Optimized multiemitter beams for free-space optical communications through turbulent atmosphere

Using laser beams with less than perfect spatial coherence is an effective way of reducing scintillations in free-space optical communication links. We report a proof-of-principle experiment that quantifies this concept for a particular type of a partially coherent beam. In our scaled model of a free-space optical communication link, the beam is composed of several partially overlapping fundamental Gaussian beams that are mutually incoherent. The turbulent atmosphere is simulated by a random phase screen imprinted with Kolmogorov turbulence. Our experiments show that for both weak-to-intermediate and strong turbulence an optimum separation between the constituent beams exists such that the scintillation index of the optical signal at the detector is minimized. At the minimum, the scintillation reduction factor compared with the case of a single Gaussian beam is substantial, and it is found to grow with the number of constituent beams. For weak-to-intermediate turbulence, our experimental results are in reasonable agreement with calculations based on the Rytov approximation.     

Generation of subpicosecond electrical pulses by optical rectification

We describe the generation of subpicosecond electrical pulses by optical rectification of ultrashort optical pulses. The electrical pulses are generated by the second-order nonlinear response of a LiTaO(3) crystal bonded to a coplanar transmission line. A bipolar temporal waveform with a width of 875 fs was measured after a propagation distance of 175mum . This pulse width was limited by the response time of the photoconductive sampler. We observed both broadening and amplitude reduction in the temporal waveform owing to propagation.     

Measurement of scintillation and link margin for laser beam propagation on 3.5-km urbanised path

An experiment of laser propagation was carried out at the urban terrain range of 3.5 km during the period of March to May of 2006. The received intensity scintillations and atmosphere turbulence strength in complex urban atmosphere circumstance were simultaneously measured concentratively. The results show the statistical characteristics of irradiance scintillation and atmosphere turbulence strength and link fade margin for urban free-space optical links.     

Scintillation behavior of Laguerre Gaussian beams in strong turbulence

In strong atmospheric turbulence, the asymptotic on-axis scintillation behaviors of Laguerre Gaussian (LG) beams are examined. To arrive at the strong-turbulence solution, we utilize the existing filtering approach for weak-turbulence solutions and our recently reported weak-turbulence scintillation index formula for LG beams. In the limiting case, our solution correctly predicts the asymptotic strong-turbulence behavior of Gaussian beam wave scintillation. Investigation of the scintillations versus the propagation distance, source size, wavelength and refractive index structure parameter lead to the conclusion that the LG beams with higher order radial modes can provide less scintillation. The results are applicable to long-haul atmospheric optical communication links.     

Nonlinear optical generation and detection of ultrashort electrical pulses in transmission lines

The nonlinear optical generation and detection of subpicosecond electrical pulses on coplanar transmission lines is demonstrated. The electrical pulses are generated by optical rectification of ultrashort optical pulses and detected by electro-optic sampling. Both processes are the result of a second-order nonlinear optical response that occurs in the same poled polymer medium. A bipolar temporal waveform with a FWHM duration of 180 fs for the positive lobe that was measured after a propagation distance of 125 mum was observed. Pulse broadening was minimized by careful attention to the device structure.     

自由空间宽谱部分相干光通信系统

大气湍流对自由空间光通信系统所造成的影响是不可忽略的，为了减弱湍流对空间光通信系统带来的影响，实验搭建了一套通信距离为900 m的真实大气信道宽谱部分相干光通信系统。系统采用皮秒脉冲泵浦高非线性光纤产生超连续谱并滤波得到部分相干宽谱脉冲，对其调制后完成通信。在测试过程中，实验专门设置了一条参考链路，保证了测试环境的一致性。实验结果表明，在中等湍流条件下，系统光强闪烁指数为0.035 8，相比窄线宽通信系统提升了23%，最低探测灵敏度达到了-23.35 dBm，相比窄线宽通信系统提升了42%。与窄线宽激光通信系统相比，宽谱部分相干光通信系统可以明显降低湍流引起的光功率抖动，并提升自由空间光通信系统通信性能。     

Effect of atmospheric turbulence on propagation of ultraviolet radiation

We investigate the effect of atmospheric optical turbulence on ultraviolet (UV) radiation with a wavelength of 253.7 nm. The normalized irradiance variance (scintillation index) was measured using a UV scintillometer with a path length of 185 m. The dependence of the UV scintillations on the atmospheric turbulence structure parameter and inner scale was determined through simultaneous measurements of these quantities made with a visible laser scintillometer. The dependence of the UV scintillation index and its probability density function on receiver aperture size was also measured. It was found that the scintillation predicted by currently available models which take into account the effects of inner scale, saturation and aperture averaging was in good agreement with the measurements made under various conditions in weak turbulence.     

Optical pulse compression of ultrashort laser pulses in an argon-filled planar waveguide

We investigate the possibility of optical pulse compression of high energy ultrashort laser pulses in an argon-filled planar waveguide, based on two level coupled mode theory and the full 3D nonlinear Schr?dinger equation. We derive general expressions for controlling the spatial beam profile and the extent of the spectral broadening. The analysis and simulations suggest that the proposed method should be appropriate for optical pulse compression of ultrashort laser pulses with energies as high as 600 mJ.     

大气光通信中大气闪烁时间平滑效应研究

利用大气闪烁的时间平滑效应,增加光电探测器曝光时间是克服大气闪烁对大气光通信的瞄准、捕获、跟踪链路影响的有效途径之一.基于科尔莫戈罗夫谱,导出了弱湍流起伏区无限平面波和球面波的大气闪烁时间平滑因子的一般表达式,并且用几何光学近似得到了在大孔径和小孔径接收情况下的时间平滑因子近似表达式.在孔径远大于菲涅耳区尺度时,平面波和球面波的时间平滑因子的近似表达式与精确表达式的误差分别小于6%和3%.分析结果表明,孔径越小,时间平滑效应越显著,并且菲涅耳区尺度对时间平滑效应影响的程度也随着孔径的增加而减弱.     

Effect of spherical aberration on scintillations of Gaussian beams in atmospheric turbulence

The effect of spherical aberration on scintillations of Gaussian beams in weak, moderate and strong turbulence is studied using numerical simulation method. It is found that the effect of the negative spherical aberration on the on-axis scintillation index is quite different from that of the positive spherical aberration. In weak turbulence, the positive spherical aberration results in a decrease of the on-axis scintillation index on propagation, but the negative spherical aberration results in an increase of the on-axis scintillation index when the propagation distance is not large. In particular, in weak turbulence the negative spherical aberration may cause peaks of the on-axis scintillation index, and the peaks disappear in moderate and strong turbulence, which is explained in physics. The strong turbulence leads to less discrepancy among scintillations of Gaussian beams with and without spherical aberration.     

Measurement of ultrashort laser pulses using single-crystal films of 4-aminobenzophenone

Single-crystal thin-film of an organic second-order nonlinear optical material, 4-aminobenzophenone (ABP), is used to measure the pulsewidth of a Ti-Sapphire laser producing 45 fs pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate, by the non-collinear second-harmonic generation (SHG) intensity autocorrelation technique. These films are suitable for measurements over a broad wavelength range, down to 780 nm, due to their wide optical transparency. The single-crystal film with thickness (3 μm) less than the coherence length requires no phase-matching for efficient broadband SHG. Pulse walk-off due to group-velocity mismatch (GVM) and temporal broadening of the pulses due to group-velocity dispersion (GVD) are found to be negligible. These effects have been estimated for pulse width down to few-cycle pulses (10 fs), and the analyses show that these films can be used to characterize such ultrashort optical pulses.     

Aperture-averaging effects for weak to strong scintillations in turbulent atmosphere

Under the approximations of (1) the received irradiance fluctuations of an optical wave caused by small scale turbulent eddies are multiplicatively modulated by the fluctuations caused by large scale turbulent eddies;(2) the scintillations caused by small- and large-scale eddies, respectively, are statistically independent; (3)the Rytov method for optical scintillation collected by the finite-diameter receiving aperture is valid for light wave propagation under weak to saturation fluctuation regime, we develop the applicable apertureaveraging analytic formulas in the week-to-strong-fluctuation for the scintillations of plane and spherical waves, which include the outer- and inner-scale rules of turbulence.     

Experimental evidence of 25-fs laser pulse distortion in singlet beam expanders

We report the measurement of spatiotemporal distortions of an ultrashort pulse in singlet beam expanders. With a simple second-order autocorrelator the temporal broadening of the pulse from 23 to 40 fs, due to propagation time difference (PTD), is determined. The delay due to PTD between different parts of the beam is also measured. This effect was theoretically studied for the first time by Bor [J. Mod. Opt. 35, 1907 (1988)]. These experimental results are in good agreement with the calculations of a dedicated three-dimensional ray-tracing program developed to simulate the spatial and temporal transformation of femtosecond pulses in optical systems.     

Self-compression of ultrashort pulses through ionization-induced spatiotemporal reshaping

We present the first demonstration of a new mechanism for temporal compression of ultrashort light pulses that operates at high (i.e., ionizing) intensities. By propagating pulses inside a hollow waveguide filled with low-pressure argon gas, we demonstrate a self-compression from 30 to 13 fs, without the need for any external dispersion compensation. Theoretical models show that 3D spatiotemporal reshaping of the pulse due to a combination of ionization-induced spectral broadening, plasma-induced refraction, and guiding in the hollow waveguide are necessary to explain the compression mechanism.     

Two-color pump of laser plasmas for harmonic generation

Various laser-produced metal plasmas were used for high-order sum and difference harmonic generation using the mixing of tunable mid-infrared pulses from optical parametric amplifier and 810 nm ultrashort pulses. We show that, regardless of non-optimal spatio-temporal overlap of two sources of radiation in the plasmas, the application of proposed technique allows a significant growth of harmonic yield and broadening of the number of different combinations of interacting waves in the extreme ultraviolet region, which could be useful for observation of the resonance induced enhancement of some frequency components.     

Influence of turbulence strength on temporal correlation of scintillation

Through extensive laboratory experimentation we demonstrate that the temporal frequency content of turbulence-induced scintillation strongly depends on the temperature gradient exerted at the propagation path of a collimated laser beam. We find a power law relating the turbulence strength induced by convection with the vertical temperature gradient and we show that the cutoff frequency of scintillation shows an approximately linear growth with turbulence strength, measured by angle-of-arrival fluctuations. The impact of these findings are discussed in the context of free-space optical communications.     

Spatiotemporal control of ultrashort optical pulses by refractive-diffractive-dispersive structured optical elements

Structured optical elements that control the spatial and temporal characteristics of femtosecond light pulses are analyzed and synthesized. We show that unique spatiotemporal effects can be attained based on the diffraction, refraction, and dispersive effects that appear in the femtosecond regime. We argue that the design requirements for ultrafast optics are beyond the achromatization considerations that are usually applied to incoherent illumination because of the need to consider coherent effects. Despite fundamental limitations in the space-time control of ultrashort pulses, we show the potential of this technique to improve simultaneously the spatial and the temporal resolution of a lens and to generate ultrafast pulse sequences.     

Partially coherent Lorentz Gaussian beam and its scintillations

We study the scintillation aspects of partially coherent Lorentz Gaussian (LG) beams via numerically integrating the average and average squared intensity expressions. Within the examined range of input and propagation medium parameters, the LG beams are generally found to offer less and less scintillations against the pure Gaussian beam, particularly when the Lorentzian feature of the beam is emphasized more. This lower scintillation property is exhibited for collimated coherent beams with different Lorentz widths and at on-axis and off-axis positions of the receiver plane. When focusing is introduced, at shorter propagation distances the ordering of the beams remains as described above, but at longer propagations distances a complete reversing of the beam order is observed. Raising the turbulence levels by increasing the structure constant inevitably causes rises in scintillations, while preserving the advantage of LG beams over the pure Gaussian beam. Partial coherence reduces scintillations as expected, at the same time nearly eliminating the scintillation differences between the beam types.     

Pulse-front tilt created in misaligned dispersionless optical systems and correct interferometric autocorrelation

In this work we present a matrix analysis of the sensitivity of otherwise dispersionless 4f and 2f-2f optical systems to misalignments resulting in spatio-temporal distortions of ultrashort laser pulses. Special attention is given to the possible creation of a pulse-front tilt (PFT). The exact analytical expression for the second-harmonic interferometric autocorrelation signal of an inverted-field autocorrelator is calculated. It confirms the effective broadening of the ultrashort pulses in the presence of an arbitrary PFT.     

Breakdown of the slowly varying envelope approximation in the self-focusing of ultrashort pulses

We show theoretically and experimentally that with ultrashort pulses much longer than a single optical cycle, the effects of self-steepening and space-time focusing are important for describing the nonlinear dynamics of self-focusing. Asymmetric temporal splitting of the pulse envelope is observed in which the relative magnitudes of the peaks are reversed as the input power is increased.