Analytical characterization of spectral anomalies in polychromatic apertured beams

The power spectrum of polychromatic apertured spherical waves changes strongly in the vicinity of phase singularities. A spectral shift effect is observed and, in some cases, a spectral switch occurs together with a broadening of the power spectrum. Low-order moments of the power spectrum are evaluated in points of the focal volume with spectral anomalies. First-order analytical expressions are proposed for the evaluation of the relative spectral shift and the relative spectral broadening in the transverse focal plane and along the optical axis. The influence of the fractional bandwidth and the selected singularity order is considered.     

Comparison of polarization-mode dispersion tolerances in polarization-multiplexing systems with different modulation formats

The polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) tolerance of 10 Gb/s polarization-multiplexing (PM) system is investigated. Using the importance sampling (IS) method, the outage probabilities of the PM systems with three modulation formats, including on-off keying (OOK), differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) and differential quadrature phase-shift keying (DQPSK), are quantified. When the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise is assumed to be dominant, we evaluate the optical power penalties caused by the PMD effect at bit error rate (BER) of 10⁻¹². The performance of compensated PM systems with variable optical delay line is also described. The simulation results indicate that the OOK signal with higher duty cycle (DC) performs better in the PM systems with PMD compensation. It is found that the higher-order PMD impairs seriously the performance of the PM system, and phase-keying formats are more sensitive to the PMD than the OOK.     

Non-Markovian thermalisation of a two-level atom

We consider thermalisation and spontaneous decay of a two-level atom beyond the Markovian approximation. While the standard elimination of the continuum of radiation modes results in exponential decay represented by a Lindblad equation of motion, we use a simple toy model that takes into account the finite relaxation rate of the environment and present an exact non-Markovian master equation of the Nakajima-Zwanzig form. Because the exact derivation of non-Markovian equations has proved very difficult for all more realistic (and hence much more complicated) models, we analyze the master equation obtained and also discuss difficulties that are likely to arise with non-Markovian evolution operators.     

Concentrated second‐harmonic generation from a single Al‐covered ZnS nanobelt

Here we report on the hybrid nanostructures where a single ZnS nanobelt was half‐covered with an aluminum (Al) film, which is an ideal platform for studying the second‐harmonic generation (SHG) enhancement effects of the Al coating. It was fabricated by the lift‐off process and allowed for the accurate comparison of the SHG intensity between the Al‐covered and the same bare ZnS nanobelt under consistent test conditions. The results indicate that the Al coating in the hybrid nanostructures not only confines the pumping laser in the ZnS effectively, but also concentrates the emitted SHG signal greatly, increasing the signal collection efficiency. By the combination of these two effects, ∼60 times enhancement of the SHG intensity is achieved at the optimized geometry size (width and thickness) of the ZnS nanobelts. The Al‐based hybrid nanostructures open up new possibilities for low‐cost, highly efficient and directional coherent nanolight sources at short wavelengths.

     

Short Terahertz Pulse Generation from a Dispersion Compensated Modelocked Semiconductor Laser

Dispersion compensation is vital for the generation of ultrashort and single cycle pulses from modelocked lasers across the electromagnetic spectrum. It is typically based on addition of an extra dispersive element to the laser cavity that introduces a chromatic dispersion opposite to that of the gain medium. To date, however, no dispersion compensation schemes have been successfully applied to terahertz (THz) quantum cascade lasers for short and stable pulse generation in the THz range. In this work, a monolithic on‐chip compensation scheme is realized for a modelocked QCL, permitting THz pulses to be considerably shortened from 16ps to 4ps. This is based on the realization of a small coupled cavity resonator that acts as an ‘off resonance’ Gires‐Tournois interferometer (GTI), permitting large THz spectral bandwidths to be compensated. This novel application of a GTI opens up a direct and simple route to sub‐picosecond and single cycle pulses in the THz range from a compact semiconductor source.     

Dynamic Thermal Emission Control Based on Ultrathin Plasmonic Metamaterials Including Phase‐Changing Material GST

Dynamic thermal emission control has attracted growing interest in a broad range of fields, including radiative cooling, thermophotovoltaics and adaptive camouflage. Previous demonstrations of dynamic thermal emission control present disadvantages of either large thickness or requiring sustained electrical or thermal excitations. In this paper, an ultrathin (∼0.023λ, λ is the emission peak wavelength) metal‐insulator‐metal plasmonic metamaterial‐based zero‐static‐power mid‐infrared thermal emitter incorporating phase‐changing material GST is experimentally demonstrated to dynamically control the thermal emission. The electromagnetic modes can be continuously tuned through the intermediate phases determined by controlling the temperature. A typical resonance mode, which involves the coupling between the high‐order magnetic resonance and anti‐reflection resonance, shifts from 6.51 to 9.33 μm while GST is tuned from amorphous to crystalline phase. This demonstration will pave the way towards the dynamical thermal emission control in both the fundamental science field and a number of energy‐harvesting applications.     

Analytic soliton solutions of cubic‐quintic Ginzburg‐Landau equation with variable nonlinearity and spectral filtering in fiber lasers

In fiber lasers, the study of the cubic‐quintic complex Ginzburg‐Landau equations (CGLE) has attracted much attention. In this paper, four families (kink solitons, gray solitons, Y‐type solitons and combined solitons) of exact soliton solutions for the variable‐coefficient cubic‐quintic CGLE are obtained via the modified Hirota method. Appropriate parameters are chosen to investigate the properties of solitons. The influences of nonlinearity and spectral filtering effect are discussed in these obtained exact soliton solutions, respectively. Methods to amplify the amplitude and compress the width of solitons are put forward. Numerical simulation with split‐step Fourier method and fourth‐order Runge‐Kutta algorithm are carried out to validate some of the analytic results. Transformation from the variable‐coefficient cubic‐quintic CGLE to the constant coefficients one is proposed. The results obtained may have certain applications in soliton control in fiber lasers, and may have guiding value in experiments in the future.

     

Nonlinear optical characteristics of monolayer MoSe2

In this study, we utilized picosecond pulses from an Nd:YAG laser to investigate the nonlinear optical characteristics of monolayer MoSe₂. Two‐step growth involving the selenization of pulsed‐laser‐deposited MoO₃ film was employed to yield the MoSe₂ monolayer on a SiO₂/Si substrate. Raman scattering, photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, and atomic force microscopy verified the high optical quality of the monolayer. The second‐order susceptibility χ⁽²⁾ was calculated to be ～50 pm V^?1 at the second harmonic wavelength ～810 nm, which is near the optical gap of the monolayer. Interestingly, our wavelength‐dependent second harmonic scan can identify the bound excitonic states including negatively charged excitons much more efficiently, compared with the PL method at room temperature. Additionally, the MoSe₂ monolayer exhibits a strong laser‐induced damage threshold ～16 GW cm^?2 under picosecond‐pulse excitation_. Our findings suggest that monolayer MoSe₂ can be considered as a promising candidate for high‐power, thin‐film‐based nonlinear optical devices and applications.     

Finsler geometry of topological singularities for multi‐valued fields: Applications to continuum theory of defects

Topological singularity in a continuum theory of defects and a quantum field theory is studied from a viewpoint of differential geometry. The integrability conditions of singularity (Clairaut‐Schwarz‐Young theorem) are expressed by a torsion tensor and a curvature tensor when a Finslerian intrinsic parallelism holds for the multi‐valued function. In the context of the quantum field theory, the singularity called an extended object is expressed by the torsion when the intrinsic parallelism is related to the spontaneous breakdown of symmetry. In the continuum theory of defects, the path‐dependency of point and line defects within a crystal is interpreted by the non‐vanishing condition of torsion tensor in a non‐Riemannian space osculated from the Finsler space, and the domain is not simply connected. On the other hand, for the rotational singularity, an energy integral (J‐integral) around a disclination field is path‐independent when a nonlinear connection is single‐valued. This means that the topological expression for the sole defect (Gauss‐Bonnet theorem with genus ) is understood by the integrability of nonlinear connection.