Broadly Tunable SOA-Based Active Mode-Locked Fibre Ring aser by Forward Injection Optical Pulse

We present a broadly tunable active mode-locked fibre ring laser based on a semiconductor optical amplifier （SOA）, with forward injection optical pulses. The laser can generate pulse sequence with pulsewidth about 12ps and high output power up to 8.56 dBm at 2.5 GHz stably. Incorporated with a wavelength-tunable optical bandpass filter, the pulse laser can operate with a broad wavelength tunable span up to 37nm with almost constant pulsewidth. A detailed experimental analysis is also carried out to investigate the relationship between the power of the internal cavity and the pulsewidth of the output pulse sequence. The experimental configuration of the pulse laser is very simple and easy to setup with no polarization-sensitive components.     

Modulation of Splitting Beam Angle with Metal--Nonlinear Optical Material--Metal (M-NL-M) Array Structure

We demonstrate active manipulating plasmonic signals with metal--nonlinear optical material--metal (M-NL-M) arrays consisting of slits with variant widths. The parameters of the M-NL-M array structure are derived by theoretical analysis of dispersion relationship. The splitting angle can be modulated by the incident light intensity, and verified by a nonlinear two-dimensional finite difference time domain method. The physical principle of this phenomenon is analysed from the phase of surface plasmon polaritons and Fabry--Pérot (F-P) resonance in slits     

Effect of illumination on magnetization and microwave absorption of La1−xCaxMnO3 (x<0.2) films

Light-induced changes of the hysteresis loops of magnetization and microwave absorption are investigated in low-doped La_1−xCa_xMnO₃ (x<0.2) thin films. The width of the hysteresis loops decreases clearly under illumination with visible or near-infrared light at temperatures below 50 K. The microwave conductivity has a minimum value at magnetic fields corresponding to the magnetization reversal and is shifted towards weaker fields under illumination. These effects show complex nonexponential time evolution and dependence on strength of the magnetic field. The results can be explained by assuming that small ferromagnetic metallic regions exist within the insulating ferromagnetic phase of the sample, and that these regions are expanded by optically induced charge transfer between Jahn–Teller split e_g states of neighboring Mn³⁺ ions. Decrease of the Mn³⁺ XPS core level spectrum is observed in the samples under illumination with a HeNe laser.     

Digital, phase-sensitive detection for in situ diode-laser spectroscopy under rapidly changing transmission conditions

A new harmonic detection scheme for fully digital, fast-scanning wavelength-modulation spectroscopy (DFS-WMS) is presented. DFS-WMS is specially suited for in situ absorption measurements in combustion environments under fast fluctuating transmission conditions and is demonstrated for the first time by open-path monitoring of ambient oxygen using a distributed-feedback diode laser, which is doubly modulated with a fast linear 1 kHz-scan and a sinusoidal 300 kHz-modulation. After an analog high-pass filter, the detector signal is digitized with a 5 megasample/s 12-bit AD-converter card plugged into a PC and subsequently – unlike standard lock-ins – filtered further by co-adding 100 scans, to generate a narrowband comb filter. All further filtering and the demodulation are performed completely digitally on a PC with the help of discrete Fourier transforms (DFT). Both 1f- and 2f-signals, are simultaneously extracted from the detector signal using one ADC input channel. For the 2f-signal, a linearity of 2% and a minimum detectable absorption of 10^-4 could be verified experimentally, with the sensitivity to date being limited only by insufficient gain on the 2f-frequency channel. Using the offset in the 1f signal as a transmission ‘probe’, we could show that the 2f-signal can be transmission-corrected by a simple division by the 1f-background, proving that DFS-WMS provides the possibility of compensating for transmission fluctuations. With the inherent suppression of additive noise, DFS-WMS seems well suited for quantitative in situ absorption spectroscopy in large combustion systems. This assumption is supported by the first measurements of oxygen in a high-pressure combustor at 12 bar. Received: 29 April 2002 / Revised version: 31 May 2002 / Published online: 12 September 2002 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +49-6221/545-050, E-mail:volker.ebert@pci.uni-heidelberg.de     

Additive-pulse mode locking of a diode-pumped Nd:KGd(WO4)2 laser

Self-starting additive-pulse mode locking of a diode-pumped Nd:KGd(WO₄)₂ laser is demonstrated for the first time. An output power of 0.85 W is achieved with 2.3-ps pulses at a repetition frequency of 76.5 MHz. The shortest pulse generated had a duration of 1.9 ps. Received: 2 May 2002 / Published online: 25 October 2002 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +44-141/5482891, E-mail: a.major@phys.strath.ac.uk     

Green Output of 1.5 W from a Diode-Pumped Intracavity Frequency-Doubled Self-Q-Switched and Mode-Locked Cr,Nd：YAG Laser

We report a diode-pumped intracavity frequency-doubled self-Q-switched and mode-locked Cr,Nd：YAG/KTP green laser with a Z-type cavity, which produces 1.5 W of average power at 532nm with incident pump power 14.2 W. The individual mode-locked green pulse duration is about 560ps with 149 MHz repetition rate. Almost 100% modulation depth of the mode-locked green pulses is achieved at an incident pump power of 4.13 W. The maximum energy of Q-switched green pulse is 19.8μJ. The experimental results of pulse duration and pulse energy of Q-switched green pulse agree well with the theoretical calculations.     

2 + 1 flavor simulations of QCD with improved staggered quarks

The MILC Collaboration has been performing realistic simulations of full QCD with 2 + 1 flavors of improved staggered quarks. Our simulations allow for controlled continuum and chiral extrapolations. I present results for the light pseudoscalar sector: masses and decay constants, quark masses and Gasser-Leutwyler low-energy constants. In addition I will present some results for heavy-light mesons, decay constants and semileptonic form factors, obtained in collaboration with the HPQCD and Fermilab lattice Collaborations. Such calculations will help in the extraction of CKM matrix elements from experimental measurements.     

Two-colour laser excitation as a way to set an absolute energy scale in photodetachment-microscopy based electron spectrometry

A two-colour laser technique is developed for photodetachment microscopy, by means of microwave modulation of a CW single-mode dye laser. A phase modulation regime is achieved through an electro-optical LiNbO₃ crystal excited at the frequency 1.95 GHz. The two first sidebands created are selected by rejection of the other orders through a plane Fabry-Perot interferometer. With the resulting two-colour radiation, the photodetachment microscopy technique is applied to a beam of ³²S⁻ ions. It is shown that the superposition of the two resulting interference patterns can be used as a ‘spectral vernier’ to remove the uncertainty on the electric field and absolute energy scale. Without any initial assumption on the value F of the electric field in the laser-ion interaction region, a measure of F and of the electron affinity ^eA of Sulfur can be obtained. Putting 16 recordings of two-colour photodetachment interferograms together, with the only condition that F be the same for all experiments, one gets ^eA(³²S) = 16752.978(11) cm⁻¹, which is quite compatible, even though not as accurate, with the most recently recommended value ^eA(³²S) = 16752.9760(42) cm⁻¹. A proposal is made for going from an incoherent to a coherent two-colour photodetachment scheme, which would make photodetachment interferograms sensitive to a new degree of freedom.     

Dynamic sideband generation in soliton fiber lasers

We show numerically that when a soliton circulating in the laser cavity experiences dynamical bifurcations, extra sets of sidebands appear in the soliton spectrum. The new sidebands have clearly different characteristics to those of the conventional soliton sidebands, indicating that there exists a new mechanism of sideband generation in the lasers.