Adaptive optics for airborne platforms—Part 1: modeling

Adaptive optics systems mitigate the atmospheric turbulence-induced distortion of a propagating light wavefront. The use of adaptive optics entails the design of a feedback controller, which requires the development of a model of the plant to be controlled. In adaptive optics, the plant consists of the atmosphere through which light is traveling. Moreover, a distinct feature of the adaptive optics control application is the presence of random signals in the plant. In optics, Zernike orthonormal polynomials are commonly used as a basis set for the expansion of wavefront phase distortions. Due to the atmospheric turbulence-induced random nature of the underlying physical process, the spatial-temporal correlation functions of the Zernike polynomial phase distortion expansion coefficients must be evaluated if a proper stochastic model of the plant is to be developed and adaptive optics is to be employed. In Part 1 of this paper, these correlation functions are developed using a layered atmospheric model and calculations for the first few low-order Zernike modes are performed. Using these correlation functions, an underlying stochastic linear dynamical system, which is adequate for control design, is synthesized. This system models the plant and, in turn, provides the basis for the employment of advanced model-based control and estimation concepts in an adaptive optics system for an airborne platform application.     

The outer-distance of nodes in random trees

The outer-distance of a nodeu in a rooted treeT _n is the height of the subtree determined byu and all nodesv such thatu is on the path joiningv and the root ofT. We show that the expected outer-distance of nodes of treesT _n in certain families is asymptotic toB logn where the constantB depends on .     

Light transmission through a circular metallic grating under broadband radial and azimuthal polarization illumination

We studied the characteristics of a circular metallic grating illuminated by broadband radial and azimuthal polarizations. We demonstrated that this scenario is the cylindrical analogue of a one-dimensional Cartesian grating illuminated by TM and TE polarizations. We measured the transmission spectra of this structure and observed strong polarization selectivity and, specifically, a resonance for radial polarization excitation, indicating a strong coupling to surface plasmons. The structure may be attractive for applications where pure radial polarization is needed, such as tight focusing, material processing, and particle trapping.     

The factorization approximation for the Master Equation

We examine the validity of the application of the Factorization Approximation to derive the Master Equation for a microscopic system coupled to a reservoir. We developed a formal perturbation expansion for the time evolution of the system reduced density matrix. We employed a diagrammatic schemes to produce each term of the perturbation series. The diagrams in the time domain provide a distinct criteria to distinguish the diagrams which survive the Factorization Approximation. The Feynmann-like diagrams in the energy domain, originated from the Resolvent method, are used for execution of diagram summations to estimate their overall contributions. We demonstrated that for a two level atomic system, interacting with a thermal reservoir, the summation over the diagrams which survived the Factorization Approximation, yields the proper time evolution of the system, in agreement with the solution of the Master Equation. The summation of the diagrams which are excluded by applying the Factorization Approximation are characterized by a dimensionless parameter: Γ/ω₀, where ω₀ is the frequency of the transition line, and Γ is the line width. The Factorization Approximation is thus rigorously justified when this expansion parameter is very small.     

Electronic transport in graphene nanostructures on SiO2

We report two experiments on graphene nanostructures. The first was performed on a graphene nanoribbon, where the nature of electronic transport was investigated in detail. Electrons or holes are found to localize in pockets of the potential along the ribbon. Transport is governed by the joint action of localization and Coulomb interaction. The temperature-dependence of the conductance shows activated behavior at temperatures above a few Kelvin. The activation energy retraces the edges of Coulomb blockade diamonds found in nonlinear transport. In the second experiment the metallic tip of a low-temperature scanning force microscope was scanned above a graphene quantum dot. In addition to the familiar Coulomb blockade fringes, localized states are detected forming in the constrictions connecting the dot to source and drain.