Synthesis,surface chemistry and electrocatalytic properties of oxygen-modified tungsten carbide in relation to the electrochemical hydrogen oxidation

The surface chemistry of tungsten carbide was studied using an indicator spectrophotometric method and X-ray photoelectron emission spectroscopy. The presence of WO₂, WO₃ and adsorbed polytungstate ions was identified on the surface of WC specimens. The electrocatalytic activity of oxygen-modified tungsten carbide was attributed to the WO₂ at their interface with WC. This conclusion is supported by the presence of some density of states of the 5d, 6s electrons at the Fermi level on the W⁴⁺ and by the relationship between exchange current density and concentration of the lattice O^2?. Insertion of oxygen atoms in the WC crystal lattice leads to a widening of the anodic range of potentials in which the WC maintains its electrochemical activity in hydrogen oxidation reaction.     

Generation of femtosecond pulses from order-of-magnitude pulse compression in a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator based on periodically poled lithium niobate

We demonstrate the generation of compressed, transform-limited 250-fs pulses, tunable in the near infrared, by means of synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillation in periodically poled lithium niobate. The almost 20-fold compression from the 4-ps pulse duration of the cw mode-locked Nd:YLF pump results in signal peak powers well in excess of the pump power.     

Femtosecond cubic optical nonlinearity of thin nickel films

Transient pump-probe measurements of circular anisotropy in nickel films induced by 38-fs optical pulses show an instantaneous response that is related to the optical orientation of the spins of free electrons. Measurements in a sample of variable thickness, performed in both transmission and reflection, revealed that the surface significantly influences the degenerate cubic optical nonlinearity of the nickel films to a depth of approximately 4-5 nm into the bulk.     

Biexcitonic effects in the time integrated four-wave mixing with picosecond pulses

We propose a simple method to estimate the biexcitonic contribution to the excitonic non-linearity. The method is based on the time integrated four-wave mixing (TI FWM) with picosecond pulses. The TI FWM signal, which is measured as a function of the delay between pump and test pulses, shows shift towards positive and negative time delay when the laser is tuned at the exciton and biexciton resonance, respectively. We show theoretically that the magnitude of the shift allows us to estimate the biexcitonic contribution to the third-order non-linearity at the fundamental band edge.     

Efficient two-photon light amplification by a coherent biexciton wave

A reversible coupling between photon pair states and a long-lived, highly coherent biexciton wave in CuCl allows efficient phase-sensitive two-photon amplification or attenuation of ultrashort light pulses. We demonstrate a gain of 350 cm(-1) for a pump intensity of 1 MW/cm(2), nearly 2 orders of magnitude higher than that achievable with conventional parametric crystal amplifiers. We develop a theoretical model that describes this new type of parametric converter where the light pump is replaced by a coherent biexciton wave and show that it is well suited for the generation of entangled photons and the squeezing of an optical beam with ultrafast time gating.     

Nonresonant optical hyperpolarizabilities of anisotropic molecules. Influence on the parameters of a liquid chrystal phase

For anharmonic oscillator models, the dependences of the nematic transition temperature and of the cholesteric structure pitch in liquid crystals upon the magnitude of the third-order polarizability are established. The possibilities of nonlinear spectroscopy for determination of anisotropic molecule mesogenity are discussed.     

Multipole interference in the second-harmonic optical radiation from gold nanoparticles

We provide experimental evidence of higher multipole (magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole) radiation in second-harmonic (SH) generation from arrays of metal nanoparticles. Fundamental differences in the radiative properties of electric dipoles and higher multipoles yield opposite interference effects observed in the SH intensities measured in the reflected and transmitted directions. These interference effects clearly depend on the polarization of the fundamental field, directly indicating the importance of multipole effects in the nonlinear response. We estimate that higher multipoles contribute up to 20% of the total emitted SH field amplitude for certain polarization configurations.     

Computer simulation of edge-terminated carbon nanoribbons

In this paper, we present the results of ab initio simulation of edge-terminated carbon nanoribbons (CNRs). The calculations were performed using the electron density functional theory with the expansion of electron wave functions in plane waves in the Quantum Espresso software package [1]. The effect of various edge termination types on the band structure of graphene nanoribbons is studied. The data obtained showed that hydrogen and fluorine termination has a very weak effect on the structure. Sulfur or bromine termination causes a semiconductor-to-metal transition. The cause of the change in the conductivity type is the appearance of the electron dispersion curve crossing the nanoribbon band gap. At the same time, the dispersion dependences of the ribbon edge-terminated with alternating chlorine and hydrogen atoms do not exhibit such a change, and the curve mentioned above is not observed. The causes of the observed effects are analyzed.