Demonstration of coherent addition of multiple gratings for high-energy chirped-pulse-amplified lasers

Petawatt solid-state lasers require meter-sized gratings to reach multiple-kilojoule energy levels without laser-induced damage. As an alternative to large single gratings, we demonstrate that smaller, coherently added (tiled) gratings can be used for subpicosecond-pulse compression. A Fourier-transform-limited, 650-fs chirped-pulse-amplified laser pulse is maintained by replacing a single compression grating with a tiled-grating assembly. Grating tiling provides a means to scale the energy and irradiance of short-pulse lasers.     

Poled polymer thin-film gratings studied with far-field optical diffraction and second-harmonic near-field microscopy

Electrical poling induces polar ordering of molecules in a grating that has been holographically inscribed on a thin film of polymer with azobenzene side chains. The resulting chi2 grating, seen by second-harmonic-generation (SHG) near-field scanning optical microscopy, can have a periodic structure that is significantly different from the topographical image. The far-field linear and SHG diffration patterns correlate well with the grating structures. Poling of the thin-film grating, which presumably has photodriven nonuniform material properties within each period, leads to the more complex structure of the chi2 grating.     

Coherent addition of two dimensional array of fiber lasers

Configurations for efficient free space coherent addition of four separate fiber lasers arranged in two dimensional array are presented. They include compact and robust interferometric combiners that can be inserted either inside or outside the cavity of the combined lasers system. The results reveal that over 85% combining efficiency can be obtained.     

Phase-locked control of tiled-grating assemblies for chirped-pulse-amplified lasers using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Multikilojoule petawatt lasers using chirped-pulse amplification are being constructed worldwide. Several systems have adopted a tiled-grating approach to meet the size requirements for the compression gratings. Grating tiles need to be precisely phased to ensure a transform-limited focal spot when focusing high-energy laser pulses in the target plane. A computer-control test system that uses a Mach-Zehnder interferometer capable of monitoring and correcting drift in the tiled-grating assemblies within the compressor is described. The differential errors due to eight gratings, within a compressor with four grating assemblies, were compensated by adjusting a single grating.     

Polymer gratings based on photopolymerization for low-order distributed feedback polymer lasers

Novel polymer distributed feedback(DFB)gratings are fabricated based on photopolymerization to reduce lasing threshold of polymer lasers.A photopolymer formulation sensitive to 355-nm ultraviolet(UV)light is proposed for the fabrication of polymer gratings and it can be used to form polymer films by spin-coating process.A very low surface-relief depth ranging from 12.5 to about 1.0 nm has been demonstrated with a refractive-index modulation of about 0.012.The experimental results indicate that such polymer gratings have promising potentials for the fabrication of low-order DFB organic semiconductor lasers.     

基于纳米孔径激光器的近场光存储的最新发展

近几年发展起来的近场光学原理和方法为实现超高密度光学数据存储开辟了新的技术途径。基于近扬光学方法的最小信息记录单元尺寸突破了经典光学分辨率的衍射极限 ,理论存储密度高达 1 0 0 0Gb/平方英寸 ,受到了研究人员和工业界的广泛关注。着重介绍了用于近场光学存储的纳米孔径激光器的原理、结构、优点 ,对它的实现方法和发展状况作了详细的阐述 ,并对其在近场光存储领域未来的发展趋势进行了展望     

Bridging the terahertz near-field and far-field observations of liquid crystal based metamaterial absorbers

Metamaterial-based absorbers play a significant role in applications ranging from energy harvesting and thermal emitters to sensors and imaging devices.The middle dielectric layer of conventional metamaterial absorbers has always been solid.Researchers could not detect the near field distribution in this layer or utilize it effectively.Here,we use anisotropic liquid crystal as the dielectric layer to realize electrically fast tunable terahertz metamaterial absorbers.We demonstrate strong,position-dependent terahertz near-field enhancement with sub-wavelength resolution inside the metamaterial absorber.We measure the terahertz far-field absorption as the driving voltage increases.By combining experimental results with liquid crystal simulations,we verify the near-field distribution in the middle layer indirectly and bridge the nearfield and far-field observations.Our work opens new opportunities for creating high-performance,fast,tunable,terahertz metamaterial devices that can be applied in biological imaging and sensing.     

Coherent beam combination far-field measuring method based on amplitude modulation and deep learning

A deep convolutional neural network is employed to simultaneously measure the beam-pointing and phase difference of sub-beams from a single far-field interference fringe for coherent beam combining systems.The amplitudes of sub-beams in the measurement path are modulated in order to prevent measuring mistakes caused by the symmetry of beam-pointing.This method is able to measure beam-pointing and phase difference with an RMS accuracy of about 0.2 μrad and λ/250,respectively,in a two-beam coherent beam combining system.     

远场光钳与近场光钳的发展

以经典光学为基础的光钳技术(又称"光镊")在生物、物理和化学等领域得到了广泛的发展和应用,但是该技术受到高倍显微物镜的尺寸和光学衍射极限等多种因素的制约,从而限制了其进一步发展。而远场光纤光钳和近场光钳技术,从不同方面克服了传统光钳的局限。回顾了传统光钳、远场光纤光钳和近场光钳的发展,着重讨论了各种方法的工作原理、实验方法和技术性能,对这几种光钳技术进行了深入地总结和细致地比较。     

Tunable Bragg gratings for fiber lasers

A tuning method of a fiber Bragg grating by the bending compression-tension is considered. With this method, a relative tuning range of the resonance wavelength of the grating of about 5% has been obtained. The changes in the shape of the spectrum and in the grating reflectivity during the tuning process are studied. The reflectivity of the fiber Bragg grating has been found to considerably increase with increasing degree of compression. It is shown that such an increase is caused by compression-induced changes in the refractive index modulation amplitude in the grating. The fiber Bragg grating developed has been applied for tuning the radiation wavelength of an ytterbium fiber laser. The tuning range of the laser has been found to be 45 nm around the central wavelength 1080 nm.     

Phase interpretation for polarization-dependent near-field images of high-density gratings

It has been described that the near-field images of a high-density grating at the half self-imaging distance could be different for TE and TM polarization states. We propose that the phases of the diffraction orders play an important role in such polarization dependence. The view is verified through the coincidence of the numerical result of finite-difference time-domain method and the reconstructed results from the rigorous coupled-wave analysis. Field distributions of TE and TM polarizations are given numerically for a grating with period d = 2.3λ, which are verified through experiments with the scanning near-field optical microscopy technique. The concept of phase interpretation not only explains the polarization dependence at the half self-imaging distance of gratings with a physical view, but also, it could be widely used to describe the near-field diffraction of a variety of periodic diffractive optical elements whose feature size comparable to the wavelength.     

Highly sensitive dynamic strain measurements by locking lasers to fiber Bragg gratings

A novel, sensitive, simple, and robust strain interrogation technique is analyzed and experimentally tested. By locking a laser wavelength to the midreflection wavelength of a standard fiber Bragg grating and measuring the error signal, we achieve high dynamic strain sensitivity of 45 picostrain/ radicalHz rms at 3 kHz, where the dominant noise in the experiment is the laser frequency noise.     

Fibre gratings and devices for sensors and lasers

Although mainstream grating writing, more often than not using single photon excitation of germanosilicate based defects with CW 244 nm light, remains the key technology for complex devices it is now being complemented by a whole host of processes which can enhance and tailor the properties of both conventional and not‐so‐conventional fibre Bragg gratings. Further, processes for writing of gratings in non‐germanosilicate fibres have also continued to develop and include multi‐photon excitation directly into the band edge of the glass. It is now possible to custom tailor a gratings property based on the application and the nature of production as well as custom tailor the grating writing process to suit the type of fibre and application. Examples and suggestions where these can benefit sensors and lasers are outlined.     

Coherent interactions in two-beam excite-probe absorption measurements: Phase gratings in flowing samples

As a rule, phase gratings yield no power transfer in two-beam excite-probe experiments. We show that an exception to this rule is that of ultrashort-pulse excite-probe experiments involving slow phase effects, such as thermal gratings, occurring in a moving sample medium under high-repetition-rate excitation. A symmetric coherent artifact results, and depending on the direction of the sample motion, its amplitude can be positive, negative, or zero. This artifact occurs only in multiple-pulse experiments, involving accumulated gratings, while, on the other hand, the antisymmetric artifact (described by Palfrey and Heinz) results only from single-pulse effects. We discuss these two complementary effects and present both theory and experiments.This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Chemical Sciences Division     

Bandpass filters based on pi-shifted long-period fiber gratings for actively mode-locked erbium fiber lasers

We have fabricated bandpass filters based on pi-shifted long-period gratings for application in actively mode-locked erbium fiber lasers. Introducing the pi-phase shift in the middle of the grating opens a bandpass within the core-cladding mode resonance peaks. With a 22-nm bandwidth filter inserted in an actively mode-locked erbium fiber sigma laser, solitonlike pulses are generated, with a power-dependent duration of approximately 3-5 ps , at a 3-GHz repetition rate. These all-fiber filters have the advantages of low insertion loss (<0.5 dB) and a wide bandwidth (10-20 nm), and they do not require that a circulator be inserted into the laser cavity.     

波长可调谐取样光纤光栅激光器的输出特性研究

建立了具有两个取样周期略有不同的取样光纤光栅反射镜的Vernier波长调谐机制的光纤分布布拉格反射式激光器的数值仿真模型,对激光器的输出特性进行了分析. 研究了激光器输出特性随着激光器前后光栅反射镜波长以及前后光栅反射镜反射率的变化关系. 提出了对两取样光栅反射率的优化配置方案,可以使输出激光的边模抑制比有所提高;同时对波长调节方式也进行了探讨;进行了实验研究. 关键词： 取样光纤光栅 光纤激光器 波长可调谐激光器     

Macroscopic far-field observation of the sub-wavelength near-field dipole vortex

The energy flow lines of the radiation emitted by a rotating electric dipole moment have a vortex structure near the source. The spatial extend of this vortex is well below an optical wavelength. This near-field vortex has a macroscopic effect which could be observed in the far field.     

Fabrication of high-spatial-frequency gratings through computer-generated near-field holography

We demonstrate an innovative method for fabrication of high-spatial-frequency grating structures. This technique makes use of the near-field diffraction patterns from computer-generated phase holograms for lithographic fabrication of grating structures with periods that are one half that of the phase hologram mask. Linear, rectilinear, and circular gratings were fabricated with this technique. Experimental results from gratings with periods to 0.5 mum and feature sizes to ~0.2 mum are presented.     

Space-variant polarization manipulation for far-field polarimetry by use of subwavelength dielectric gratings

A method for polarimetric measurement that uses a discrete space-variant subwavelength dielectric grating is presented. One retrieves the polarization state by measuring the far-field intensity of a beam emerging from the grating followed by a polarizer. The analysis for a partially polarized, quasi-monochromatic beam is performed by use of the beam coherence polarization matrix along with an extended van Cittert-Zernike theorem. We experimentally demonstrate polarization measurements of both fully and partially polarized light.     

稀疏贝叶斯学习远近场混合源定位方法

针对远、近场混合源定位,提出一种基于稀疏重构理论框架的远、近场混合源分离和定位算法。该算法充分考虑平面波导向矢量和球面波导向矢量的相关特性,利用远、近场声源在阵列上的响应机理的差异,针对远、近场区域分别构造过完备字典,采用多测量矢量模型下的稀疏贝叶斯学习算法重构远近场混合源的空间谱,同时完成远近场混合源的分离和定位。本文算法可以在半波长间距布放的线列阵下对混合源进行定位,适用于高斯和非高斯信号,且无需信源数和噪声功率等先验信息,并具有较高的分辨力和定位精度·计算机仿真结果验证了算法的有效性。