Local hyperfine field vector of positive muon in mono-domain single crystal of antiferromagnetic La2CuO4

By using a monodomain single crystal La₂CuO₄ grown by the travelling solvent floating zone method, the strength and direction of the local hyperfine field vector at positive muon sites were determined. Combining with the ⁺ location determined separately, we found the importance of the local hyperfine field contributions with dipolar symmetry as well as the distant dipolar field from surrounding point dipoles of Cu atomic moments.     

Dual-wavelength all-fiber Q-switched fiber laser using bismuth-doped fiber as saturable absorber

A passively Q-switched all-fiber laser is demonstrated using a 10-cm-long bismuth-doped fiber (BDF) as a saturable absorber (SA). The dual-wavelength operation was obtained due to the nonlinear effect inside the fabricated BDF, which has a high germanium content. Stable Q-switched pulses were obtained at the dual synchronous wavelengths of 1 530.1 nm and 1 531.1 nm. When the pump power is tuned from 105.3 mW to 191.0 mW, the repetition rate can be varied from 82.6 kMz to 117.6 kHz. The maximum pulse energy and average output power were 83.4 nJ and 9.8 mW, respectively while the minimum pulse width was 8.5 μs at the maximum pump power of 191.0 mW. Our results indicate that BDF could be a promising alternative optical modulator for pulsed fiber laser application.     

Agarose coated micro-bottle sensor for relative humidity detection

The whispering gallery mode (WGM) based micro-bottle resonator (MBR) sensor has been proposed and demonstrated for relative humidity measurement by using an agarose gel as a transducer. MBR was fabricated by using a soften-and-compress method to form a 190 μm bulge bottle. The micro-bottle was optically excited by a 3 μm tapered fiber and it exhibits a resonance with a Q factor in an order of 105. The agarose coated MBR produces a good sensing response towards humidity with the sensitivity of 0.107 dB/%RH and linearity of 99.614%. The agarose hydrophilic nature and its changing porosity and refractive index with increasing relative humidity made the coated MBR structure to be more sensitive than the uncoated structure. This humidity sensor has a simple fabrication and is showing good sensitivity, linearity, resolution, response time and operational in a wide humidity range.     

A Spider‐Capture‐Silk‐Like Fiber with Extremely High‐Volume Directional Water Collection

A spider web collects water by its capture silk for recovering the daytime‐distorted shape during night through water‐sensitive shape memory effect. This unique smart function and geometrical structure of spider‐capture‐silk inspires the development of artificial fibers with periodic knots for directional water collection with vast potential applications in water scarce regions. Existing such fibers are mainly based on nylon filaments coated with petroleum‐originated synthetic polymer solutions. Distinct from using synthetic materials, an all silk‐protein fiber (ASPF) with periodic knots endows extremely high volume‐to‐mass water collection capability. This fiber has a main body consisting of B. mori degummed silk coated with recombinant engineered major ampullate spidroin 2 of spider dragline silk. It is 252 times lighter than synthetic polymer coated nylon fibers that once was reported to have the highest water collection performance. The ASPF collects a maximum water volume of 6.6 µL and has a 100 times higher water collection efficiency compared to existing best water collection artificial fibers in terms of volume‐to‐mass index at the shortest length (0.8 mm) of three‐phase contact line. Since silkworm silks are available abundantly, effective use of recombinant spidroins tandemly shows great potential for scalability.     

SOA-based multi-wavelength laser using fiber Bragg gratings

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a triple-wavelength fiber ring laser using a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) in conjunction with a series of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). The three channels operate at 1554.4, 1555.3, and 1556.1 nm with a peak power above ?25 dBm and optical signal-to-noise (OSNR) above 30 dB at SOA drive current of 350 mA under the room temperature. The proposed laser configuration has the advantages of a simple and compact structure, multi-wavelength operation and the system can be upgraded to generate more wavelengths by increasing the number of FBG used.     

S-band Brillouin erbium fibre laser

A multi-wavelength Brillouin erbium fibre laser, which operates in short wavelength band (S-band), is proposed and demonstrated. The system employs both linear gain and nonlinear gain from a 20 m S-band erbium-doped fibre and a 500 m singlemode fibre, respectively, to generate an optical wavelength comb with spacing of approximately 0.084 nm. Two 80/20 couplers were used in the system as an internal feedback of generated Stokes signal to produce cascaded Brillouin Stokes for multiwavelength operation. A stable output laser comb of up to seven lines was obtained with a Brillouin pump of 3.5 mW and a 980 nm pump of 200 mW.     

Flat output and switchable fiber laser using AWG and broadband FBG

The switchable multiwavelength fiber laser (SMWLSs) using AWG and broadband FBG with tuning range 11.7 nm and 0.75 nm spacing are demonstrated. The switchable lasers for every channel shows flatness output power with variation 3.7 dBm and peak power around −6.1 dBm. The side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) of the laser is significantly improved for every channel when using broadband FBG. The improvement is about 27.7 dBm. The laser for every channel also shows the good stability within the 2 h operation.     

On convergence of general Gamma type operators

The present paper deals with the new type of Gamma operators, here we esti- mate the rate of pointwise convergence of these new Gamma type operators Mn,k for func- tions of bounded variation, by using some techniques of probability theory.     

Theoretical study of the effect of liquid desiccant mass flow rate on the performance of a cross flow parallel-plate liquid desiccant-air dehumidifier

A computer simulation using MATLAB is investigated to predict the distribution of air stream parameters (humidity ratio and temperature) as well as desiccant parameters (temperature and concentration) inside the parallel plate absorber. The present absorber consists of fourteen parallel plates with a surface area per unit volume ratio of 80 m²/m³. Calcium chloride as a liquid desiccant flows through the top of the plates to the bottom while the air flows through the gap between the plates making it a cross flow configuration. The model results show the effect of desiccant mass flow rate on the performance of the dehumidifier (moisture removal and dehumidifier effectiveness). Performance comparisons between present cross-flow dehumidifier and another experimental cross-flow dehumidifier in the literature are carried out. The simulation is expected to help in optimizing of a cross flow dehumidifier.     

Theory of hyperfine interactions associated with the negative muon in lanthanum copper oxide high Tc system

The reaction mechanism of excitation and de-excitation of the high-spin isomers ¹⁸⁰Hf (J=8^-) and ¹⁸⁰Ta (J=9^-) in inelastic gamma-quanta scattering was investigated. An anomalously large integral cross section and isomeric ratio for ¹⁸⁰Ta in comparison to ¹⁸⁰Hf were obtained. Level properties influencing these relations are discussed. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.