Two-dimensional cell parameters measurement of nematic liquid crystal using optical interferometry and Fourier transform fringe analysis technique

We report a method for the measurement of nematic liquid crystal (NLC) cell parameters i.e., switching voltage, birefringence, retardation, dielectric anisotropy, average tilt angle and change in refractive index with applied DC voltage to LC material. The proposed method is based on optical interferometry and Fourier transform fringe analysis technique, in which we obtain 2-dimensional (2D) phase map of the interferograms as a function of applied voltage. Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) was used for the study of cell parameters and interferograms were recorded at different applied DC voltages to NLC cell using CCD camera. From the phase map, 2D-refractive index distribution of the LC cell with applied voltage was reconstructed. Analytical equations are derived based on optical interferometry and then solved to obtain cell parameters. The present method is fast and can give 2D-cell parameters from only two quick interferograms.     

Rapid and accurate chromatic dispersion measurement of fiber using asymmetric Sagnac interferometer

We propose and experimentally demonstrate an advanced method for chromatic dispersion measurement of fiber. This technique is based on spectral interferometry by using an asymmetric Sagnac loop and broadband optical source. The chromatic dispersion can be directly obtained from the spectral interferogram seen from an optical spectral analyzer. This method is rapid (<1?s), accurate, simple, low cost, and can provide a large dispersion measurement range.     

Frequency-domain modal delay measurement for higher-order mode fiber based on stretched pulse interference

We propose and demonstrate a novel modal delay measurement technique for a higher-order mode fiber (HOF) based on optical frequency-domain reflectometry (OFDR) using an extremely simple, entirely passive, and ultrafast wavelength sweeping mechanism, namely, dispersion-induced optical pulse stretching. We obtained a high temporal resolution of approximately 1.12 ps, which was sufficient for discerning the four excited modes in an HOF with a length of only approximately 5 m. The results from our measurements were very consistent with those obtained by using a traditional time-domain measurement method and a conventional OFDR measurement based on a tunable CW laser. Our proposed technique can be also easily adapted to perform conventional time-domain modal delay measurements for very long HOFs.     

Evaluation of elastic modulus of cantilever beam by TA-ESPI

The paper proposes an evaluation technique for the elastic modulus of a cantilever beam by vibration analysis based on time average electronic speckle pattern interferometry (TA-ESPI) and Euler-Bernoulli equation. General approaches for the measurement of elastic modulus of a thin film are the Nano indentation test, Buldge test, Micro-tensile test, and so on. They each have strength and weakness in the preparation of the test specimen and the analysis of experimental results. ESPI is a type of laser speckle interferometry technique offering non-contact, high-resolution and whole-field measurement. The technique is a common measurement method for vibration mode visualization and surface displacement. Whole-field vibration mode shape (surface displacement distribution) at resonance frequency can be visualized by ESPI. And the maximum surface displacement distribution from ESPI can be used to find the resonance frequency for each vibration mode shape. And the elastic modules of a test material can be easily estimated from the measured resonance frequency and Euler-Bernoulli equation. The TA-ESPI vibration analysis technique can be used to find the elastic modulus of a material requiring simple preparation process and analysis.     

Determination of elastic modulus of a beam by using electronic speckle pattern interferometry

This paper proposes a sonic resonance test for an elastic modulus measurement which is based on the electronic speckle pattern interferometry. Previous measurement technique of elastic constant has the limitation of application for thin film or polymer material because contact to specimen affects the result. It has been developed as a non-contact optical measurement technique which can visualize resonance vibration mode shapes with whole field. The maximum vibration amplitude at each vibration mode shape is a clue to find the resonance frequencies. The dynamic elastic constant of test material can be easily determined from vibration of a beam equation using the measured resonance frequencies. The proposed technique is able to give high accurate elastic modulus of materials through a simple experimental set-up and analysis. The experimental result also compared to the theoretical result.     

Simultaneous single-shot measurement of temperature and pressure along a one-dimensional line by use of laser-induced thermal grating spectroscopy

We report a new technique, based on laser-induced thermal grating spectroscopy (LITGS), for time- and space-resolved simultaneous measurement of temperature and pressure along a one-dimensional line. LITGS signals generated in NO2/N2 mixtures along a 5 mm line produce a time-varying image that is recorded on a streak camera. The temperature is derived with a precision of 0.3% from the streak images using a rapid Fourier method with a spatial resolution of 150 microm along the line. The principle of pressure measurement is demonstrated using a sequence of images, and a simple extension of the method to single-shot pressure measurement is discussed.     

Simple scheme for direct measurement of exponential phase moments of cavity fields by adiabatic passage

We propose simple experimental scheme for direct measurement of the exponential phase moments of single-mode cavity field. The scheme is based on the adiabatic passage technique, and all the relevant quantities can be obtained directly from the measurement of atomic populations. We also point out that scheme can be used to measure Q-function of single-mode cavity fields and verify the phase-number uncertainty relation.     

Measurements of complex third-order optical susceptibility in a collinear pump-probe experiment

We demonstrate simultaneous measurement of the real and the imaginary parts of third-order susceptibilities by use of a collinear pump-probe technique. This technique allows for good results and simple implementation. The signal analysis is based on the particular oscillatory signature versus the pump-probe delay allowed by the collinear configuration. Results are compared with interferometric measurements of a SF59 (Schott) glass sample.     

Electrically tunable long-period fiber gratings with low-birefringence liquid crystal near the turn-around point

In this work, an electrically tunable long-period fiber grating (LPFG) coated with liquid crystal layer (LC) is presented. As a LC layer, a prototype low-birefringence 1550A LC mixture was chosen. As a LPFG host, two types of gratings were studied: the LPFGs based on a standard telecommunication fiber, produced by an electric arc technique with a period of 222 μm, and the LPFGs based on a boron co-doped fiber written by a UV technique with a period of 226.8 μm. The relatively short period of these gratings allowed exploiting unique sensing properties of the attenuation bands associated with modes close to the turn-around point. Experiments carried out showed that for the UV-induced LPFG with a LC layer, on the powered state the attenuation band could be offset from the attenuation band measured in the unpowered state by almost 130 nm. When the arc-induced LPFG was coated with the LC, the depth of the attenuation band could be efficiently controlled by applying an external E-field. Additionally, all experimental results obtained in this work were supported by the theoretical analysis based on a model developed with Optigrating v.4.2 software.     

Antiresonant guiding photonic crystal fibers for distributed temperature gradient measurements

We propose, design, and experimentally demonstrate a novel, simple, distributed refractometric measurement technique based on unique spectral properties of antiresonant-guiding photonic crystal fibers for measuring temperature gradients. We use a simple and accurate analytical model and numerical simulations to guide our experiments. The proposed technique may find applications for monitoring and control of chemical and biological reactions in microfluidic systems.     

Fringe pattern analysis by S-transform

S-transform proposed in 1996 by Stockwell R.G is a simple and popular technique for the time–frequency analysis. It has been introduced in optical three-dimensional shape measurement, recently. In this paper, a study about applications of S-transform in the demodulation of deformed fringe patterns is performed. We focus on discussing not only the S-transform spectrum filtering technique, the S-transform ridge technique and the phase gradient calculation method based on S-transform used in fringe pattern demodulation, but also the phase unwrapping technique. In addition, a generalized S-transform was introduced to analyze fringe patterns, which is helpful to improve the measurement accuracy and flexibility of the method based on S-transform. The reconstruction results based on S-transform were compared with that on wavelet transform and windowed Fourier transform in fringe analysis.     

Measurement of the binding of DNA to liposomes by resonance energy transfer

A rapid and simple semiquantitative method for monitoring the attachment of DNA to liposomes is described. This technique is based on the measurement of resonance energy transfer between a membrane-embedded fluorescent pyrene lipid donor and DNA labeled with adriamycin as an acceptor.     

一种简便的压阻测压方法

 介绍了用直流电压源和锰铜压力计测量压力的一种方法。该方法的测量电路非常简单，便于匹配，与以往传统的脉冲电源供电的测量方法相比，不仅可省去触发系统，而且由于流过压力计的电流很小（约20 mA），所产生的派生磁场对样品和飞片的磁化作用减少了两个数量级以上。同时此法也是一种低成本的压力测量方法。     

一种液晶透镜盒间隙的测试方法

针对当前液晶透镜盒间隙测试存在的难题, 文中提出采用线偏振干涉法测试方法, 采用光强均匀分布的单色光入射, 检偏器的偏光轴方向与起偏器的偏光轴垂直或者平行, 液晶透镜的液晶取向层的摩擦方向与起偏器偏振轴夹角为45°, 此时干涉条纹亮暗差别最明显. 利用液晶透镜中心保持预倾角不变的透过率以及其他位置透过率最大值来计算液晶透镜的盒间隙, 该方法简单、可靠, 因采用光学手段测试, 其精确度相对较高. 关键词： 液晶透镜 盒间隙 线偏振光干涉 透过率     

Proposal for a simple integrated optical ion-exchange waveguide polarizer with a liquid crystal overlay

A simple, compact electro-optic polarizer based on an ion-exchanged glass channel waveguide covered with a nematic liquid crystal (LC) is proposed. A full-vectorial beam propagation method is employed to simulate this device for the first time. For the cases of zero and strong LC surface anchoring, the performance of the proposed polarizer under different applied voltages is analyzed numerically. Analysis indicates that surface anchoring of the liquid crystal is a key issue influencing the performance for the proposed optical polarizer device.     

光学元件群延迟的直接测量

提出了一种测量群延迟的新方法,利用白光干涉仪产生的光谱干涉,通过时间频率联合分析直接得出群延迟,减小了传统相位差分方法产生的误差,并通过测量结果减去系统背景,进一步提高了光学元件色散测量的准确度. 该方法适合于具有复杂色散光学元件群延迟和色散的准确测量,也适合于慢光器件群速度延迟的测量. 关键词： 色散测量 白光干涉 时间频率分析 超快激光     

Layer construction of topological crystalline insulator LaSbTe

Topological crystalline insulator(TCI) is one of the symmetry-protected topological states. Any TCI can be deformed into a simple product state of several decoupled two-dimensional(2 D) topologically nontrivial layers in its lattice respecting its crystalline symmetries called the layer construction(LC) limit. In this work, based on first-principles calculations we have revealed that both tetragonal LaSbTe(t-LaSbTe) and orthorhombic LaSbTe(o-LaSbTe) can be interpreted as stacking of 2 D topological insulators in each lattice space. The structural phase transition from t-LaSbTe to o-LaSbTe due to soft phonon modes demonstrates how the real space change can lead to the modification of topological states. Their symmetry-based indicators and topological invariants have been analyzed based on LC. We propose that LaSbTe is an ideal example demonstrating the LC paradigm, which bridges the crystal structures in real space to the band topology in momentum space.     

Simple system for evaluating retardation of liquid crystal cells using grating type liquid crystal polarization splitters

We propose a unique optical system for measuring the retardation of birefringent films using a pair of liquid crystal (LC) gratings; that is, the examined birefringent films are inserted between two LC gratings. Because the LC grating functions as a polarization beam splitter for circularly polarized light, the proposed system is optically equivalent to the measurement system using a pair of two circular polarizers. First, the polarization splitting performance of the LC grating is discussed. It is found that a sufficiently high voltage (such that the retardation is less than a half wavelength) has to be applied for the almost pure circularly polarized diffracted light. Next, the measurement of the retardation of a homogeneous LC cell as an examined birefringent film was demonstrated using the proposed method. The proposed method is revealed to have the same measurement performance as that of the conventional method using a pair of linear polarizers and has an advantage that there is no need for the optic axis of the test birefringent specimen to be set at a specific angle.     

Chromatic aberration free liquid crystal adaptive optics for flood illuminated retinal camera

A high-resolution, flood-illumination retinal camera using liquid crystal (LC) adaptive optics (AO) is presented. The retinal camera uses light at 780 nm for ocular aberration measurement while light at 655 nm and 593 nm for retinal imaging. In order to avoid chromatic aberrations due to wavelength dependence of LC, we adopt an open-loop technique, in which dynamic correction of aberrations is applied only to the imaging light. A compensation pattern projected on the LC wavefront corrector is adjusted to provide phase wrapping of 2 π for illumination light. We confirmed feasibility of this technique by performing in vivo retinal imaging experiments. Photoreceptors were clearly revealed at both imaging light at 655 nm and 593 nm. Feasibility of the technique was also supported by comparison of the retinal images taken by the present open-loop technique with those taken by the conventional closed-loop one and by analysis of the spatial distribution of the photoreceptors.