Photoluminescence Spectroscopy of an Aqueous Solution of Uranyl Cloride upon Laser and LED Excitation

The excitation of an aqueous solution of uranyl chloride by a 410-nm semiconductor LED and 266- and 448-nm lasers is found to induce intense photoluminescence: several bands in the blue-green spectral range (494 to 565 nm). Upon excitation of uranyl chloride aqueous solution by a 468-nm LED, the photoluminescence spectrum is a relatively narrow strong band peaking at 508 nm, which was interpreted as the transition from spontaneous photoluminescence to superluminescence. A lasing scheme (similar to that for dye lasers) has been proposed.     

Chlorotetracycline-induced fluorescence from atherosclerotic plaque with uv laser excitation

We have investigated the fluorescence from post mortem atherosclerotic and normal aortic valve segments and coronary arteries induced by pulsed and cw lasers at various wavelengths in an attempt to examine the long wavelenght shift from calcified plaque stained with chlorotetracycline-hydrogen chloride. Fluorescence measurements were made at 351.9 nm cw UV excitation as well as 351, 308, and 248 nms pulsed excimer excitation. The typical native normal tissue fluoresced at ∼460 nm while plaque fluoresced at ∼475 nm. After staining the normal tissue had a peak maximum which red-shifted slightly while the calcified plaque now had a fluorescence maximum close to 540 nm, a very large red shift in the peak maximum. These results indicate that chlorotetracycline-hydrogen chloride clearly binds preferentially to calcified regions of aortic valves and arteries, and in doing so generates a long wavelength emission with any ultraviolet laser source, pulsed or cw. Thus, the long wavelength peak at 540 nm might be used to pinpoint calcific atherosclerotic lesions in cardiovascular tissue before removing it by laser ablation.     

Interferometric measurement of two-dimensional Xe and electron density distributions in XeCl laser discharges

A near-infrared, interferometric measurement of the density distribution of the electrons and excited xenon atoms has been performed at two discharge pumped, X-ray preionized XeCl lasers. The experimental results of one of these lasers are in good agreement with model calculations for the homogeneous phase. The electrons and excited states of xenon show a different behaviour in their spatial distributions at both lasers. In addition a region of inhomogeneities, which is identified as the hot-spot region, is been found near the cathode. Filamentation of the discharge can occur after a short time. The dimension of the hot-spot region depends on the preionization delay time. The same holds for the filamentation process, which in addition depends on the HCl partial pressure.     

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.     

Performance of optical fibers for transmission of high-peak-power XeCl excimer laser pulses

The simple and efficient fiber delivery of 5-ns pulses from a XeCl excimer laser operating at a wavelength of 308 nm is demonstrated. The coupling scheme uses all of the output energy of the XeCl excimer laser and benefits from a simple and easy-to-adjust fiber coupling. Experiments on the 308-nm fiber delivery for more than 2.5 million laser pulses of 8-ns pulse width (FWHM) and up to 8-mJ stabilized pulse energy are performed. The long-time pulsed UV laser transmission is found to be different for individual samples of optical fibers that perform very similarly in low-intensity UV light applications. For applications with strict demands on the long-time stability, a critical evaluation of the fiber performance with the 308-nm laser under operating conditions is necessary. Measurements between 1 and 200 Hz show a negligible dependence of the fiber delivery performance on the repetition rate of the transmitted laser pulses. PACS 42.55.Lt; 42.81.Cn; 07.69.Vg     

Optical amplifier for femtosecond frequency comb measurements near 633 nm

An optical amplifier operating at the 633-nm wavelength region is designed for absolute frequency measurements of iodine-stabilized He-Ne lasers with an optical femtosecond frequency comb generator. The same setup can also be used in other applications that require relatively high (15 mW) laser powers with good spectral characteristics. Radiation of a master laser is amplified by a microlens-coupled diode laser, which is injection locked to the frequency of the master laser. The amplifier can be reliably operated over several hours with very low phase noise. Optical amplification of more than 39 dB is demonstrated. PACS 06.20.Fn; 06.30.Ft; 42.55.Px; 42.62.Eh     

Calculation of the characteristics of xenon excilamps using a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model

The characteristics of xenon barrier-discharge excilamps have been calculated with the use of a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model in the approximation of a nonlocal electric field. It has been shown that a two-peak mode of operation of the barrier discharge is realized in xenon excilamps. The 172-nm radiation of molecules prevails in the radiation of excilamps; the 147-nm resonance radiation makes no more than 1% of the overall radiation. The radiation intensity of xenon excilamps and their optical efficiency vary inversely on varying the parameters: the radiation intensity of a lamp falls, whereas its optical efficiency increases.     

A long-pulse xenon ion laser as a pumping source for dye lasers

A simple xenon ion laser that is either sealed or has a gas flow mode is described. The laser delivered long pulses ( 15 μs) of almost 1 kW peak power. It has been used to pump a dye laser employing the same configuration as cw dye lasers. The system is inexpensive and can be mode-locked, enabling it to yield ultrashort pulses comparable in duration to those delivered by cw argon laser-pumped dye lasers but with much higher peak powers.     

Growth of the green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under red and blue lasers

Red and blue lasers, holding promise as an electric light source for photosynthetic systems on account of being true monochromatic, high-power, and having high electrical-conversion efficiency, were employed in growing a green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The laser treatments tested included: 655-nm Red; 680-nm Red; 655-nm Red+474-nm Blue and 680-nm Red+474-nm Blue. A white cold cathode lamp with spectral output similar to that of white fluorescent lamp served as control. C. reinhardtii successfully grew and divided under the 655 and 680-nm red lasers as well as under the white-light control. Supplementing either red with blue laser, however, resulted in increased algae cell count that significantly exceeded those under both red lasers and the white-light control on average by 241%.     

VUV spectra of krypton-xenon mixtures in a cooled DC-excited discharge

An experimental study was made of VUV spectra of a gas-discharge krypton plasma with a xenon impurity. The mixture pressure, the xenon impurity concentration, and the current were varied in ranges of 40–1000 hPa, 0.001–1%, and 10–50 mA, respectively. The heteronuclear XeKr dimers were shown to play a crucial role in the quenching of excitation energy of krypton dimers. The mechanism of transformation of the energy of excited krypton dimers in a low-temperature plasma of a binary krypton-xenon mixture is discussed.     

Lasers effects on enamel for caries prevention

The aim of this study was to ascertain whether laser irradiation is able to reduce caries incidence. For this purpose, the effects of laser on enamel and on fluoride uptake were discussed. Current literature regarding the preventive effect of laser irradiation on dental hard tissue has been reviewed. An evaluation of the results of the available in vitro and in vivo studies on the efficacy of anticaries and induced changes on enamel by laser irradiation were also performed. Articles were selected using the Medline, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane databases, and the results of these studies were described. The most common lasers employed for caries prevention on enamel are Nd:YAG; CO₂; Er:YAG; Er,Cr:YSGG; and argon. The percentage of inhibition of dental caries varied from 30 to 97.2%, and the association with fluoride has demonstrated the best results on inhibition of caries development. Laser irradiation under specific conditions can change the crystallographic properties of apatite crystals, increasing the acid resistance of lased enamel. The combined treatment of laser irradiation with fluoride propitiates an expressive fluoride uptake, reducing the progression of carieslike lesions, and this treatment is more effective than laser or fluoride alone. Available data suggest that lasers combined with fluoride is a promising treatment in caries prevention.     

Changes in the etch rate of photosensitive polymers as a function of the pulse number

The ablation rates of a polyimide and a triazene polymer were studied gravimetrically by a quartz micro balance for 248-nm and 308-nm irradiation. Special care was taken to examine the dependence of the ablation rate at constant fluences for single pulses and the influence of consecutive pulses at the same position. A clear trend was observed in these measurements, i.e., that the mass loss after the first pulse is always different from values for the following pulses. This implies that it is very difficult to determine true ablation rates, which are the foundation of most ablation models. The differences of the mass loss between the first pulse and the following pulses is most probably due to carbonization of the material, resulting in varying ablation rates for the following pulses. The ablation rates are thus not a real material property but a superposition of the material ablation rates with the ablation rates of carbon and carbonized material. PACS 52.38.Mf; 71.20.Rv; 07.10.Lw     

Dense plasma diagnostics with an amplitude-division soft-x-ray laser interferometer based on diffraction gratings

We report the demonstration of an amplitude-division soft-x-ray interferometer that can be used to generate high-contrast interferograms at the wavelength of any of the saturated soft-x-ray lasers (5.6-46.9 nm) that are available at present. The interferometer, which utilizes grazing-incidence diffraction gratings as beam splitters in a modified Mach-Zehnder configuration, was used in combination with a tabletop 46.9-nm laser to probe a large-scale (~2.7-mm-long) laser-created plasma.     

Spectral filtering of dual lasers with a high-finesse length-tunable cavity for rubidium atom Rydberg excitation

We propose and demonstrate an alternative method for spectral filtering and frequency stabilization of both 780-nm and 960-nm lasers using a high-finesse length-tunable cavity(HFLTC). Firstly, the length of HFLTC is stabilized to a commercial frequency reference. Then, the two lasers are locked to this HFLTC using the Pound–Drever–Hall(PDH) method which can narrow the linewidths and stabilize the frequencies of both lasers simultaneously. Finally, the transmitted lasers of HFLTC with each power up to about 100 μW, which act as seed lasers, are amplified using the injection locking method for single-atom Rydberg excitation. The linewidths of obtained lasers are narrowed to be less than 1 k Hz, meanwhile the obtained lasers' phase noise around 750 k Hz are suppressed about 30 d B. With the spectrally filtered lasers, we demonstrate a Rabi oscillation between the ground state and Rydberg state of single-atoms in an optical trap tweezer with a decay time of(67 ± 37) μs, which is almost not affected by laser phase noise. We found that the maximum short-term laser frequency fluctuation of a single excitation lasers is at ～ 3.3 k Hz and the maximum long-term laser frequency drift of a single laser is ～ 46 k Hz during one month. Our work develops a stable and repeatable method to provide multiple laser sources of ultra-low phase noise, narrow linewidth, and excellent frequency stability, which is essential for high precision atomic experiments, such as neutral atom quantum computing, quantum simulation, quantum metrology, and so on.     

High performance 1689-nm quantum well diode lasers

1689-nm diode lasers used in medical apparatus have been fabricated and characterized. The lasers had pnpn InP current confinement structure, and the active region consisted of 5 pairs of InGaAs quantum wells and InGaAsP barriers.     

Subnormal glow discharge in a Xe/Cl2 mixture in a narrow discharge tube

Electrical and optical characteristics of a subnormal glow discharge in a short (L=10 cm) discharge tube with an inner diameter of 5 mm are investigated. The dependences of the discharge current-voltage characteristic, the energy deposition in the discharge, the plasma spectral characteristics in the 130-to 350-nm wavelength range, the emission intensities of the XeCl(D-X) 236-nm and XeCl(B-X) 308-nm bands, and the total emission intensity in the range 180–340 nm on the pressure and composition of the Xe/Cl₂ mixture are studied. Two modes of glow discharge are shown to exist: the low-current mode at a discharge current of I _ch ≤2 mA and the high-current mode at I _ch >2 mA. The transition from one mode to another occurs in a stepwise manner. The increase in the chlorine content causes the discharge voltage and the energy deposition in the plasma to increase. At low pressures of the Xe/Cl₂ mixture (P≤0.7 kPa), stationary strata form in the cathode region. The lower the discharge current, the greater the volume occupied by the strata. This longitudinal discharge acts as a powerful source of continuous broadband emission in the range 180–340 nm, which forms due to overlapping the XeCl(D, B-X) and Cl ₂ ^* bands with edges at λ=236, 308, and 258 nm. The intensity of the 236-nm band is at most 20% of the total intensity of UV radiation. The maximum power of UV radiation (3 W at an efficiency of 8%) is attained at a xenon partial pressure of 250–320 Pa and a total pressure of the mixture of 2 kPa.     

Numerical study on strained InGaAsP/InGaP quantum wells for 850-nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

The physical and optical properties of compressively strained InGaAsP/InGaP quantum wells for 850-nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers are numerically studied. The simulation results show that the maximum optical gain, transparency carrier densities, transparency radiative current densities, and differential gain of InGaAsP quantum wells can be efficiently improved by employing a compressive strain of approximately 1.24% in the InGaAsP quantum wells. The simulation results suggest that the 850-nm InGaAsP/InGaP vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers have the best laser performance when the number of quantum wells is one, which is mainly attributed to the non-uniform hole distribution in multiple quantum wells due to high valence band offset. PACS 42.55.Px; 78.20.-e; 78.20.Bh; 78.30.Fs     

Pulsed laser deposition of molybdenum oxide thin films

Thin films of molybdenum oxide were deposited in vacuum by pulsed laser ablation using a xenon fluoride (351 nm) and a krypton fluoride (248 nm) excimer lasers. The films were deposited on unheated substrates and were post-annealed in air in the temperature range 300–500°C. The structural, morphological, chemical, and optical properties of the films were studied. As-deposited films were found to be dark. The transparency of the films was improved with annealing in air. The films were polycrystalline with diffraction peaks that belong to the orthorhombic phase of MoO₃. The surface morphology of the films showed a layered structure. Both the grain size and surface roughness increased with annealing temperature. The stoichiometry of the films improved upon annealing in air, with the best stoichiometry of MoO_2.95 obtained for films deposited by the XeF laser and annealed at 400°C. Similarly, the best transparency, with a transmittance exceeding 80%, was obtained with the films annealed in the temperature range 400–450°C.     

A novel picosecond distributed feedback dye laser arrangement for excimer laser pumping

A distributed feedback dye laser arrangement is described which can generate pulses at the subharmonic wavelengths of the main excimer laser lines (308 nm, 248 nm, 193 nm, etc.). The laser can be pumped with broadband lasers, such as the XeCl^* laserpumped dye laser with competing cavities. The laser is designed to be used as a part of a femtosecond, terawatt excimer laser system.