The 50 most-cited articles in Optics Letters, 2017

We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of coherent solid-state light detection and ranging (LIDAR) using optical phased arrays in a silicon photonics platform. An integrated transmitting and receiving frequency-modulated continuous-wave circuit was initially developed and tested to confirm on-chip ranging. Simultaneous distance and velocity measurements were performed using triangular frequency modulation. Transmitting and receiving optical phased arrays were added to the system for on-chip beam collimation, and solid-state beam steering and ranging measurements using this system are shown. A cascaded optical phase shifter architecture with multiple groups was used to simplify system control and allow for a compact packaged device. This system was fabricated within a 300 mm wafer CMOS-compatible platform and paves the way for disruptive low-cost and compact LIDAR on-chip technology.

A significant enhancement of photoresponse from the light-controlled conductive switching based on Cu2O/rGO nanocomposites was experimentally demonstrated. Cu2O/rGO nanocomposites were synthesized via a facile wet-reduced method. The crystalline structure, morphologies, and photoluminescence of the Cu2O/rGO nanocomposites were characterized and analyzed. The fabricated conductive switching was measured under the irradiation of a continuous laser. When the laser was turned on and off alternately, the photoconductive switching obviously displayed a state conversion between “on” and “off” reversibly. Furthermore, the typical current–voltage (I–V) and current–time (I–t) curves exhibited a relatively high switching ratio (Ion/Ioff) of 3.25 and a fast response time of 0.45 s. The excellent “on–off” characteristics of the device show promising applications in memory storage and logic circuits.

In this Letter, we propose a broadband, nonvolatile on-chip switch design in the telecommunication C-band with record low loss and crosstalk. The unprecedented device performance builds on: 1) a new optical phase change material (O-PCM) Ge2Sb2Se4Te1 (GSST), which exhibits significantly reduced optical attenuation compared to traditional O-PCMs, and 2) a nonperturbative design that enables low-loss device operation beyond the classical figure-of-merit (FOM) limit. We further demonstrate that the 1-by-2 and 2-by-2 switches can serve as basic building blocks to construct nonblocking and nonvolatile on-chip switching fabric supporting arbitrary numbers of input and output ports.

We investigate, numerically and experimentally, the effect of thermo-optical (TO) chaos on soliton generation dynamics in microresonators. Numerical simulations that include the thermal dynamics show that the generated solitons can either survive or annihilate when the pump laser is scanned from blue to red and then stop at a fixed wavelength; the outcome is stochastic and is strongly related to the number of solitons generated. The random fluctuations of the cavity resonance occurring under TO chaos are also found to trigger delayed spontaneous soliton generation after the laser scan ends, which could enable soliton excitation with slow laser tuning speed. Stochastic soliton annihilation/survival, as well as delayed spontaneous soliton generation, is observed experimentally in a silicon-nitride microresonator.

We report on a laser system based on thin-disk technology and chirped pulse amplification, providing output pulse energies of 200 mJ at a 5 kHz repetition rate. The amplifier contains a ring-type cavity and two thin Yb:YAG disks, each pumped by diode laser systems providing up to 3.5 kW power at a 969 nm wavelength. The average output power of more than 1 kW is delivered in an excellent output beam characterized by M2=1.1. The output pulses are compressed to 1.1 ps at full power with a pair of dielectric gratings.

We demonstrated the generation of 4.2 PW laser pulses at 0.1 Hz from a chirped-pulse amplification Ti:sapphire laser. The cross-polarized wave generation and the optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification stages were installed for the prevention of the gain narrowing and for the compensation of the spectral narrowing in the amplifiers, obtaining the spectral width of amplified laser pulses of 84 nm (FWHM), and enhancing the temporal contrast. The amplified laser pulses of 112 J after the final booster amplifier were compressed to the pulses with 83 J at 19.4 fs with a shot-to-shot energy stability of 1.5% (RMS). This 4.2 PW laser will be a workhorse for exploring high field science.

We propose to achieve multi-band perfect plasmonic absorptions with peak absorptivity >99% via the excitation of standing-wave graphene surface plasmon polaritons using single-layer graphene-based rectangular gratings. For the case with continuous gratings, perfect absorptions are only allowed for even-order modes, while the absorptions are quite low for odd-order modes because the fields are out-of-phase. However, for gratings with bottom-open configuration, four-band perfect absorptions containing both the even- and odd-order modes can be realized, which are found to be highly sensitive to the incident angle. The simulated results agree very well with the theoretical analyses by considering the phase path of the plasmonic waves. This multi-band absorber is a promising candidate for future plasmonic devices.

We propose and demonstrate a novel and compact optical-fiber temperature sensor with a high sensitivity and high figure of merit (FOM) based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The sensor is fabricated by employing a single-mode twin-core fiber (TCF), which is polished as a circular truncated cone and coated with a layer of gold film and a layer of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Owing to the high refractive index sensitivity of SPR sensors and high thermo-optic coefficient of PDMS, the sensor realizes a high temperature sensitivity of -4.13 nm/°C to -2.07 nm/°C in the range from 20°C to 70°C, transcending most other types of optical-fiber temperature sensors. Owing to the fundamental mode beam transmitting in the TCF, the sensor realizes a high FOM of up to 0.034/°C, more than twice that of SPR sensors based on multimode fiber. The proposed temperature sensor is meaningful and will have potential applications in many fields, such as biomedical and biomaterial.

Autofocusing is essential to digital holographic imaging. Previously used autofocusing criteria exhibit challenges when applied to, e.g., connected objects with different optical properties. Furthermore, in some of the earlier autofocusing criteria, the polarity, i.e., whether to search for the peak or the valley as a function of depth, changes for different types of samples, which creates another challenge. Here, we propose a robust and accurate autofocusing criterion that is based on the edge sparsity of the complex optical wavefront, which we termed the "sparsity of the gradient" (SoG). We demonstrated the success of SoG by imaging a wide range of objects, including resolution test targets, stained and unstained Papanicolaou smears, stained tissue sections, and blood smears.

An ideal photonic integrated circuit for nonlinear photonic applications requires high optical nonlinearities and low loss. This work demonstrates a heterogeneous platform by bonding lithium niobate (LN) thin films onto a silicon nitride (Si3N4) waveguide layer on silicon. It not only provides large second- and third-order nonlinear coefficients, but also shows low propagation loss in both the Si3N4 and the LN-Si3N4 waveguides. The tapers enable low-loss-mode transitions between these two waveguides. This platform is essential for various on-chip applications, e.g., modulators, frequency conversions, and quantum communications.

We demonstrate a novel type of distributed optical fiber acoustic sensor, with the ability to detect and retrieve actual temporal waveforms of multiple vibration events that occur simultaneously at different positions along the fiber. The system is realized via a dual-pulse phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry, and the actual waveform is retrieved by heterodyne phase demodulation. Experimental results show that the system has a background noise level as low as 8.91×10−4 rad/√Hz with a demodulation signal-to-noise ratio of 49.17 dB at 1 kHz, and can achieve a dynamic range of ∼60 dB at 1 kHz (0.1 to 104 rad) for phase demodulation, as well as a detection frequency range from 20 Hz to 25 kHz.

We report on a multi-petawatt 3-cascaded all-optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification laser facility. The experimental results demonstrate that the maximum energy after the final amplifier and after the compressor is 168.7 J and 91.1 J, respectively. The pulse width (FWHM) is 18.6 fs in full width at half maximum after optimization of pulse compression. Therefore, 4.9 PW peak power has been achieved for the laser facility. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest peak power reported so far for an all-optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification facility, and a compressed pulse shorter than 20 fs is achieved in a PW-class laser facility for the first time.

We report a silicon nitride chip-based radio-frequency photonic notch filter with an unprecedented performance including an RF gain of 8 dB, a record-low noise figure of 15.6 dB, and a spurious-free dynamic range of 116 dB·Hz2/3, with a stop band rejection of 50 dB. This level of performance is achieved by using on-chip resonators’ unique phase responses, and thorough optimizations of the photonic link. These record results will potentially stimulate future implementations of integrated microwave photonic subsystems for real-world applications.

We propose a new scheme for ultrasensitive laser gyroscopes that utilizes the physics of exceptional points. By exploiting the properties of such non-Hermitian degeneracies, we show that the rotation-induced frequency splitting becomes proportional to the square root of the gyration speed (Ω), thus enhancing the sensitivity to low angular rotations by orders of magnitudes. In addition, at its maximum sensitivity limit, the measurable spectral splitting is independent of the radius of the rings involved. This Letter paves the way toward a new class of ultrasensitive miniature ring laser gyroscopes on chip.

Integrated optical power splitters are one of the fundamental building blocks in photonic integrated circuits. Conventional multimode interferometer-based power splitters are widely used as they have reasonable footprints and are easy to fabricate. However, it is challenging to realize arbitrary split ratios, especially for multi-outputs. In this Letter, an ultra-compact power splitter with a QR code-like nanostructure is designed by a nonlinear fast search method. The highly functional structure is composed of a number of freely designed square pixels with the size of 120×120 nm which could be either dielectric or air. The light waves are scattered by a number of etched squares with optimized locations, and the scattered waves superimpose at the outputs with the desired power ratio. We demonstrate 1×2 splitters with 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3 split ratios, and a 1×3 splitter with the ratio of 1:2:1. The footprint for all the devices is only 3.6×3.6 μm. Well-controlled split ratios are measured for all the cases. The measured transmission efficiencies of all the splitters are close to 80%…

We demonstrate the first electrically pumped continuous-wave (CW) III–V semiconductor lasers epitaxially grown on on-axis (001) silicon substrates without offcut or germanium layers, using InAs/GaAs quantum dots as the active region and an intermediate GaP buffer between the silicon and device layers. Broad-area lasers with uncoated facets achieve room-temperature lasing with threshold current densities around 860 A/cm2 and 110 mW of single-facet output power for the same device. Ridge lasers designed for low threshold operations show maximum lasing temperatures up to 90°C and thresholds down to 30 mA.

We design and demonstrate a compact, narrow-linewidth integrated laser based on low-loss silicon nitride waveguides coupled to a III-V gain chip. By using a highly confined optical mode, we simultaneously achieve compact bends and ultra-low loss. We leverage the narrowband backreflection of a high-Q microring resonator to act as a cavity output mirror, a single-mode filter, and a propagation delay all in one. This configuration allows the ring to provide feedback and obtain a laser linewidth of 13 kHz with 1.7 mW output power around 1550 nm. This demonstration realizes a compact sub-millimeter silicon nitride laser cavity with a narrow linewidth.

We propose and numerically investigate a novel ultra-broadband solar absorber by applying iron in a 2D simple metamaterial structure. The proposed structure can achieve the perfect absorption above 95% covering the wavelength range from 400 to 1500 nm. The average absorption reaches 97.8% over this wavelength range. The broadband perfect absorption is caused by the excitation of localized surface plasmon resonance and propagating surface plasmon resonance. We first propose and demonstrate that the iron is obviously beneficial to achieve impedance matching between the metamaterial structure and the free space over an ultra-broad frequency band in the visible and near-infrared region, which play an extremely important role to generate an ultra-broadband perfect absorption. In order to further broaden the absorption band, we also demonstrate the perfect absorption exceeding 92% for the 400-2000 nm range by adding the number of metal-dielectric pairs and using both gold and iron simultaneously in the proposed structure. The average absorption of the improved absorber reaches 96.4% over…

In this Letter, we use laser beam intensity fluctuation measurements to model and describe the statistical properties of weak temperature-induced turbulence in underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) channels. UWOC channels with temperature gradients are modeled by the generalized gamma distribution (GGD) with an excellent goodness of fit to the measured data under all channel conditions. Meanwhile, thermally uniform channels are perfectly described by the simple gamma distribution which is a special case of GGD. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first model that comprehensively describes both thermally uniform and gradient-based UWOC channels.

Solid-state high-harmonic sources offer the possibility of compact, high-repetition-rate attosecond light emitters. However, the time structure of high harmonics must be characterized at the sub-cycle level. We use strong two-cycle laser pulses to directly control the time-dependent nonlinear current in single-crystal MgO, leading to the generation of extreme ultraviolet harmonics. We find that harmonics are delayed with respect to each other, yielding an atto-chirp, the value of which depends on the laser field strength. Our results provide the foundation for attosecond pulse metrology based on solid-state harmonics and a new approach to studying sub-cycle dynamics in solids.

A distributed optical fiber dynamic strain sensor with high spatial and frequency resolution is demonstrated. The sensor, which uses the ϕ-OTDR interrogation technique, exhibited a higher sensitivity thanks to an improved optical arrangement and a new signal processing procedure. The proposed sensing system is capable of fully quantifying multiple dynamic perturbations along a 5 km long sensing fiber with a frequency and spatial resolution of 5 Hz and 50 cm, respectively. The strain resolution of the sensor was measured to be 40 nε.

We present a time-multiplexing structured illumination control technique for optical diffraction tomography (ODT). Instead of tilting the angle of illumination, time-multiplexed sinusoidal illumination is exploited using a digital micromirror device (DMD). The present method effectively eliminates unwanted diffracted beams from binary DMD patterns, which deteriorates the image quality of the ODT in the previous binary Lee hologram method. We experimentally show the feasibility and advantage of the present method by reconstructing three-dimensional refractive index distributions of various samples and comparing with a conventional Lee hologram method.

Polarization control of light waves is an important technique in optical communication and signal processing. On-chip polarization rotation from the fundamental transverse-electric (TE00) mode to the fundamental transverse-magnetic (TM00) mode is usually difficult because of their large effective refractive index difference. Here, we demonstrate an on-chip wideband polarization rotator designed with a genetic algorithm to convert the TE00 mode into the TM00 mode within a footprint of 0.96 μm ×4.2 μm. In simulation, the optimized structure achieves polarization rotation with a minimum conversion loss of 0.7 dB and the 1-dB bandwidth of 157 nm. Experimentally, our fabricated devices have demonstrated the expected polarization rotation with a conversion loss of ∼2.5 dB in the measured wavelength range of 1440–1580 nm, where the smallest value reaches ∼2 dB. The devices can serve as a generic approach and standard module for controlling light polarization in integrated photonic circuitry.

We propose a scheme for bifurcation control in micro-cavities based on the interplay between the ultrafast Kerr effect and a slow nonlinearity, such as thermo-optical, free-carriers-induced, or opto-mechanical one. We demonstrate that Hopf bifurcations can be efficiently controlled with a low energy signal via four-wave mixing. Our results show that new strategies are possible for designing efficient micro-cavity-based oscillators and sensors. Moreover, they provide new understanding of the effect of coherent wave mixing in the thermal stability regions of optical micro-cavities, fundamental for micro-resonator-based applications in communications, sensing, and metrology, including optical micro-combs.

We demonstrate millimeter-scale optical waveguide grating antennas with unidirectional emission for integrated optical phased arrays. Unidirectional emission eliminates the fundamental problem of blind spots in the element factor of a phased array caused by reflections of antenna radiation within the substrate. Over 90% directionality is demonstrated using a design consisting of two silicon nitride layers. Furthermore, the perturbation strength along the antenna is apodized to achieve uniform emission for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, on a millimeter scale. This allows for a high effective aperture and receiving efficiency. The emission profile of the measured 3 mm long antenna has a standard deviation of 8.65% of the mean. These antennas are state of the art and will allow for integrated optical phased arrays with blind-spot-free high transmission output power and high receiving efficiency for LIDAR and free-space communication systems.

We present a novel compact dual-comb source based on a monolithic optical crystalline MgF2 multi-resonator stack. The coherent soliton combs generated in the two microresonators of the stack with the repetition rate of 12.1 GHz and difference of 1.62 MHz provided after heterodyning a 300 MHz wide radio frequency comb. An analogous system can be used for dual-comb spectroscopy, coherent LIDAR applications, and massively parallel optical communications.

Supercontinuum generation in a solid-state medium was investigated experimentally. A continuum covering 460 to 950 nm was obtained when 0.8 mJ/30 fs Ti:sapphire laser pulses were applied to seven thin fused silica plates at a 1 kHz repetition rate. The primary processes responsible for spectral broadening were self-phase modulation (SPM) and self-steepening, while SPM and self-focusing were balanced to optimize the spectral broadening and suppress the multiphoton process. The output was compressed to a 5.4 fs and a 0.68 mJ pulse, corresponding to two optical cycles and 0.13 TW of peak power.

We demonstrate the generation of 0.85 PW, 30 fs laser pulses at a repetition rate of 3.3 Hz with a record average power of 85 W from a Ti:sapphire laser. The system is pumped by high-energy Nd:glass slab amplifiers frequency doubled in LiB3O5 (LBO). Ultrahigh-contrast λ=400 nm femtosecond pulses were generated in KH2PO4 (KDP) with >40% efficiency. An intensity of 6.5×1021 W/cm2 was obtained by frequency doubling 80% of the available Ti:sapphire energy and focusing the doubled light with an f/2 parabola. This laser will enable highly relativistic plasma experiments to be conducted at high repetition rate.

A high spatial resolution phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometer (ϕ-OTDR) with an optical frequency-swept pulse (FSP) is proposed, and the experimental results are presented in the Letter. The FSP ϕ-OTDR uses optical pulses with linear frequency modulation with higher pulse energy for longer sensing fiber and uses matched filter in the receiver to compress the processed pulse width. Thus, the contradiction between spatial resolution and the working distance in ordinary ϕ-OTDR is relaxed. A spatial resolution of 30 cm, a sensing distance of 19.8 km, and a signal-to-noise ratio of 10 dB for vibration sensing were obtained experimentally. To our best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a sub-meter spatial resolution over such a long sensing range has been reported in ϕ-OTDR sensors.

Light beams can be characterized by their complex spatial profiles in both intensity and phase. Analogous to time signals, which can be decomposed into multiple orthogonal frequency functions, a light beam can also be decomposed into a set of spatial modes that are taken from an orthogonal basis. Such decomposition can potentially provide a tool for spatial spectrum analysis, which may enable stable, accurate, and robust extraction of physical object information that may not be readily achievable using traditional approaches. As a proof-of-concept example, we measure an object's opening angle using orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) -based complex spectrum, achieving a >15 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Moreover, the dip (i.e., notch) positions of the OAM intensity spectrum are dependent on an object's opening angle but independent of the opening's angular orientation, whereas the slope of the OAM phase spectrum is dependent on the opening's orientation but independent of the opening angle.

Leveraging subwavelength resonant nanostructures, plasmonic metasurfaces have recently attracted much attention as a breakthrough concept for engineering optical waves both spatially and spectrally. However, inherent ohmic losses concomitant with low coupling efficiencies pose fundamental impediments over their practical applications. Not only can all-dielectric metasurfaces tackle such substantial drawbacks, but also their CMOS-compatible configurations support both Mie resonances that are invariant to the incident angle. Here, we report on a transmittive metasurface comprising arrayed silicon nanodisks embedded in a homogeneous dielectric medium to manipulate phase and amplitude of incident light locally and almost independently. By taking advantage of the interplay between the electric/magnetic resonances and employing general concepts of spatial Fourier transformation, a highly efficient metadevice is proposed to perform mathematical operations including solution of ordinary differential and integro-differential equations with constant coefficients. Our findings further…

We present a wide-field fluorescence microscopy add-on that provides a fast, light-efficient extended depth-of-field (EDOF) using a deformable mirror with an update rate of 20 kHz. Out-of-focus contributions in the raw EDOF images are suppressed with a deconvolution algorithm derived directly from the microscope 3D optical transfer function. Demonstrations of the benefits of EDOF microscopy are shown with GCaMP-labeled mouse brain tissue.

We investigated an all-fiber mode converter based on long-period fiber gratings (LPFGs) written in the few-mode fiber. Mode conversion between the fundamental core mode and different higher-order core modes (LP11, LP21, and LP02 modes) can be realized via a single LPFG with an efficiency of 99% at the resonance wavelength. Moreover, optimized mode conversion between the LP01 and LP21 modes can be realized by cascading two LPFGs with different grating pitches. The maximum conversion efficiency is estimated to be ∼99.5% at 1553 nm. The orbital angular momentum states with different topological charges (±1,±2) are demonstrated experimentally. The all-fiber LPFG mode converters could have promising applications in the mode-division multiplexing optical communications.

We demonstrate that an integrated silicon microring resonator is capable of efficiently producing photon pairs that are completely unentangled; such pairs are a key component of heralded single-photon sources. A dual-channel interferometric coupling scheme can be used to independently tune the quality factors associated with the pump and signal and idler modes, yielding a biphoton wavefunction with a Schmidt number arbitrarily close to unity. This will permit the generation of heralded single-photon states with unit purity.

We demonstrate an all-fiber ultrafast ytterbium laser oscillator mode-locked by means of a nonlinear polarization evolution (NPE) method realized in polarization-maintaining (PM) fibers. A sequence of the PM fiber pieces is shown to perform NPE action while maintaining a required temporal overlap of the ordinary and extraordinary pulses propagating through it. We present details of simple numerical simulations showing the advantage of the proposed scheme of segmented PM fibers. The laser utilizing the above mentioned design which generates ultrashort pulses at a 20.54 MHz repetition rate with the dechirped pulse duration around 150 fs and a pulse energy of 0.85 nJ is also presented.

We report, to the best of our knowledge, the first monolithic erbium-doped fluorozirconate fiber laser bounded by two fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) operating at 3.55 μm. Its output power and total optical efficiency are 5.6 W and 26.4% respectively, the highest ever achieved at this wavelength from a fiber laser. The monolithic design of the cavity also increases its stability and prevents fiber tip damage which has limited prior demonstrations to a maximum output power of 1.5 W. This Letter also studies the performances of the laser cavity for various output FBG reflectivities and presents numerical modeling results exhibiting remarkable agreement with experimental results.

Grating couplers enable position-friendly interfacing of silicon chips by optical fibers. The conventional coupler designs call upon comparatively complex architectures to afford efficient light coupling to sub-micron silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides. Conversely, the blazing effect in double-etched gratings provides high coupling efficiency with reduced fabrication intricacy. In this Letter, we demonstrate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the realization of an ultra-directional L-shaped grating coupler, seamlessly fabricated by using 193 nm deep-ultraviolet (deep-UV) lithography. We also include a subwavelength index engineered waveguide-to-grating transition that provides an eight-fold reduction of the grating reflectivity, down to 1% (-20 dB). A measured coupling efficiency of -2.7 dB (54%) is achieved, with a bandwidth of 62 nm. These results open promising prospects for the implementation of efficient, robust, and cost-effective coupling interfaces for sub-micrometric SOI waveguides, as desired for large-volume applications in silicon photonics.

We utilize silicon-nitride waveguides to self-reference a telecom-wavelength fiber frequency comb through supercontinuum generation, using 11.3 mW of optical power incident on the chip. This is approximately 10 times lower than conventional approaches using nonlinear fibers and is enabled by low-loss (<2 dB) input coupling and the high nonlinearity of silicon nitride, which can provide two octaves of spectral broadening with incident energies of only 110 pJ. Following supercontinuum generation, self-referencing is accomplished by mixing 780-nm dispersive-wave light with the frequency-doubled output of the fiber laser. In addition, at higher optical powers, we demonstrate f-to-3f self-referencing directly from the waveguide output by the interference of simultaneous supercontinuum and third harmonic generation, without the use of an external doubling crystal or interferometer. These hybrid comb systems combine the performance of fiber-laser frequency combs with the high nonlinearity and compactness of photonic waveguides, and should lead to low-cost, fully stabilized frequency combs…

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a sharply bent multimode silicon waveguide by introducing a pair of mode converters. The principle of the multimode bend is based on the eigenmode conversion between straight and bent waveguides, and the particle swarm optimization is adopted to engineer the geometry. The device is fabricated on the standard silicon-on-insulator platform using one lithography/etching, and no additional steps are required. The measured results show that the insertion loss is <0.2 dB, and the inter-mode crosstalk is <-22 dB with a bend radius of 5 μm, from 1500 to 1600 nm. A comparable performance can be achieved using a conventional scheme with 40 μm radius.

We present a simple and fast phase aberration compensation method in digital holographic microscopy (DHM) for quantitative phase imaging of living cells. By analyzing the frequency spectrum of an off-axis hologram, phase aberrations can be compensated for automatically without fitting or pre-knowledge of the setup and/or the object. Simple and effective computation makes the method suitable for quantitative online monitoring with highly variable DHM systems. Results from automated quantitative phase imaging of living NIH-3T3 mouse fibroblasts demonstrate the effectiveness and the feasibility of the method.

We demonstrated the importance of the refractive index of the background medium containing the microsphere in microsphere-assisted super-resolution microscopy. We performed numerical simulation and showed that the photonic nanojet properties of a microlens can be optimized by adjusting the index of the background medium surrounding it. Our simulation results, in qualitative agreement with experimental observations, demonstrated that for the same refractive index contrast between the microsphere and its surrounding medium, a high-index microsphere embedded in a medium provides sharper focusing and better imaging quality compared with its low-index counterpart working in air. Our results are of interest for various applications that require optimization of nanojet properties of microspheres, and will inform on the design of novel microparticle-embedded devices for high-resolution imaging.

The Letter reports the inscription of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) in a single-crystal sapphire optical fiber via a point-by-point method by 780 nm infrared-femtosecond laser pulses. Compared to phase mask exposure, the use of the point-by-point method for the inscription provides a flexible way to fabricate sapphire FBGs and to make wavelength division multiplexing in sapphire fiber more practicable. The multiplexing of three cascade gratings is demonstrated, and their performance up to 1400°C is tested. The permanent enhancement of reflectivity by a factor of about 5 after heat treatment and the nearly linear temperature response with a slope of 25.8 pm/°C are demonstrated.

We report on a master and slave configuration consisting of two optically pumped spin-vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers for chaos synchronization and secure communication. Under appropriate conditions, high-quality chaos synchronization is achieved. We propose two encryption schemes, where either the pump magnitude or polarization is modulated. The results show that these allow for Gb/s transmission of secure data, but exhibit different features: one indicates that the message can be recovered by the total intensity, but not the polarization components, whereas the other shows that the message can be better or exclusively retrieved from the polarization components at high bit rates.

A blue diode laser has a higher absorption rate than a traditional laser, while the maximum power is limited. We report the structure and laser beam profile of a 250 W high-power blue laser (445 nm) for material processing. The absorption rate of the blue laser system for the steel was 2.75 times that of a single-mode fiber laser system (1070 nm). The characteristics of the steel after laser irradiation were determined, validating the potential of this high-power blue laser for material processing, such as heat treatment and cladding. The cost of the developed laser system was lower than that of the existing one. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first blue laser with a power as high as 250 W.

We report experimentally and theoretically on the controllable inhibition of spiking regimes in a 1300 nm wavelength vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser. Reproducible suppression of spiking dynamics is demonstrated at fast operation speeds (up to sub-ns rates) and with total control on the temporal duration of the spiking inhibition windows. This Letter opens new paths toward a photonic inhibitory neuronal model system for use in future neuromorphic photonic information processing modules and which are able to operate at speeds up to 8 orders of magnitude faster than biological neurons.

In this Letter, we demonstrate an all-fiber holmium-doped laser operating in the stretched-pulse regime. As a result of dispersion management, the laser is capable of generating 190 fs pulses with a bandwidth of 53.6 nm. The pulses centered at 2060 nm reach 2.55 nJ of energy. Mode-locking is achieved with a multilayer graphene saturable absorber (SA). The Letter also presents the measurement of group velocity dispersion of active (Nufern SM-HDF-10/130), passive (SMF28), and dispersion-compensating (Nufern UHNA4) fibers in a 1.8-2.1 μm range. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on an all-fiber, stretched-pulse laser operating beyond 2 μm with nanomaterial-based SA.

Polymer micro-ring resonators fabricated by a direct laser writing technique are presented as sensors for ultrasound detection. The optical micro-ring resonator consists of a micro-ring waveguide that acts as a wavelength selective feedback mirror to an erbium-doped fiber-ring laser (FRL). The micro-ring resonator reflection spectrum determines the lasing frequencies of the FRL. Acoustic waves, which cause strain or deformation of the micro-ring resonator, lead to shifts of the resonance wavelength and thereby shifts in the FRL lasing spectrum. The spectral shifts are demodulated using an unbalanced Michelson interferometer. The experiments demonstrate that polymer micro-ring resonators integrated with a FRL can be used as adaptive high-frequency ultrasound detectors.

We describe a fast continuous optimization wavefront shaping system able to focus light through dynamic scattering media. A micro-electro-mechanical system-based spatial light modulator, a fast photodetector, and field programmable gate array electronics are combined to implement a continuous optimization of a wavefront with a single-mode optimization rate of 4.1 kHz. The system performances are demonstrated by focusing light through colloidal solutions of TiO2 particles in glycerol with tunable temporal stability.

Orbital angular momentum beam excitation through direct phase-matched coupling is experimentally demonstrated using an all-fiber weakly fused mode selective coupler consisting of a single-mode fiber and a ring-core fiber. Experimental results showing the excited OAM mode purity of up to 75% measured through the standard ring technique not only demonstrate the proof of concept but also provide a baseline for further improvement.

In this Letter, high-quality WS2 film and MoS2 film were vertically stacked on the tip of a single-mode fiber in turns to form heterostructure (WS2-MoS2-WS2)-based saturable absorbers with all-fiber integrated features. Their nonlinear saturable absorption properties were remarkable, such as a large modulation depth (∼16.99%) and a small saturable intensity (6.23 MW·cm−2). Stable pulses at 1.55 μm with duration as short as 296 fs and average power as high as 25 mW were obtained in an erbium-doped fiber laser system. The results demonstrate that the proposed heterostructures own remarkable nonlinear optical properties and offer a platform for adjusting nonlinear optical properties by stacking different transition-metal dichalcogenides or modifying the thickness of each layer, paving the way for engineering functional ultrafast photonics devices with desirable properties.