it shows above 80% absorption value for the entire operating wavelength from 200 to 4000 nm. To predict the angular stability of this broadband absorption device, the absorptivity was investigated under different oblique incident angles of the exciting wave by considering both transverse electric (TE)- and transverse magnetic (TM)-polarization. Further, multiple reflection theory was employed to calculate the absorption value of FMA, and it shows appreciable agreement with the simulation…

Based on the phase-transition property of vanadium dioxide (VO2), a terahertz bifunctional absorber is proposed with switchable functionalities of broadband absorption and multiband absorption. When VO2 is metal, the system is regarded as a broadband absorber, which is composed of VO2 patch, topas spacer, and VO2 film with metallic disks inserted. The system obtains a broadband absorption with absorptance >90% from 3.25 THz to 7.08 THz. Moreover, the designed broadband absorber has a stable performance within the incident angle range of 50°. When VO2 is dielectric, multiband absorption with six peaks is realized in the designed system. Graphene and the metallic disk-shaped array play the dominant role in the mechanism of multiband absorption. Through changing the Fermi energy level of graphene, the performance of multiband absorption can be dynamically adjusted. Because of the switchable functionalities, the proposed design may have potential application in the fields of intelligent absorption and terahertz switch.

We present a unified density-based topology-optimization framework that yields integrated photonic designs optimized for manufacturing constraints including all those of commercial semiconductor foundries. We introduce a new method to impose minimum-area and minimum-enclosed-area constraints, and simultaneously adapt previous techniques for minimum linewidth, linespacing, and curvature, all of which are implemented without any additional re-parameterizations. Furthermore, we show how differentiable morphological transforms can be used to produce devices that are robust to over/under-etching while also satisfying manufacturing constraints. We demonstrate our methodology by designing three broadband silicon-photonics devices for nine different foundry-constraint combinations.

In this paper, we design a polarization-independent and angle-insensitive broadband THz graphene metamaterial absorber based on the surface plasmon-polaritons resonance. Full-wave simulation is conducted, and the results show that the designed metamaterial absorber has an absorption above 99% in the frequency range from 1.23 THz to 1.68 THz, which refers to a very high standard. Furthermore, the absorber has the properties of tunability, and the absorption can be nearly adjusted from 1% to 99% by varying the Fermi energy level of the graphene from 0 eV to 0.7 eV. In the simulation, when the incident angles of TE and TM waves change from 0° to 60°, the average absorption keeps greater than 80%. The proposed absorber shows promising performance, which has potential applications in developing graphene-based terahertz energy harvesting and thermal emission.

We propose a bi-directional gated recurrent unit neural network based nonlinear equalizer (bi-GRU NLE) for coherent optical communication systems. The performance of bi-GRU NLE has been experimentally demonstrated in a 120 Gb/s 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (64-QAM) coherent optical communication system with a transmission distance of 375 km. Experimental results show that the proposed bi-GRU NLE can significantly mitigate nonlinear distortions. The Q-factors can exceed the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limit of 8.52 dB with the aid of bi-GRU NLE, when the launched optical power is in the range of -3 dBm to 3 dBm. In addition, when the launched optical power is in the range of 0 dBm to 2 dBm, the Q-factor performances of the bi-GRU NLE and bi-directional long short-term memory neural network based nonlinear equalizer (bi-LSTM NLE) are similar, while the number of parameters of bi-GRU NLE is about 20.2% less than that of bi-LSTM NLE, the average training time of bi-GRU NLE is shorter than that of bi-LSTM NLE, the number of multiplications required for the…

Developing high-efficiency microwave absorbers remains challenging in the broadband range, particularly in the low-frequency range containing the L band and even lower. To overcome this challenge, a hybrid metamaterial absorber comprising a conventional magnetic absorbing material and a multi-layered meta-structure predesigned with graphene films is proposed to realize wideband absorption performance starting from ultra-low frequencies (0.79-20.9 GHz and 25.1-40.0 GHz). The high absorption ability of the proposed device originates from fundamental resonance modes and their coupling. The experimental results agree well with the simulated ones, proving the effectiveness of our design method. In addition, owing to the use of low-density polymethylacrylimide foam and graphene films with outstanding mechanical properties, our design is lightweight and environmentally adaptable, which reflects its engineering value.

The accuracy of the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) optical fiber sensor is affected by the change of ambient temperature. Therefore, we propose a simple dual channel SPR optical fiber sensor, which can measure both glucose concentration and ambient temperature. The proposed sensor is a two-channel structure based on a no-core optical fiber (NCF): one channel is coated with gold film and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to sense the ambient temperature, and the other is coated with silver film to sense glucose concentration. The experimental results show that the sensor's sensitivity for sensing glucose concentration is 2.882 nm / %, and for sensing temperature is -2.904 nm / °C. By monitoring the real-time temperature, the accuracy of glucose concentration detection was improved. The proposed sensor has a simple and compact structure, and it is suitable for sensing glucose solution or other analyte solutions that need temperature compensation.

In this letter, a distributed optical fiber hydrophone (DOFH) based on Φ-OTDR is demonstrated and tested in the field. The specially designed sensitized optical cable with sensitivity up to -146 dB rad/µPa/m is introduced, and an array signal processing model for DOFH is constructed to analyze the equivalence and specificity of the distributed array of acoustic sensors. In the field test, a 104-meter-long optical cable and a Φ-OTDR system based on heterodyne coherent detection (Het Φ-OTDR) is utilized, and underwater acoustic signal spatial spectrum estimation, beamforming and motion trajectory tracking with high accuracy can be realized. As far as we know, this is the first report on the field trial of DOFH based on Φ-OTDR. The DOFH has the potential to achieve an array range of tens of kilometers, with elements spaced up to the meter level and flexible configuration, which has a broad application prospect for marine acoustic detection.

Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) modulators are expected to be an ideal solution to achieve a super-wide modulation bandwidth needed by the next-generation optical communication system. To improve the performance, especially to reduce the driving voltage, we have carried out a detailed design of the TFLN push-pull modulator by calculating 2D maps of the optical losses and V π for different ridge waveguide depths and electrode gaps. Afterwards the modulator with travelling wave electrodes was fabricated through i-line photolithography and then characterized. The measured V π for a modulator with 5-mm modulation arm length is 3.5 V, corresponding to voltage-length product of 1.75 V·cm, which is the lowest among similar modulators as far as we know. And the measured electro-optic response has a 3-dB bandwidth beyond 40 GHz, which is the limitation of our measurement capability. The detailed design, fabrication and measurement results are presented.

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) chemical sensor comprising microstructured optical fiber (MOF) is designed for refractive index (RI) sensing in the visible to near-infrared (0.42-1.60 µm) region (NIR) as well as detection of gas-liquid pollutants. To realize mode coupling and facilitate manufacturing, gold with inert and plasmonic properties and an analyte sensing layer are introduced to the external surface of the MOF. The sensor is analyzed by the full-vector finite element method (FEM) and the wavelength and amplitude interrogation methods are adopted to evaluate the sensing characteristics. Our analysis reveals a maximum wavelength sensitivity (WS) of 15,000 nm/RIU, amplitude sensitivity (AS) of 1,603.37 RIU -1 , and resolution (R) of 6.67×10 −6 RIU in the determination of analyte RIs spanning an ultra-wide range between 1.00 and 1.45. Furthermore, the figure of merit (FOM) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the sensor are 295.01 RIU −1 and 2.95, respectively. On account of its simple structure, low cost, and industrial compatibility, this multi-functional sensor has…

The stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method is useful in the phase-only hologram optimization process and can achieve a high-quality holographic display. However, for the current SGD solution in multi-depth hologram generation, the optimization time increases dramatically as the number of depth layers of object increases, leading to the SGD method nearly impractical in hologram generation of the complicated three-dimensional object. In this paper, the proposed method uses a complex loss function instead of an amplitude-only loss function in the SGD optimization process. This substitution ensures that the total loss function can be obtained through only one calculation, and the optimization time can be reduced hugely. Moreover, since both the amplitude and phase parts of the object are optimized, the proposed method can obtain a relatively accurate complex amplitude distribution. The defocus blur effect is therefore matched with the result from the complex amplitude reconstruction. Numerical simulations and optical experiments have validated the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A bifunctional metamaterial is proposed based on a hybrid graphene and vanadium dioxide (VO2) configuration, which can realize a dynamic switch between beam steering and broadband absorption. The structure consists of a VO2 square, graphene patch, topas spacer, VO2 film, topas spacer, and metal substrate. When VO2 is in the metallic state, the structure serves as a coding metamaterial. By engineering different sizes of the top VO2 square and adjusting the Fermi energy level of graphene, the incident wave is scattered in different patterns. When VO2 is in the dielectric state, the structure serves as a broadband absorber. By changing the Fermi energy level of graphene from 0.0 eV to 0.9 eV, absorptance can be gradually changed and working bandwidth widens. There is an absorption band with near 100% absorptance from 0.9 THz to 1.35 THz when the Fermi energy level is 0.73 eV. And the designed broadband absorber is polarization-insensitive within the incident angle of 50°. Our work may show great potential in applications such as terahertz switching and modulation.

Inducing a large refractive-index change is the holy grail of reconfigurable photonic structures, a goal that has long been the driving force behind the discovery of new optical material platforms. Recently, the unprecedentedly large refractive-index contrast between the amorphous and crystalline states of Ge-Sb-Te (GST)-based phase-change materials (PCMs) has attracted tremendous attention for reconfigurable integrated nanophotonics. Here, we introduce a microheater platform that employs optically transparent and electrically conductive indium-tin-oxide (ITO) bridges for the fast and reversible electrical switching of the GST phase between crystalline and amorphous states. By the proper assignment of electrical pulses applied to the ITO microheater, we show that our platform allows for the registration of virtually any intermediate crystalline state into the GST film integrated on the top of the designed microheaters. More importantly, we demonstrate the full reversibility of the GST phase between amorphous and crystalline states. To show the feasibility of using this hybrid…

We demonstrate a single-beam atomic magnetometer (AM) capable of measuring a three-axis magnetic field with high-sensitivity, achieved by applying a small DC offset field and a high frequency modulation field. To satisfy the miniaturization demand of AMs, an elliptically polarized light detuned by 50 GHz from the resonance transition center is employed. The circularly polarized component is used to polarize the alkali-metal atoms, while the linearly polarized light is used to detect the dynamics of the polarized spin under a magnetic field. Based on theoretical analysis, parameters that significantly affect the performance are optimized, and a sensitivity of 20 fT/Hz 1/2 in x -axis, 25 fT/Hz 1/2 in y -axis, 30 fT/Hz 1/2 in z -axis is achieved with a miniature 4 × 4 × 4 mm 87 Rb vapor cell. Moreover, we also verify that the operation principle of AMs can be used to null background magnetic fields in-situ with isotropic compensation resolution of 6.7 pT, which provides an effectively precise method for zeroing ambient magnetic field. The high-sensitivity operating of an…

Recently, broadband optical Tamm states (OTSs) in heterostructures composed of highly lossy metal layers and all-dielectric one-dimensional (1D) photonic crystals (PhCs) have been utilized to realize broadband absorption. However, as the incident angle increases, the broadband OTSs in such heterostructures shift towards shorter wavelengths along the PBGs in all-dielectric 1D PhCs, which strongly limits the bandwidths of wide-angle absorption. In this paper, we realize a broadband omnidirectional OTS in a heterostructure composed of a Cr layer and a 1D PhC containing layered hyperbolic metamaterials with an angle-insensitive photonic band gap. Assisted by the broadband omnidirectional OTS, broadband wide-angle absorption can be achieved. High absorptance (A > 0.85) can be remained when the wavelength ranges from 1612 nm to 2335 nm and the incident angle ranges from 0° to 70°. The bandwidth of wide-angle absorption (0°-70°) reaches 723 nm. The designed absorber is a lithography-free 1D structure, which can be easily fabricated under the current magnetron sputtering or electron-beam…

In this paper, we propose a graphene-dielectric metasurface to enhance the light-matter interactions in graphene. The dielectric metasurface consists of periodically arranged silicon split rings placed on the silica substrate, which supports a symmetry-protected bound state in the continuum (BIC). When perturbation is introduced into the system to break symmetry, the BIC will transform into the quasi-BIC with high quality (Q)-factor. As the graphene layer is integrated with the dielectric metasurface, the absorption of graphene can be enhanced by the quasi-BIC resonance and a bandwidth-tunable absorber can be achieved by optimizing the Fermi energy of graphene and the asymmetry parameter of the metasurface to satisfy the critical coupling condition. By varying the Fermi energy of graphene, the quasi-BIC resonances can be effectively modulated and the max transmission intensity difference is up to 81% and a smaller asymmetry parameter will lead to better modulation performance. Our results may provide theoretical support for the design of absorber and modulator based on the quasi-BIC.

Supercontinuum sources are all-fiber pulsed laser-driven systems that provide high power spectral densities within ultra-broadband spectral ranges. The tailored process of generating broadband, bright, and spectrally flat supercontinua—through a complex interplay of linear and non-linear processes—has been recently pushed further towards longer wavelengths and has evolved enough to enter the field of mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectroscopy. In this work, we review the current state and perspectives of this technology that offers laser-like emission properties and instantaneous broadband spectral coverage comparable to thermal emitters. We aim to go beyond a literature review. Thus, we first discuss the basic principles of supercontinuum sources and then provide an experimental part focusing on the quantification and analysis of intrinsic emission properties such as typical power spectral densities, brightness levels, spectral stability, and beam quality (to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the M 2 factor for a mid-IR supercontinuum source is characterized for the first time). On this…

Both toroidal dipoles, electric dipoles and magnetic dipoles belong to one type of electromagnetic excitation. In this paper, we present an all-dielectric metasurface composed of an array of square nanoholes. It can simultaneously generate four resonance responses excited by TD, EQ and MD in the continuous near-infrared band. By introducing the in-plane symmetry breaking of the unit cell, asymmetric dielectric nanohole arrays are used to achieve two quasi-BIC resonance modes with high Q-factors excited by EQ and MD. The paper theoretically analyzes and demonstrates the relationship between structural asymmetry and the radiative Q-factor of two Fano resonances, that are governed by symmetry-protected BICs. And multipole decomposition and near-field analysis are performed to demonstrate the dominant role of various electromagnetic excitations in the four modes. The spectra response is also calculated for different incident polarization angles and medium refractive indices. The proposed metasurface is more feasible and practical compared to other complex nanostructures, which may open…

Semantic segmentation (SS) is promising for outdoor scene perception in safety-critical applications like autonomous vehicles, assisted navigation and so on. However, traditional SS is primarily based on RGB images, which limits the reliability of SS in complex outdoor scenes, where RGB images lack necessary information dimensions to fully perceive unconstrained environments. As a preliminary investigation, we examine SS in an unexpected obstacle detection scenario, which demonstrates the necessity of multimodal fusion. Thereby, in this work, we present EAFNet, an Efficient Attention-bridged Fusion Network, to exploit complementary information coming from different optical sensors. Specifically, we incorporate polarization sensing to obtain supplementary information, considering its optical characteristics for robust representation of diverse materials. By using a single-shot polarization sensor, we build the first RGB-P dataset which consists of 394 annotated pixel-aligned RGB-polarization images. A comprehensive variety of experiments shows the effectiveness of EAFNet to fuse…

We demonstrate power-efficient, thermo-optic, silicon nitride waveguide phase shifters for blue, green, and yellow wavelengths. The phase shifters operated with low power consumption due to a suspended structure and multi-pass waveguide design. The devices were fabricated on 200-mm silicon wafers using deep ultraviolet lithography as part of an active visible-light integrated photonics platform. The measured power consumption to achieve a π phase shift (averaged over multiple devices) was 0.78, 0.93, 1.09, and 1.20 mW at wavelengths of 445, 488, 532, and 561 nm, respectively. The phase shifters were integrated into Mach-Zehnder interferometer switches, and 10 - 90% rise(fall) times of about 570(590) μs were measured.

Ultra-weak fiber Bragg grating (UWFBG) arrays are key elements for constructing large-scale quasi-distributed sensing networks for structural health monitoring. Conventional methods for creating UWFBG arrays are based on in-line UV exposure during fiber drawing. However, the UV-induced UWFBG arrays cannot withstand a high temperature above 450 °C. Here, we report for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, a new method for fabricating high-temperature-resistant UWFBG arrays by using a femtosecond laser point-by-point (PbP) technology. UWFBGs with a low peak reflectivity of ∼ - 45 dB (corresponding to ∼ 0.0032%) were successfully fabricated in a conventional single-mode fiber (SMF) by femtosecond laser PbP inscription through fiber coating. Moreover, the influences of grating length, laser pulse energy, and grating order on the UWFBGs were studied, and a grating length of 1 mm, a pulse energy of 29.2 nJ, and a grating order of 120 were used for fabricating the UWFBGs. And then, a long-term high-temperature annealing was carried out, and the results show that the UWFBGs can…

A mono-layer metamaterial comprising four graphene-strips and one graphene-square-ring is proposed herein to realize triple plasmon-induced transparency (PIT). Theoretical results based on the coupled mode theory (CMT) are in agreement with the simulation results obtained using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD). An optical switch is investigated based on the characteristics of graphene dynamic modulation, with modulation degrees of the amplitude of 90.1%, 80.1%, 94.5%, and 84.7% corresponding to 1.905 THz, 2.455 THz, 3.131 THz, and 4.923 THz, respectively. Moreover, the proposed metamaterial is insensitive to the change in the angle of polarized light, for which the triple-PIT is equivalent in the cases of both x- and y-polarized light. The optical switch based on the proposed structure is effective not only for the linearly polarized light in different directions but also for left circularly polarized and right circularly polarized light. As such, this work provides insight into the design of optoelectronic devices based on the polarization characteristics of the incident…

We propose a scheme to generate squeezed states of magnon and phonon modes and verify squeezing transfer between different modes of distinct frequencies in a cavity magnomechanical system which is composed of a microwave cavity and a yttrium iron garnet sphere. We present that by activating the magnetostrictive force in the ferrimagnet, realized by driving the magnon mode with red-detuned and blue-detuned microwave fields, the driven magnon mode can be prepared in a squeezed state. Moreover, the squeezing can be transferred to the cavity mode via the cavity-magnon beamsplitter interaction with strong magnomechanical coupling. We show that under the weak coupling regime, large mechanical squeezing of phonon mode can be achieved, which verifies that our scheme can find the existence of quantum effects at macroscopic scales. Furthermore, distinct parameter regimes for obtaining large squeezing of the magnons and phonons are given, which is the principal feature of our scheme. The considered scheme can be extended to hybrid optical systems, and can facilitate the advancement for…

Multiple works have applied deep learning to fringe projection profilometry (FPP) in recent years. However, to obtain a large amount of data from actual systems for training is still a tricky problem, and moreover, the network design and optimization is still worth exploring. In this paper, we introduce graphic software to build virtual FPP systems in order to generate the desired datasets conveniently and simply. The way of constructing a virtual FPP system is described in detail firstly, and then some key factors to set the virtual FPP system much closer to reality are analyzed. With the aim of accurately estimating the depth image from only one fringe image, we also design a new loss function to enhance the overall quality and detailed information is restored. And two representative networks, U-Net and pix2pix, are compared in multiple aspects. The real experiments prove the good accuracy and generalization of the network trained by the diverse data from our virtual systems and the designed loss, providing a good guidance for real applications of deep learning methods.

A novel, compact, and easy fabrication vector magnetic field sensor has been proposed and investigated. The proposed sensor consists of a U-bent single-mode fiber fixed in a magnetic-fluid-filled vessel. Neither mechanical modification nor additional fiber grating is needed during the sensor fabrication. The results show that the response of magnetic fluid to magnetic field can be used to measure the direction and intensity of magnetic field via whispering gallery modes supported by the U-bent fiber structure with suitable bending radius. The sensitivity of direction is 0.251 nm/°, and the maximum magnetic field intensity sensitivity is 0.517 nm/mT. Besides, the results of this work prove the feasibility for realizing vector magnetic sensors based on other bending structures (such as bending multimode interference, bending SPR structure) in the future.

We propose a chiral metasurface (CMS) that exhibits asymmetric transmission (AT) of double circularly and linearly polarized waves at the same frequency band. In order to realize the manipulation of electromagnetic (EM) waves in the whole space, the unit cell of CMS consists of three layers of dielectric substrate and four layers of metal patches. The Z-shaped chiral micro-structure and a grating-like micro-structure are proposed and designed to achieve AT. The simulated results show that the x-polarized wave that is incident along one direction can be transmitted into the right-hand circularly polarized (RHCP) wave and the left-hand circularly polarized (LHCP) wave that is incident along the opposite direction can be reflected as the LHCP wave in the frequency band of 4.69GHz-5.84 GHz. The maximum chirality response can be reflected by AT and circular dichroism (CD) and they can reach up to 0.38 and 0.75, respectively. In addition, we also produced the sample of CMS, and the experimental results are in good agreement with the simulated results.

In this work, a novel all-dielectric metasurface made of arrayed circular slots etched in a silicon layer is proposed and theoretically investigated. The structure is designed to support both Mie-type multipolar resonances and symmetry-protected bound states in the continuum (BIC). Specifically, the metasurface consists of interrupted circular slots, following the paradigm of complementary split-ring resonators. This configuration allows both silicon-on-glass and free-standing metasurfaces and the arc length of the split-rings provides an extra tuning parameter. The nature of both BIC and non-BIC resonances supported by the metasurface is investigated by employing the Cartesian multipole decomposition technique. Thanks to the non-radiating nature of the quasi-BIC resonance, extremely high Q-factor responses are calculated, both by fitting the simulated transmittance spectra to an extended Fano model and by an eigenfrequency analysis. Furthermore, the effect of optical losses in silicon on quenching the achievable Q-factor values is discussed. The metasurface features a simple bulk…

A ppb-level H2S and CO photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) gas sensor was developed by using a two-stage commercial optical fiber amplifier with a full output power of 10 W. Two near-infrared diode lasers with the central wavenumbers of 6320.6 cm−1 and 6377.4 cm−1 were employed as the excitation laser source. A time-division multiplexing method was used to simultaneously detect CO and H2S with an optical switch. A dual-resonator structural photoacoustic cell (PAC) was theoretically simulated and designed with a finite element analysis. A µV level background noise was achieved with the differential and symmetrical PAC. The performance of the multi-component sensor was evaluated after the optimization of frequency, pressure and modulation depth. The minimum detection limits of 31.7 ppb and 342.7 ppb were obtained for H2S and CO at atmospheric pressure.

All-dielectric metasurfaces exhibit exotic electromagnetic responses, similar to those obtained with metal-based metamaterials. Research in all-dielectric metasurfaces currently uses relatively simple unit-cell designs, but increased geometrical complexity may yield even greater scattering states. Although machine learning has recently been applied to the design of metasurfaces with impressive results, the much more challenging task of finding a geometry that yields a desired spectra remains largely unsolved. We propose and demonstrate a method capable of finding accurate solutions to ill-posed inverse problems, where the conditions of existence and uniqueness are violated. A specific example of finding the metasurface geometry which yields a radiant exitance matching the external quantum efficiency of gallium antimonide is demonstrated. We also show how the neural-adjoint method can intelligently grow the design search space to include designs that increasingly and accurately approximate the desired scattering response. The neural-adjoint method is not restricted to the case…

In this manuscript, a highly sensitive methane (CH 4 ) sensor based on light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy (LITES) using a 2.33 µm diode laser with high power is demonstrated for the first time. A quartz tuning fork (QTF) with an intrinsic resonance frequency of 32.768 kHz was used to detect the light-induced thermoelastic signal. A Herriot multi-pass cell with an effective optical path of 10 m was adopted to increase the laser absorption. The laser wavelength modulation depth and concentration response of this CH 4 -LITES sensor were investigated. The sensor showed excellent long term stability when Allan deviation analysis was performed. An adaptive Savitzky-Golay (S-G) filtering algorithm with χ 2 statistical criterion was firstly introduced to the LITES technique. The SNR of this CH 4 -LITES sensor was improved by a factor of 2.35 and the minimum detection limit (MDL) with an integration time of 0.1 s was optimized to 0.5 ppm. This reported CH 4 -LITES sensor with sub ppm-level detection ability is of great value in applications such as environmental monitoring and…

In this paper, we report on an ultra-highly sensitive light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy (LITES)-based carbon monoxide (CO) sensor exploiting custom quartz tuning forks (QTFs) as a photodetector, a multi-pass cell and a mid-infrared quantum cascade laser (QCL) for the first time. The QCL emitting at 4.58 µm with output power of 145 mW was employed as exciting source and the multi-pass cell was employed to increase the gas absorption pathlength. To reduce the noise level, wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) and second harmonic demodulation techniques were exploited. Three QTFs including two custom QTFs (#1 and #2) with different geometries and a commercial standard QTF (#3) were tested as photodetector in the gas sensor. When the integration time of the system was set at 200 ms, minimum detection limits (MDLs) of 750 part-per-trillion (ppt), 4.6 part-per-billion (ppb) and 5.8 ppb were achieved employing QTF #1 #2, and #3, respectively. A full sensor calibration was achieved using the most sensitive QTF#1, demonstrating an excellent linear response with CO concentration.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel interference fading suppression method for phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (φ-OTDR) using space-division multiplexed (SDM) pulse probes in a few-mode fiber. The SDM probes consist of multiple different modes, and three spatial modes (LP01, LP11a, and LP11b) are used in this work for the proof of concept. Firstly, the Rayleigh backscattering light of different modes is experimentally characterized, and it turns out that the waveforms of the φ-OTDR traces for distinct modes are all different and independent. Thanks to the spatial difference of the fading positions for distinct modes, multiple probes from spatially multiplexed modes can be used to suppress the interference fading in φ-OTDR. Then, the performances of the φ-OTDR systems using a single probe and multiple probes are evaluated and compared. Specifically, the statistical analysis shows that the fading probabilities over both the fiber length and the time scale are reduced significantly by using multiple SDM probes, which verifies the significant performance…

Thin-film lithium niobate is an attractive integrated photonics platform due to its low optical loss and favorable optical nonlinear and electro-optic properties. However, in applications such as second harmonic generation, frequency comb generation, and microwave-to-optics conversion, the device performance is strongly impeded by the photorefractive effect inherent in thin-film lithium niobate. In this paper, we show that the dielectric cladding on a lithium niobate microring resonator has a significant influence on the photorefractive effect. By removing the dielectric cladding layer, the photorefractive effect in lithium niobate ring resonators can be effectively mitigated. Our work presents a reliable approach to control the photorefractive effect on thin-film lithium niobate and will further advance the performance of integrated classical and quantum photonic devices based on thin-film lithium niobate.

Linear and nonlinear impairments in underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems caused by the limited bandwidth and nonlinearity of devices severely degrade the system performance. In this paper, we propose a sparse Volterra series model-based nonlinear post equalizer with greedy algorithms to mitigate the nonlinear impairments and the inter-symbol interference (ISI) in a UWOC system. A variable step size generalized orthogonal matching pursuit (VSgOMP) algorithm that combines generalized orthogonal matching pursuit (gOMP) and adaptive step size method is proposed and employed to compress the Volterra equalizer with low computational cost. A maximum data rate of 500 Mbps is realized with the received optical power of −32.5 dBm in a 7-m water tank. In a 50-m swimming pool, a data rate of 500 Mbps over 200-m underwater transmission is achieved with a BER lower than the forward error correction (FEC) threshold of 3.8 × 10−3. The number of kernels of the sparse Volterra equalizer is reduced to 70% of that of the traditional Volterra equalizer without significant BER…

Phase retrieval approaches based on deep learning (DL) provide a framework to obtain phase information from an intensity hologram or diffraction pattern in a robust manner and in real-time. However, current DL architectures applied to the phase problem rely on i) paired datasets, i. e., they are only applicable when a satisfactory solution of the phase problem has been found, and ii) the fact that most of them ignore the physics of the imaging process. Here, we present PhaseGAN, a new DL approach based on Generative Adversarial Networks, which allows the use of unpaired datasets and includes the physics of image formation. The performance of our approach is enhanced by including the image formation physics and a novel Fourier loss function, providing phase reconstructions when conventional phase retrieval algorithms fail, such as ultra-fast experiments. Thus, PhaseGAN offers the opportunity to address the phase problem in real-time when no phase reconstructions but good simulations or data from other experiments are available.

The physical layer security of radio-over-fiber (RoF) system is a very important problem for future communication. In this paper, a novel probabilistic shaping (PS) based constellation encryption scheme is proposed in which two bit-level encryption operations are firstly performed according to chaotic sequences and hash values. The chaotic sequences are generated by hyperchaotic system and hash values are obtained by SHA-512. Then PS is applied to enhance transmission performance. After PS-16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), constellation encryption is implemented aiming at maintaining overall shaping distribution unchanged and improving security. An encrypted PS-16-QAM orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal is successfully transmitted over 50 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) and 5 m wireless channel in our experiment. The results demonstrate that the key space of 10 121 is achieved to defend malicious attacks. Moreover, the proposed PS-based encryption scheme can obtain approximately 2.4 dB gain at a BER of 10 −3 compared with traditional OFDM signal.…

Nonlinear interferometers allow for mid-infrared spectroscopy with near-infrared detection using correlated photons. Previous implementations have demonstrated a spectral resolution limited by spectrally selective detection. In our work, we demonstrate mid-infrared transmission spectroscopy in a nonlinear interferometer using single-pixel near-infrared detection and Fourier-transform analysis. A sub-wavenumber spectral resolution allows for rotational-line-resolving spectroscopy of gaseous samples in a spectral bandwidth of over 700 cm−1. We use methane transmission spectra around 3.3 μm wavelength to characterize the spectral resolution, noise limitations and transmission accuracy of our device. The combination of nonlinear interferometry and Fourier-transform analysis paves the way towards performant and efficient mid-infrared spectroscopy with near-infrared detection.

Here, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time we report an in-depth experimental study of high ultrafast laser ablation efficiency for processing of copper and steel with single-pulses, MHz, GHz, and burst-in-the-burst (biburst) regimes. The comparison of burst, biburst, and single-pulse ablation efficiencies was performed for beam-size-optimised regimes, showing the real advantages and disadvantages of milling and drilling processing approaches. Highly efficient ultrashort pulse laser processing was achieved for ∼1 µm optical wavelength: 8.8 µm3/µJ for copper drilling, 5.6 µm3/µJ for copper milling, and 6.9 µm3/µJ for steel milling. We believe that the huge experimental data collected in this study will serve well for the better understanding of laser burst-matter interaction and theoretical modelling.

MoS 2 -based heterostructures have received increasing attention for not only surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) but also for enhanced photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) performance. This study presents a hydrothermal method for preparing vertical MoS 2 nanosheets composed of in situ grown AuNPs with small size and chemically reduced AgNPs with large size to achieve the synergistic enhancement of SERS and PEC properties owing to the size effect of the plasmonic structure. Compared with pristine MoS 2 nanosheets and unitary AuNPs or AgNPs composited with MoS 2 nanosheets, the ternary heterostructure exhibited the strongest electromagnetic field and surface plasmon coupling, which was confirmed by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation and absorption spectra. In addition, the experimental results confirmed the outstanding SERS enhancement with an EF of 1.1×10 9 , and the most efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity with a sensitive photocurrent response, attributing to the multiple surface plasmonic coupling effects of the Au-Ag bimetal and efficient…

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) that dynamically manipulate scattered waves have attracted much attention regarding accommodating coverage holes in wireless communication systems using radio wave frequencies higher than millimeter waves. RISs generally actualized through metasurface technologies must be visually unaffected so that they can be installed in various locations such as existing walls and glass windows in environments where propagation should be controlled. We propose a novel method that dynamically controls scattering characteristics of metasurfaces while achieving a large area and high optical transparency. For transparency in the visible light range, we use transparent glass as a substrate and meshed metal patterns. Furthermore, by stacking a metasurface substrate onto another transparent substrate and controlling the interlayer distance, we achieve dynamic control of the scattered waves over a large area in the 28-GHz band. Fabricated prototypes successfully operate when switching transmission and reflection modes, exhibiting extremely low loss of less than…

In this work, a straightforward and highly sensitive design of a CO2 gas sensor is numerically investigated using the finite element method. The sensor is based on a plasmonic metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguide side coupled to a square ring cavity filled with polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) functional material. The refractive index of the functional material changes when exposed to the CO2 and that change is linearly proportional to the concentration of the gas. The sensors based on surface plasmon polariton (SPP) waves are highly sensitive due to the strong interaction of the electromagnetic wave with the matter. By utilizing PHMB polymer in the MIM waveguide plasmonic sensor provides a platform that offers the highest sensitivity of 135.95 pm/ppm which cannot be obtained via optical sensors based on silicon photonics. The sensitivity reported in this work is ∼7 times higher than reported in the previous works. Therefore, we believe that the results presented in this paper are exceedingly beneficial for the realization of the sensors for the detection of toxic gases by…

This study experimentally demonstrates a high-sensitivity fiber-optic relative humidity (RH) sensor based on sensitivity amplification and a reduction mechanism, employing an internal-external Fabry-Perot cavity (IEFPC) Vernier effect and a chitosan film as a Fabry-Perot (FP)-sensing cavity. The proposed sensor is constructed using cascaded FP interferometers comprised of an air cavity formed by a hollow-core fiber (HCF), a chitosan cavity, and an air-chitosan hybrid cavity. The chitosan cavity is fabricated by dipping the HCF into a chitosan solution to form a thin chitosan film. Thus, the thickness of the chitosan film could be controlled precisely based on dipping time and capillary effect. As the optical path lengths of an air-chitosan hybrid cavity and an air cavity are similar, the IEFPC Vernier effect is generated, amplifying the air-chitosan hybrid cavity's low sensitivity to the chitosan cavity's high sensitivity. The experimental results agree with the theoretical analysis, supporting the fact that the sensor's sensitivity is related only to the thickness of the chitosan…

In this work, we propose broadband and switchable terahertz (THz) polarization converters based on either graphene patch metasurface (GPMS) or its complementary structure (graphene hole metasurface, GHMS). The patch and hole are simply cross-shaped, composed of two orthogonal arms, along which plasmonic resonances mediated by Fabry-Perot cavity play a key role in polarization conversion (PC). An incidence of linear polarization will be converted to its cross-polarization (LTL) or circular polarization (LTC), as the reflected wave in the direction of two arms owning the same amplitude and π phase difference (LTL), or ±π/2 phase difference (LTC). Such requirements can be met by optimizing the width and length of two arms, thickness of dielectric layer, and Fermi level EF of graphene. By using GPMS, LTL PC of polarization conversion ratio (PCR) over 90% is achieved in the frequency range of 2.92 THz to 6.26 THz, and by using GHMS, LTC PC of ellipticity χ ≤ −0.9 at the frequencies from 4.45 THz to 6.47 THz. By varying the Fermi level, the operating frequency can be actively tuned, and…

This paper presents a simple, yet effective demosaicking technique using polarization channel difference prior for polarization images captured by division of focal plane imaging sensors. The polarization channel difference prior embodies that high frequency energy of difference between orthogonal channels tends to be larger than that between non-orthogonal channels. This paper theoretically proves that this prior is physical valid. For each missing polarization channel at a pixel position, three initial predictions are recovered using different channel differences. The missing polarization channel is estimated by the weighted fusion of the three initial predictions, where the weights are determined by the proposed polarization channel difference prior. The prior helps recover polarization information of the edges, fast and effectively. Experiment results on the polarization dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the polarization channel difference prior for polarization image demosaicking. The proposed polarization demosaicking method consists of only 16 convolution operations,…

Distributed acoustic sensors (DASs) have the capability of registering faint vibrations with high spatial resolution along the sensing fiber. Advanced algorithms are important for DAS in many applications since they can help extract and classify the unique signatures of different types of vibration events. Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which have powerful spectro-temporal feature learning capability, are well suited for event classification in DAS. Generally, these data-driven methods are highly dependent on the availability of large quantities of training data for learning a mapping from input to output. In this work, to fully utilize the collected information and maximize the power of CNNs, we propose a method to enlarge the useful dataset for CNNs from two aspects. First, we propose an intensity and phase stacked CNN (IP-CNN) to utilize both the intensity and phase information from a DAS with coherent detection. Second, we propose to use data augmentation to further increase the training dataset size. The influence of different data augmentation methods on the…

In this paper, a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguide structure consisting of a side-coupled rectangular cavity (SCRC), a rightward opening semi-ring cavity (ROSRC), and a bus waveguide is reported. The finite element method is used to analyze the transmission characteristics and magnetic-field distributions of the structure in detail. The structure can support triple Fano resonances, and the Fano resonances can be tuned independently by altering the geometric parameters of the structure. Moreover, the structure can be applied in refractive index sensing and biosensing. The maximum sensitivity of refractive index sensing is up to 1550.38 nm/RIU, and there is a good linear relationship between resonance wavelength and refractive index. The MIM waveguide structure has potential applications in optical on-chip nano-sensing.

A trace gas detection technique of quartz-enhanced photoacoustic-photothermal spectroscopy (QEPA-PTS) is demonstrated. Different from quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) or quartz-enhanced photothermal spectroscopy (QEPTS), which detected only one single kind of signal, QEPA-PTS was realized by adding the photoacoustic and photothermal signals generated from two quartz tuning forks (QTFs), respectively. Water vapor (H2O) with a volume concentration of 1.01% was selected as the analyte gas to investigate the QEPA-PTS sensor performance. Compared to QEPAS and QEPTS, an enhanced signal level was achieved for this QEPA-PTS system. Further improvement of such a technique was proposed.

We present a simple, highly modular deep neural network (DNN) framework to address the problem of automatically inferring lens design starting points tailored to the desired specifications. In contrast to previous work, our model can handle various and complex lens structures suitable for real-world problems such as Cooke Triplets or Double Gauss lenses. Our successfully trained dynamic model can infer lens designs with realistic glass materials whose optical performance compares favorably to reference designs from the literature on 80 different lens structures. Using our trained model as a backbone, we make available to the community a web application that outputs a selection of varied, high-quality starting points directly from the desired specifications, which we believe will complement any lens designer's toolbox.

In this work, a silicon metasurface designed to support electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) based on quasi-bound states in the continuum (qBIC) is proposed and theoretically demonstrated in the near-infrared spectrum. The metasurface consists of a periodic array of square slot rings etched in a silicon layer. The interruption of the slot rings by a silicon bridge breaks the symmetry of the structure producing qBIC stemming from symmetry-protected states, as rigorously demonstrated by a group theory analysis. One of the qBIC is found to behave as a resonance-trapped mode in the perturbed metasurface, which obtains very high quality factor values at certain dimensions of the silicon bridge. Thanks to the interaction of the sharp qBIC resonances with a broadband bright background mode, sharp high-transmittance peaks are observed within a low-transmittance spectral window, thus producing a photonic analogue of EIT. Moreover, the resonator possesses a simple bulk geometry with channels that facilitate the use in biosensing. The sensitivity of the resonant qBIC on the…

Metamaterial perfect absorbers in the terahertz band are attracting more and more attention. Pure narrowband absorbers as well as broadband absorbers have been proposed one after another in recent years. However, absorbers that can achieve both narrow-band absorption and broadband absorption have hardly been reported. To meet more practical needs, we propose a terahertz metamaterial perfect absorber that combines ultra-broadband and narrowband based on the phase transition properties of vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ). Its main structure consists of a metal ring and four VO 2 discs, and the absorber can be flexibly switched between ultra-broadband and narrowband absorption by adjusting the ambient temperature. The resonator consisting of metal rings and VO 2 discs are mainly responsible for the formation of absorption peaks. A detailed explanation is given by means of magnetic resonance theory and the impedance matching principle. Compared to recent reports, our design offers a significant improvement in absorption rate and bandwidth and is also flexible in terms of tuning. Moreover, as…

In this research work, an anisotropic photonic crystal fiber ( PCF ) biosensor working on a refractive index ( RI ) variation and based on surface plasmon resonance ( SPR ) is presented. Liquid analytes ( LA ) having a RI within the range of 1.340 to 1.380 RIU are investigated from the proposed biosensor. Spectroscopy analysis of LA having RI values of 1.340 RIU , 1.360 RIU , and 1.380 RIU is performed from the developed sensing setup for modeling an ultrasensitive biosensor. The numerical analysis of the sensing parameters for the proposed sensor presents a maximum wavelength sensitivity ( WS ) of 20000 nm / RIU for x- polarization ( x − pol .) and 18000 nm / RIU for y- polarization ( y − pol .), respectively, using the wavelength interrogation technique. Maximum amplitude sensitivity ( AS ) of 2158 RIU −1 and 3167 RIU −1 is obtained for x − pol . and y − pol ., respectively, using the amplitude interrogation technique. Maximum sensor resolution ( SR ) of 5.00 × 10 −6 RIU and 5.55 × 10 −6 RIU is obtained for x − pol . and y − pol ., respectively. The linear relationship of the…

An integrated physical diffractive optical neural network (DONN) is proposed based on a standard silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate. This DONN has compact structure and can realize the function of machine learning with whole-passive fully-optical manners. The DONN structure is designed by the spatial domain electromagnetic propagation model, and the approximate process of the neuron value mapping is optimized well to guarantee the consistence between the pre-trained neuron value and the SOI integration implementation. This model can better ensure the manufacturability and the scale of the on-chip neural network, which can be used to guide the design and manufacturing of the real chip. The performance of our DONN is numerically demonstrated on the prototypical machine learning task of prediction of coronary heart disease from the UCI Heart Disease Dataset, and accuracy comparable to the state-of-the-art is achieved.

Enhancing the light-matter interactions in two-dimensional materials via optical metasurfaces has attracted much attention due to its potential to enable breakthrough in advanced compact photonic and quantum information devices. Here, we theoretically investigate a strong coupling between excitons in monolayer WS2 and quasi-bound states in the continuum (quasi-BIC). In the hybrid structure composed of WS2 coupled with asymmetric titanium dioxide nanobars, a remarkable spectral splitting and typical anticrossing behavior of the Rabi splitting can be observed, and such strong coupling effect can be modulated by shaping the thickness and asymmetry parameter of the proposed metasurfaces, and the angle of incident light. It is found that the balance of line width of the quasi-BIC mode and local electric field enhancement should be considered since both of them affect the strong coupling, which is crucial to the design and optimization of metasurface devices. This work provides a promising way for controlling the light-matter interactions in strong coupling regime and opens the door for…

In this paper, fabrication processes of a 0.55-inch 400 × 240 high-brightness active-matrix micro-light-emitting diode (LED) display using GaN-on-Si epi-wafers are described. The micro-LED array, featuring a pixel size of 20 µm × 20 µm and a pixel density of 848 pixels per inch (ppi), was fabricated and integrated with a custom-designed CMOS driver through Au-Sn flip-chip bonding. Si growth substrate was removed using a crack-free wet etching method. Four-bit grayscale images and videos are clearly rendered. Optical crosstalk is discussed and can be mitigated through micro-LED array design and process modification. This high-performance, high-resolution micro-LED display demonstration provides a promising and cost-effective solution towards mass production of micro-displays for VR/AR applications.

We develop a rapidly converging algorithm for stabilizing a large channel-count diffractive optical coherent beam combination. An 81-beam combiner is controlled by a novel, machine-learning based, iterative method to correct the optical phases, operating on an experimentally calibrated numerical model. A neural-network is trained to detect phase errors based on interference pattern recognition of uncombined beams adjacent to the combined one. Due to the non-uniqueness of solutions in the full space of possible phases, the network is trained within a limited phase perturbation/error range. This also reduces the number of samples needed for training. Simulations have proven that the network can converge in one step for small phase perturbations. When the trained neural-network is applied to a realistic case of 360 degree full range, an iterative scheme exploits random walking at the beginning, with the accuracy of prediction on phase feedback direction, to allow the neural-network to step into the training range for fast convergence. This neural-network-based iterative method of phase…

An optical Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) pressure sensor loaded with arrays of silver nanorods (NRs) is proposed in this article. The illustrated sensor contains a straight waveguide coupled with a ladder-shaped resonator. The spectral profile of the proposed schematic is numerically analyzed utilizing the 2D Finite Element Method (FEM). When pressure is exerted upon the silver layer, the resonating area deforms and shifts the resonant wavelength. Extensive computations demonstrate that increasing the deformation shifts the resonant wavelength to the right, establishing a linear relationship. The suggested structure reports maximum pressure sensitivity of 25.4 nm/MPa. Moreover, the impact of NRs on pressure sensitivity is extensively investigated and the results indicate that the designed layout is sensitive to the size and radius of NRs, making it highly tunable. All these features make the modeled prototype a promising nanoscale solution in different fields of engineering.

We experimentally demonstrate topological slow light waveguides in valley photonic crystals (VPhCs). We employed a bearded interface formed between two topologically-distinct VPhCs patterned in an air-bridged silicon slab. The interface supports both topological and non-topological slow light modes below the light line. By means of optical microscopy, we observed light propagation in the topological mode in the slow light regime with a group index n g over 30. Furthermore, we confirmed light transmission via the slow light mode even under the presence of sharp waveguide bends. In comparison between the topological and non-topological modes, we found that the topological mode exhibits much more efficient waveguiding than the trivial one, demonstrating topological protection in the slow light regime. This work paves the way for exploring topological slow-light devices compatible with existing photonics technologies.

Compared to standard rotationally symmetric macroscopic optical components, free-form micro-optical arrays (FMOAs), sometimes termed microstructured optical surfaces, offer greater design freedom and a smaller footprint. Hence, they are used in optical devices to deliver new functionalities, enhanced device performance, and/or a greater degree of miniaturization. But their more complex surface shape is a challenge for traditional manufacturing technologies, and this has triggered a substantial effort by research institutes and industry to develop alternative fabrication solutions. Two-photon polymerization (2PP) is a promising additive manufacturing technology to manufacture 3D optical (micro)structures. The manufacturing times involved are, however, often impractically long, especially for the excellent surface quality required for optical applications. Recently, Nanoscribe GmbH has reduced manufacturing times substantially with the introduction of so-called two-photon grayscale lithography (2GL). However, its acceleration potential and consequent impact on surface quality have, to…

Underwater imaging method based on polarization information is extremely popular due to its ability to effectively remove the backscattered light. The Stokes vector contains the information of both the degree and angle of polarization of the light wave. However, this aspect has been rarely utilized in image reconstruction. In this study, an underwater polarimetric imaging model is established by fully exploiting this feature of Stokes vectors. The transmission of light wave is described in terms of the polarization information derived from the Stokes vector. Then, an optimization function is designed based on the independent characteristics of target light and backscattered light to estimate the target and backscattered field information. The real-world experiments and mean squared error analysis verify that the proposed method can remove the backscattered light and recover the target information accurately.

Nonlinearity mitigation in optical fiber networks is typically handled by electronic Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips. Such DSP chips are costly, power-hungry and can introduce high latencies. Therefore, optical techniques are investigated which are more efficient in both power consumption and processing cost. One such a machine learning technique is optical reservoir computing, in which a photonic chip can be trained on certain tasks, with the potential advantages of higher speed, reduced power consumption and lower latency compared to its electronic counterparts. In this paper, experimental results are presented where nonlinear distortions in a 32 GBPS OOK signal are mitigated to below the 0.2 × 10−3 FEC limit using a photonic reservoir. Furthermore, the results of the reservoir chip are compared to a tapped delay line filter to clearly show that the system performs nonlinear equalisation.

Real-time tracking of fast-moving object have many important applications in various fields. However, it is a great challenge to track of fast-moving object with high frame rate in real-time by employing single-pixel imaging technique. In this paper, we present the first single-pixel imaging technique that measures zero-order and first-order geometric moments, which are leveraged to reconstruct and track the centroid of a fast-moving object in real time. This method requires only 3 geometric moment patterns to illuminate a moving object in one frame. And the corresponding intensities collected by a single-pixel detector are equivalent to the values of the zero-order and first-order geometric moments. We apply this new approach of measuring geometric moments to object tracking by detecting the centroid of the object in two experiments. The root mean squared errors in the transverse and axial directions are 5.46 pixels and 5.53 pixels respectively, according to the comparison of data captured by a camera system. In the second experiment, we successfully track a moving magnet with a…

When a low flux of time-frequency-entangled photon pairs (EPP) illuminates a two-photon transition, the rate of two-photon absorption (TPA) can be enhanced considerably by the quantum nature of photon number correlations and frequency correlations. We use a quantum-theoretic derivation of entangled TPA (ETPA) and calculate an upper bound on the amount of quantum enhancement that is possible in such systems. The derived bounds indicate that in order to observe ETPA the experiments would need to operate at a combination of significantly higher rates of EPP illumination, molecular concentrations, and conventional TPA cross sections than are achieved in typical experiments.

Vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), which feature helical wavefronts, have been regarded as an alternative degree of freedom for free-space optical (FSO) communication systems. However, in practical applications, atmospheric turbulence and limited-size receiving aperture effects will cause OAM modal degradation and seriously reduce the received power. In this paper, by controlling the radial phase distribution of conventional OAM beams, quasi-ring Airy vortex beams (QRAVBs) are successfully generated in the experiments to increase the received power under the limited-size receiving aperture conditions. By employing 72-Gbit/s 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) discrete multi-tone (DMT) signals, we successfully demonstrate free-space data transmission with QRAVBs in the experiments. Moreover, the transmission performance of QRAVBs under atmospheric turbulence is also evaluated. Comparing with conventional OAM beam and Bessel beam, the obtained results show that QRAVBs can achieve higher received power and better BER performance under limited-size…

A stable passively mode-locked Er-doped silica fiber laser with a fundamental repetition rate of up to 5 GHz is demonstrated, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the highest repetition rate for 1.5 μm semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) mode-locked Er-doped silica fiber (EDF) lasers. A segment of commercially available EDF with a net gain coefficient of 1 dB/cm is employed as gain medium. The compact Fabry-Pérot (FP) cavity features a fiber mirror, namely multiple-layer dielectric films (DFs) directly coated on end facet of a passive fiber ferrule, enabling a short cavity length of 2 cm configured. The mode-locked oscillator operates at 1561.0 nm with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 62.1 dB, whose average power is boosted to 27 mW by a single-mode Er-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and spectral bandwidth is broadened form 0.69 nm to 1.16 nm with a pulse width of 3.86 ps. The fiber laser shows excellent spectral stability without conspicuous wavelength drifting for 3 hours. Moreover, the basic guidelines of selecting SESAM for high repetition rate passively mode-locked…

We report on a new record in the field of broadband BDFA in the O+E spectral range. Using only 250 mW single wavelength pump at 1256 nm and a low-OH bismuth-doped fiber containing two types of bismuth active centers, we achieved >23 dB gain from 1325 nm to 1441 nm with flatness <3 dB and a NF of <6.8 dB. Three different pump wavelengths were considered: 1230, 1256, 1270 nm. Pumping at the shortest wavelength enabled wider gain bandwidth – 125 nm but required pump power up to ∼620 mW, whereas the longest one provided higher pump efficiency but narrower gain bandwidth. We also studied multiple wavelength amplification effects in the BDFA to reveal potential problems with simultaneous broadband signal amplification in such amplifiers.

Underwater imaging is a challenging task because of the large amounts of noise and the scattering nature of water. Conventional optical methods cannot realize clear imaging in underwater conditions owing to the limitations of low sensitivity, geometrical aberrations, and the narrow spectrum of photoelectric detectors. By contrast, single-pixel imaging (SPI) is a promising tool for imaging in poor-visibility environments. Nevertheless, this challenge is faced even when using traditional SPI methods in highly turbid underwater environments. In this work, we propose a Hadamard single-pixel imaging (HSI) system that outperforms other imaging modes in turbid water imaging. The effects of laser power, projection rate, and water turbidity on the final image quality are systematically investigated. Results reveal that compared with the state-of-the-art SPI techniques, the proposed HSI system is more promising for underwater imaging because of its high resolution and anti-scattering capabilities.

For a structured light system, scan speed and reconstruction accuracy are usually compromised for limited sensor bandwidth. The bio-inspired camera, also known as the event camera, has high temporal resolution and redundancy-suppressing properties, showing potential to be utilized in a high-speed structured light system. In this paper, we present an event-based structured light system for high-speed 3D scanning, which is composed of an event camera (CeleX-V) and a high-speed digital light projector (TI-DLP6500). The events are triggered by blinking a single pseudo-random pattern by controlling the projector. A simple yet effective algorithm is proposed to generate the event frames from the event stream, and a digital image correlation method is then performed to calculate the displacements, deriving the 3D surfaces of the target objects. A prototype of our proposed system is built with off-the-shelf devices and tested in both static and dynamic scenes. Experiments verify that the proposed system successfully achieves up to a 1000 fps scan rate with an accuracy of 0.27 mm at a…

We present a fast-scanning Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) in combination with high-repetition-rate mid-infrared supercontinuum sources, covering a wavelength range of 2–10.5 µm. We demonstrate the performance of the spectrometer for trace gas detection and compare various detection methods: baseband detection with a single photodetector, baseband balanced detection, and synchronous demodulation at the repetition rate of the supercontinuum source. The FTS uses off-the-shelf optical components and provides a minimum spectral resolution of 750 MHz. It achieves a noise equivalent absorption sensitivity of ∼10−6 cm−1 Hz−1/2 per spectral element, by using a 31.2 m multipass absorption cell.

In this work, we investigate single-pulse laser ablation of bulk stainless steel (AISI304), aluminium (Al) and copper (Cu) and its dependence on the pulse duration. We measured the reflectivity, ablation thresholds and volumes under the variation of pulse duration and fluence. The known drop of efficiency with increasing pulse duration is confirmed for single-pulse ablation in all three metals. We attribute the efficiency drop to a weakened photomechanically driven ablation process and a stronger contribution of photothermal phase explosion. The highest energetic efficiency and precision is achieved for pulse durations below the mechanical expansion time of 3-5 ps, where the stress confinement condition is fulfilled.

We demonstrate a 1×64 optical phased array (OPA) based on a silicon on insulator (SOI) platform with integrated silicon nitride. The input port of the OPA is fabricated using a silicon nitride waveguide due to its advantage of allowing more optical power. The phase shifter is a silicon waveguide with heater because of the higher thermo-optic coefficient of silicon. And a double layer silicon nitride assisted grating is used in the emitter to reduce the emission strength and then increase the length of emitter to reduce the spot size. The length of the grating emitter is 1.5 mm and the measured field of view of this optical phased array is 35.5°×22.7° with spot size of 0.69°×0.075°.

We present the results from a Monte Carlo computer simulation of adaptive optics (AO) pre-compensated laser uplink propagation through the Earth's atmospheric turbulence from the ground to orbiting satellites. The simulation includes the so-called point-ahead angle and tests several potential AO mitigation modes such as tip/tilt or full AO from the downlink beam, and a laser guide star at the point ahead angle. The performance of these modes, as measured by metrics relevant for free-space optical communication, are compared with no correction and perfect correction. The aim of the study is to investigate fundamental limitations of free-space optical communications with AO pre-compensation and a point-ahead angle, therefore the results represent an upper bound of AO corrected performance, demonstrating the potential of pre-compensation technology. Performance is assessed with varying launch aperture size, wavelength, launch geometry, ground layer turbulence strength (i.e. day/night), elevation angle and satellite orbit (Low-Earth and Geostationary). By exploring this large parameter…

We design and demonstrate a thermally switchable terahertz metamaterial absorber consisting of an array of orthogonal coupled split-ring metal resonators involving a VO2 phase transition. Numerical results indicate that the active metamaterial always absorbs the TE wave in dual-band regardless of insulating and metallic VO2, while the insulator-to-metal phase transition enables a switchable effect between dual-band and broadband absorption of the TM wave with the resonant frequency tunability of 33%. Especially under the metallic VO2 state, the absorption properties are polarization-dependent and exhibit a switching effect between dual-band and broadband absorption with the increase of the polarization angle. The tunable absorption mechanism can be explained by effective impedance theory and electric energy density distributions. The proposed dual-band to broadband metamaterial switching absorber may have broad applications in sensors, imaging and emitters.

A tunable broadband terahertz (THz) absorber based on vanadium dioxide (VO2) is proposed, which is composed of a structured VO2 metamaterial layer, a dielectric layer, and a metal layer. The simulation results show that the peak absorption intensity of the absorber can be dynamically adjusted from 3.6% to 100% by changing the conductivity of VO2. When the conductivity of VO2 is 2×105 S/m, an excellent broadband absorption phenomenon appears, and the bandwidth of absorption rate greater than 90% is as wide as 4.10 THz from 3.25 THz to 7.35 THz. The impedance matching theory and the electric field distribution are used to explain the physical mechanism of the proposed absorber. In addition, the absorber shows the advantages of polarization-insensitiveness and wide-angle absorption. It is expected that this absorber can have potential applications such as modulators and photoelectric switches.

Using fusion splicing and hydroxide catalysis bonding (HCB) technology, an all-silica inline fiber-optic sensor with high-pressure survivability, high-resolution salinity measurement capability, and corrosion resistance for deep sea explorations is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Two extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometers (EFPIs) and a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) are cascaded in one single-mode fiber (SMF), enabling structural integration of single lead-in fiber and versatility of the sensing probe for temperature, depth, and salinity monitoring. The HCB technology offers a polymer adhesive-free assembly of one open-cavity EFPI for refractive index (RI) (salinity) sensing under normal pressure and temperature (NPT) conditions, showing obvious advantages of strong bonding strength, reliable effectiveness, and no corrosive chemicals requirements. The other EFPI formed by a fused structure is designed for pressure (depth) measurement. The cascading of EFPIs, especially the open-cavity EFPI immersed in water, will result in large light transmission loss and bring challenges to…

The transverse mode instability (TMI) has been one of the main limitations for the power scaling of single mode fiber lasers. In this work, we report a 6 kW single mode monolithic fiber laser enabled by effective mitigation of the TMI. The fiber laser employs a custom-made wavelength-stabilized 981 nm pump source, which remarkably enhanced the TMI threshold compared with the wavelength of 976 nm. With appropriately distributing bidirectional pump power, the monolithic fiber laser is scaled to 6 kW with single mode beam quality (M2<1.3). The stability is verified in a continuous operation for over 2 hours with power fluctuation below 1%.

In this study, an ultra-thin reflective metasurface is proposed for polarization conversion in the terahertz band. Each unit cell of metasurface is composed of graphene ribbons lying diagonally on silicon substrate. A reflective metal is also placed at the bottom of the structure. Our polarization converter works as a linear polarization converter (LPC) and linear to circular polarization converter (LTC-PC) by variation of the chemical potential of graphene, which can actively be changed by chemical doping or electrical bias of the graphene. The working bandwidth of LPC changes by adjusting the chemical potential of the graphene. The LPC structure has more than 99% polarization conversion ratio in the frequency range of 0.83-0.92 THz, even by changing the angle of incident wave up to 45°, the results are still acceptable. The LTC-PC has less than 3dB axial ratio (AR) in the frequency range of 0.6-0.67 THz for left-handed circularly polarized (LHCP) waves and 0.72-0.97 THz for right-handed circularly polarized (RHCP) waves. To verify the simulation results, an equivalent circuit…

An iterative method with bandwidth constraint strategy is proposed to design phase holograms for high-quality speckle-free optical reconstruction. The bandwidth properties of the reconstructed field are analyzed theoretically based on the sampling theory, which helps in properly allocating the sampling resources for efficiently describing the speckles and artifacts in the reconstructed field. Iterative calculation with bandwidth constraint strategy of the reconstructed field and quadratic initial phase can optimize the phase hologram without stagnation problem, which provides effective controls of the reconstructed intensity fluctuations and helps to suppress the speckles and artifacts. Numerical and optical experiments have been performed to validate the proposed method can achieve excellent image fidelity.

A perfect vortex beam has been attracting tremendous attention due to the fact that its ring radius is independent of the topological charge. Taking advantage of the superposition principle of phase in Fourier space, we proposed to generate perfect vortex beam using propagation-phase-based dielectric metasurface, which exhibits production efficiency larger than 83.5%. Due to the sensitivity of propagation phase to the polarization of incident beam, two sets of phase profiles can be imposed on a single dielectric metasurface, enabling the simultaneous generation of dual perfect vortex beams. Based on this property, convenient control to the radius and/or topological charge of perfect vortex beam is achieved by switching the incident polarization between two orthogonal polarizations, without redesigning metasurface or changing optical path. What's more important, the crosstalk of these two channels is low, less than 4%. Thus, the propagation-phase method of producing perfect vortex beam will find significant applications in optical communication, particle trapping, particle…

Three-dimensional (3D) displays have been vastly investigated in the past few decades. Recent development of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) has further demanded to compress the 3D display system into a compact platform, such as wearable near-eye displays. Holographic optical elements (HOEs) have received widespread attention owing to their lightweight, thin formfactor, and low cost, and thus have been widely deployed in various 3D display systems. In this review article, we first describe the working principle of some 3D techniques used in AR and VR headsets, and then present 3D display systems employing HOEs, and finally analyze how HOEs influence the system design and performance.

Recently, based on the selective excitation of the guided mode, researchers realized quasi-bound states in the continuum (quasi-BICs) in all-dielectric compound grating waveguide structures. In this paper, we introduce a graphene layer into an all-dielectric compound grating waveguide layer supporting quasi-BIC to achieve near-infrared perfect absorption of graphene. The underlying physical mechanism of perfect absorption can be clearly explained by the critical coupling theory derived from temporal coupled-mode theory in a single-mode, one-port system. By changing the Fermi level and the layer number of the graphene, the absorption rate of the system can be flexibly tuned. In addition, by changing the geometric parameter of the compound grating waveguide structure, the radiation coupling rate of the quasi-BIC can also be flexibly tuned. Therefore, the critical coupling condition can be maintained in a broad range of the Fermi level and the layer number of the graphene. The full width at half maximum of the near-infrared perfect absorption peak can be flexibly tuned from 5.7 to…

Metasurface-mediated bound states in the continuum (BIC) provides a versatile platform for light manipulation at the subwavelength dimension with diverging radiative quality factor and extreme optical localization. In this work, we theoretically propose the magnetic dipole quasi-BIC resonance in asymmetric silicon nanobar metasurfaces to realize giant Goos-Hänchen (GH) shift enhancement by more than three orders of wavelength. In sharp contrast to GH shift based on the Brewster dip or transmission-type resonance, the maximum GH shift here is located at the reflection peak with unity reflectance, which can be conveniently detected in the experiment. By adjusting the asymmetric parameter of metasurfaces, the Q-factor and GH shift can be modulated accordingly. More interestingly, it is found that GH shift exhibits an inverse quadratic dependence on the asymmetric parameter. Furthermore, we theoretically design an ultrasensitive environmental refractive index sensor based on the quasi-BIC enhanced GH shift, with a maximum sensitivity of 1.5×107 μ m/RIU. Our work not only reveals the…

Jump errors easily occur on the discontinuity of the wrapped phase because of the misalignment between wrapped phase and fringe order in fringe projection profilometry (FPP). In this paper, a phase unwrapping method that avoids jump errors is proposed for FPP. By building two other staggered wrapped phases from the original wrapped phase and dividing each period of fringe order into three parts, the proposed generalized tripartite phase unwrapping (Tri-PU) method can be used to avoid rather than compensatorily correct jump errors. It is suitable for the phase unwrapping method assisted by fringe order with a basic wrapped phase and fringe order, no matter which method is used to recover them. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and generality of the proposed method, which is simple to implement and superior to measure complex objects with sharp edges.

Perfect metasurface absorbers play a significant role in imaging, detecting, and manipulating terahertz radiation. We utilize all-dielectric gratings to demonstrate tunable multi-band absorption in the terahertz region. Simulation reveals quad-band and tri-band absorption from 0.2 to 2.5 THz for different grating depths. Coupled-mode theory can explain the absorption phenomenon. The absorption amplitude can be precisely controlled by changing the pump beam fluence. Furthermore, the resonant frequency is sensitive to the medium's refractive index, suggesting the absorber may be of great potential in the sensor detection field. The experimental results exhibit a high detectivity of pesticides.

Speckle projection profilometry (SPP), which establishes the global correspondences between stereo images by projecting only a single speckle pattern, has the advantage of single-shot 3D reconstruction. Nevertheless, SPP suffers from the low matching accuracy of traditional stereo matching algorithms, which fundamentally limits its 3D measurement accuracy. In this work, we propose a single-shot 3D shape measurement method using an end-to-end stereo matching network for SPP. To build a high-quality SPP dataset for training the network, by combining phase-shifting profilometry (PSP) and temporal phase unwrapping techniques, high-precision absolute phase maps can be obtained to generate accurate and dense disparity maps with high completeness as the ground truth by phase matching. For the architecture of the network, a multi-scale residual subnetwork is first leveraged to synchronously extract compact feature tensors with 1/4 resolution from speckle images for constructing the 4D cost volume. Considering that the cost filtering based on 3D convolution is computationally costly, a…

A hollow-core anti-resonant fiber (HC-ARF) design based on hybrid silica/silicon cladding is proposed for single-polarization, single-mode and high birefringence. We show that by adding silicon layers in a semi-nested HC-ARF, one of the polarization states can be strongly suppressed while simultaneously maintaining low propagation loss for other polarization states, single-mode and high birefiringence. The optimized HC-ARF design exhibits propagation loss, high birefringence, and polarization-extinction ratio of 0.05 dB/m, 0.5 × 10−4, >300 respectively for y-polarization while the loss of x-polarization is >5 dB/m at 1064 nm. The fiber also has low bend-loss and thus can be coiled to a small bend radii of 5 cm having ≈0.06 dB/m bend loss.

A planar and broadband cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) lens is designed, fabricated, and hybridized with a refractive lens to form a catadioptric pancake lens for virtual reality (VR) displays. Due to their opposite optical dispersion behaviors, the chromatic aberration of the assembled pancake lens is dramatically suppressed, as verified by both ray-tracing analysis and experimental results. The demonstrated catadioptric pancake lens has great potential for next-generation VR displays.

In light transmission microscopy, axial scanning does not directly provide tomographic reconstruction of specimen. Phase deconvolution microscopy can convert a raw intensity image stack into a refractive index tomogram, the intrinsic sample contrast which can be exploited for quantitative morphological analysis. However, this technique is limited by reconstruction artifacts due to unoptimized optical conditions, which leads to a sparse and non-uniform optical transfer function. Here, we propose an optimization method based on simulated annealing to systematically obtain optimal illumination schemes that enable artifact-free deconvolution. The proposed method showed precise tomographic reconstruction of unlabeled biological samples.

The demand for high-speed and highly efficient optical communication techniques has been rapidly growing due to the ever-increasing volume of data traffic. As well as the digital coherent communication used for core and metro networks, intensity modulation and direct detection (IM-DD) are still promising schemes in intra/inter data centers thanks to their low latency, high reliability, and good cost performance. In this work, we study a microresonator-based frequency comb as a potential light source for future IM-DD optical systems where applications may include replacing individual stabilized lasers with a continuous laser driven microresonator. Regarding comb line powers and spectral intervals, we compare a modulation instability comb and a soliton microcomb and provide a quantitative analysis with regard to telecom applications. Our experimental demonstration achieved a forward error correction (FEC) free operation of bit-error rate (BER) <10 −9 with a 1.45 Tbps capacity using a total of 145 lines over the entire C-band and revealed the possibility of soliton microcomb-based…

Active metasurfaces with dynamically switchable functionalities are highly in demands in various practical applications. In this paper, we experimentally present an active metasurface based on PIN diodes which can realize nearly perfect reflection, transmission and absorption in a single design. Such switchable functionalities are accomplished by controlling the PIN diodes integrated in both layers of the metasurface. A transmission line model is employed to further investigate the underlying mechanism of the metasurface. This proposal is confirmed by numerical simulations and experiments. As a novel metasurface with multiple switchable functionalities, our design may find some practical applications such as smart radomes.

Negative curvature hollow-core fibers (NC-HCFs) can boost the excellent performance of HCFs in terms of propagation loss, nonlinearity, and latency, while retaining large core and delicate cladding structures, which makes them distinctly different from conventional fibers. Construction of low-loss all-fiber NC-HCF architecture with conventional single-mode fibers (SMFs) is important for various applications. Here we demonstrate an efficient and reliable fusion splicing method to achieve low-loss connection between a NC-HCF and a conventional SMF. By controlling the mode-field profile of the SMF with a two-step reverse-tapering method, we realize a record-low insertion loss of 0.88 dB for a SMF/NC-HCF/SMF chain at 1310 nm. Our method is simple, effective, and reliable, compared with those methods that rely on intermediate bridging elements, such as graded-index fibers, and can greatly facilitate the integration of NC-HCFs and promote more advanced applications with such fibers.

Broadband perfect infrared wave absorption of unpolarized light over a wide range of angles in an ultrathin film is critical for applications such as thermal emitters and imaging. Although many efforts have been made in infrared broadband absorption, it is still challenging to cover the perfect absorption of broadband in the long-wave infrared band. We propose a long-wave infrared broadband, polarization, and incident angle insensitivity metamaterial absorber based on the supercell with four rings of two sizes. Broadband absorption covering the long-wave infrared band is realized by combining four PSPRs and LSPRs absorption peaks excited by the supercell structure. The absorptivity of our absorber exceeds 90% in the wavelength range of 7.76∼14µm, and the average absorptivity reaches 93.8%. The absorber maintains more than 80% absorptivity as the incident angle of unpolarized light reaches 60°, which may have promising applications for thermal emitters, infrared imaging, thermal detection.

As an emerging material, graphene has been widely applied in the field of active metasurface. Recently, researchers employed graphene to achieve dynamical control of electromagnetic wavefront. In this work, graphene-based reflective metasurface is presented to realize dynamical wavefront reconfiguration for terahertz wave. Using a hybrid structure of cross-shaped graphene and metal patch, the designed metasurface has 360° phase modulation capability. Its wavefront is reconfigurable and can realize multiple functions. In order to verify this, three examples are designed to demonstrate the phenomenon of wavefront reconstruction. They are gradient metasurface, vortex beam generator, and focusing mirror, respectively. First of all, Fermi level of graphene is used to reconstruct the reflected wavefront of gradient metasurface, and then realize switching between positive and negative reflections. Secondly, a vortex beam generator is implemented, and it can reconstruct the mode number of orbital angular momentum through Fermi level. Finally, a reflective lens is proposed and verified,…