This PDF file contains the editorial “Four Attributes of an Excellent Peer Review” for OE Vol. 55 Issue 07

This PDF file contains the editorial “Special Section Guest Editorial:Freeform Optics” for OE Vol. 55 Issue 07

Precisely known artifacts are required to characterize the accuracy of asphere and freeform measuring instruments. To this end the best knowledge of the surface characteristics in conjunction with a low measurement uncertainty are necessary. Because this is a challenging task for typical freeform surfaces used in optical systems, the concept of “metrological” artifacts is introduced. We have developed a multispherical freeform artifact for performance tests of tactile touch probe and contact-free optical measuring systems. The measurement accuracy of the complete form and the deviation from calibrated spherical sections can thus be determined. The radius calibration of multiple spherical sections is performed with an extended radius measuring procedure by interferometry. Evaluated surface forms of different measuring methods and the radii determined can be compared to each other. In this study, a multispherical freeform specimen made of copper, with two differing radii, has been measured by two optical measuring methods, a full field measuring tilted-wave interferometer and a high accuracy cylinder coordinate measuring machine with an optical probe. The surface form measurements are evaluated and compared, and the radii determined are compared to the results of a radius measurement bench.

We investigate use of the anisotropic radial basis functions expansion as a means to represent surface errors on aspheric and freeform surfaces. We show how the optimal choice of the shape parameter and the placement of radial basis function (RBF) nodes can increase accuracy of the surface approximation. We show an example of the adaptive grid refinement. In our approach, complex surfaces are modeled with general arbitrary representation while the anisotropic RBFs expansion models perturbation of the base surface. We show how both the global and the localized surface errors can be modeled across a wide spatial frequency range. With our method, the impact of the structured surface errors on the arbitrary surfaces when applied on the standardized image quality metrics can be assessed for the purpose of optical tolerancing.

Several applications of freeform optics call for deeper analysis of systems with rectangular apertures. We study the behavior of a freeform mirror system by comparing four orthogonal polynomial surface representations through local optimization. We compare polynomials with different orthogonal areas (rectangular-circular) and different metrics (sag-gradient). Polynomials orthogonal inside a rectangle converge faster or to a better local minimum than those orthogonal inside a circle in the example considered. This is the most likely due to the loss of the good properties of orthogonality when the orthogonality area does not coincide with the surface area used.

Successful fabrication of aspheres requires all parts of the process chain including design, production, and measurements. Aspheres now are well-established and accepted as an equal optical element, when done properly. Research and industry have now started to focus efforts to develop the next element that propels the field forward in capability, namely the optical freeform surface. An essential factor enabling wide use of freeforms is communicating requirements. This paper discusses form description and tolerancing additions to ISO 10110 to accommodate freeform surfaces. Information stating how ISO 10110 and related standards documents such as ISO 14999-4 are being continually developed to meet the requirements for specifying freeform surfaces is also provided. This paper further provides an example monolithic freeform element using the recently updated relevant parts of ISO 10110. The first manufacturing of this component has been successful, and this paper shows the role the ISO standard has played in success. Definitions for toleranced parameters, such as surface registration (centration) and form deviation (irregularity, slope, Zernike, PV, and PVr), are also indicated. The monolithic example also shows how to use the defined data and definitions for metrology and data handling. Metrology results for the freeform surface are given.

The cylindrical coordinate measuring machine MarForm MFU200 can measure not only rotationally symmetric aspheric samples but also nonrotationally symmetric freeform surfaces. Applying both an optical and a tactile probe system, the measuring processes of the optical freeform surface and fiducials can be combined in a very flexible way. A strategy to measure freeforms including the determination of reference coordinate systems, the measuring process, and the analysis are discussed. In this process, fiducials defining a reference coordinate system are of fundamental importance. It is shown how different positions of fiducials can be measured.

Glass molding has become a key replication-based technology to satisfy intensively growing demands of complex precision optics in the today’s photonic market. However, the state-of-the-art replicative technologies are still limited, mainly due to their insufficiency to meet the requirements of mass production. This paper introduces a newly developed nonisothermal glass molding in which a complex-shaped optic is produced in a very short process cycle. The innovative molding technology promises a cost-efficient production because of increased mold lifetime, less energy consumption, and high throughput from a fast process chain. At the early stage of the process development, the research focuses on an integration of finite element simulation into the process chain to reduce time and labor-intensive cost. By virtue of numerical modeling, defects including chill ripples and glass sticking in the nonisothermal molding process can be predicted and the consequent effects are avoided. In addition, the influences of process parameters and glass preforms on the surface quality, form accuracy, and residual stress are discussed. A series of experiments was carried out to validate the simulation results. The successful modeling, therefore, provides a systematic strategy for glass preform design, mold compensation, and optimization of the process parameters. In conclusion, the integration of simulation into the entire nonisothermal glass molding process chain will significantly increase the manufacturing efficiency as well as reduce the time-to-market for the mass production of complex precision yet low-cost glass optics.

The designs of two imaging freeform systems using nonuniform rational basis-spline (NURBS) optical surfaces are described. The first system, a 10  deg×9  degf/2 three-mirror anastigmat has four times higher spatial resolution over the image plane compared with the equivalent conventional rotational aspheric design, and 2.5 times higher resolution compared with a 10th-order XY polynomial freeform design. The mirrors for the NURBS freeform design have more than twice the asphericity than the conventional rotational and XY polynomial designs. In the second system, a Ritchey–Chretien telescope followed by a two-mirror NURBS freeform corrector is compared to a four-mirror Korsch telescope, for imaging to a visible-infrared imaging spectrometer. The freeform corrector design had 70% smaller spot sizes over the field and eliminated the large tertiary required in Korsch type design. Both of these NURBS freeform designs are possible due to a custom optical design code for fast accurate NURBS optimization, which now has parallel raytracing for thousands of NURBS grid points.

A proposed framework using spectral and spatial information is introduced for neural net multisensor data fusion. This consists of a set of independent-sensor neural nets, one for each sensor (type of data), coupled to a fusion net. The neural net of each sensor is trained from a representative data set of the particular sensor to map to a hypothesis space output. The decision outputs from the sensor nets are used to train the fusion net to an overall decision. During the initial processing, three-dimensional (3-D) point cloud data (PCD) are segmented using a multidimensional mean-shift algorithm into clustered objects. Concurrently, multiband spectral imagery data (multispectral or hyperspectral) are spectrally segmented by the stochastic expectation–maximization into a cluster map containing (spectral-based) pixel classes. For the proposed sensor fusion, spatial detections and spectral detections complement each other. They are fused into final detections by a cascaded neural network, which consists of two levels of neural nets. The success of the approach in utilizing sensor synergism for an enhanced classification is demonstrated for the specific case of classifying hyperspectral imagery and PCD extracted from LIDAR, obtained from an airborne data collection over the campus of University of Southern Mississippi, Gulfport, Mississippi.

Tuned basis function (TBF) is a powerful technique for classification of two classes by transforming them into a new space, where both classes will have complementary eigenvectors. A target discrimination technique can be described based on these complementary eigenvector analyses under two classes: (1) target and (2) background clutter, where basis functions that best represent the desired targets form one class while the complementary basis functions form the second class. Since the TBF does not require pixel-based preprocessing, it provides significant advantages for target tracking applications. Furthermore, efficient eigenvector selection and subframe segmentation significantly reduce the computation burden of the target tracking algorithm. The performance of the proposed TBF-based target tracking algorithm has been tested using real-world forward looking infrared video sequences.

Multiple image encryption (MIE) was proposed to increase the efficiency of encrypting images by processing several images simultaneously. Because of the advantage of optical technology in processing twodimensional images at high throughput, MIE has been significantly improved by use of methods originating from optics. Phase retrieval was the process of algorithmically finding solutions to the phase loss problem due to light detectors only capturing the intensity. It was to retrieve phase information for the determination of a structure from diffraction data. Error-reduction algorithm is a typical phase retrieval method. Here, we employ it to illustrate that methods in phase retrieval are able to encrypt multiple images and compress them into encrypted data simultaneously. Moreover, the decryption is also designed to handle multiple images at the same time. The whole process including both the encryption and decryption is proposed to improve MIE with respect to the compression and efficiency. The feasibility and encryption of the MIE scheme is demonstrated with encryption experiments under Gaussian white noise and unauthorized access.

A phase-recovery method based on iterative least-square fitting is proposed to overcome off-axis phase-shifting errors of high numerical-aperture (NA) surfaces in tilt phase-shift interferometry. Vibration of test optics having optical powers makes nonuniform off-axis phase-shift errors over the aperture, which is severe when testing optics with high NA. The proposed method calculates the test wavefront, off-axis phase shift, and tilt phase shifts in x- and y-directions within four separate least-square fitting steps iteratively. Parabolic and linear regressions are used for extracting off-axis and tilt phase-shift errors, respectively. The proposed method is verified with simulations and experiments with a Fizeau interferometer having F/0.75 transmission sphere. This method can be used with a temporal phase-shifting interferometers for testing high-NA optics in the presence of vibration.

In multispectral imaging, it is necessary to select a reduced number of filters to balance the imaging efficiency and spectral reflectance recovery accuracy. Due to the combined effect of filters and light source on reflectance recovery, the optimal filters are influenced by the employed light source in the multispectral imaging system. By casting the filter selection as an optimization issue, the selection of optimal filters corresponding to the employed light source proceeds with respect to a set of target samples utilizing one kind of genetic algorithms, regardless of the detailed spectral characteristics of the light source, filters, and sensor. Under three light sources with distinct spectral power distributions, the proposed filter selection method was evaluated on a filter-wheel based multispectral device with a set of interference filters. It was verified that the filters derived by the proposed method achieve better spectral and colorimetric accuracy of reflectance recovery than the conventional one under different light sources.

Handheld Raman systems have become powerful analytical tools for the detection and identification of hazardous chemical materials that are now commonly used by both the civilian and military communities. Due to the availability of compact lasers and sensitive detectors, systems typically operate at 785 nm. However, the Raman return at this wavelength can still be obscured by fluorescent impurities in the targeted materials or their matrices. To potentially mitigate this shortcoming, a prototype dual-wavelength Raman incorporating both 785- and 1064-nm excitations was developed and assessed at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center. The results of that evaluation are discussed here.

The dynamic laser goniometer (LG) implementation for noncontact measurements of an object’s angular position is presented. One of the possible implementations involves determining the time dependence of the scanning mirror’s angular position. Another application is aimed at determining the oscillatory movement parameters on the test table. The results obtained in the course of the research show that the dynamic LG makes it possible to calibrate various kinds of test beds making angular oscillations or angular movement of arbitrary law.

Fiber optic gyros (FOGs) are sensitive to the environment fields where they are mounted, and their drifts are easily affected when surrounding temperature field or magnetic field changes. In FOG strapdown inertial navigation system (INS), gyro drifts caused by environmental fields are stable mostly, thus they could be calibrated and compensated beforehand and would not cause obvious alignment and navigation errors. However, in rotation INS (RINS), although navigation errors caused by the constant components of FOG drifts could be well attenuated, the gyro sensing axes are changing relative to the environmental fields in the RINS, which would lead to periodically changing gyro drift components when inertial measurement unit is pointing to different headings, thus producing serious alignment and navigation errors in FOG RINS. To solve this problem, a four-position heading effect calibration algorithm was proposed, and its effectiveness and validity were verified through a dual-axis FOG RINS by turntable experiments. The experimental results show that the azimuth alignment accuracy of the FOG RINS improves from 0.2 deg to about 0.04 deg, increasing five times approximately, which illustrates that the proposed heading effect calibration algorithm could further improve the navigation performance of FOG RINS significantly.

The design and evaluation of the expected performance of optical systems requires sophisticated and reliable information about the surface topography of planned optical elements before they are fabricated. The problem is especially severe in the case of x-ray optics for modern diffraction-limited-electron-ring and free-electron-laser x-ray facilities, as well as x-ray astrophysics missions, such as the X-ray Surveyor under development. Modern x-ray source facilities are reliant upon the availability of optics of unprecedented quality, with surface slope accuracy <0.1  μrad. The unprecedented high angular resolution and throughput of future x-ray space observatories require high-quality optics of 100  m² in total area. The uniqueness of the optics and limited number of proficient vendors make the fabrication extremely time-consuming and expensive, mostly due to the limitations in accuracy and measurement rate of metrology used in fabrication. We continue investigating the possibility of improving metrology efficiency via comprehensive statistical treatment of a compact volume of metrology of surface topography, which is considered the result of a stochastic polishing process. We suggest, verify, and discuss an analytical algorithm for identification of an optimal symmetric time-invariant linear filter model with a minimum number of parameters and smallest residual error. If successful, the modeling could provide feedback to deterministic polishing processes, avoiding time-consuming, whole-scale metrology measurements over the entire optical surface with the resolution required to cover the entire desired spatial frequency range. The modeling also allows forecasting of metrology data for optics made by the same vendor and technology. The forecast data are vital for reliable specification for optical fabrication, evaluated from numerical simulation to be exactly adequate for the required system performance, avoiding both over- and underspecification.

The theoretical basis of self-mixing interference (SMI) employing a resonant phase modulator is explored to prove its tempting advantages. The adopted method induces a pure phase carrier without increasing system complexity. A simple time-domain signal process is used to estimate modulation depth and precisely track vibrating trail, which promises the flexibility of measuring ultrasonic vibration regardless of the constraint of the Bessel functions. The broad bandwidth, low speckle noise, compact, safe, and easy operating SMI system obtains the best resolution of a poor reflection environment. Numerical simulation discusses the spectrum broadening and errors due to multiple reflections. Experimental results agree with theory coherently and are compared with laser Doppler vibration meter showing a dynamical error better than 20 nm in ultrasonic vibration measurement.

The swing arm profilometer (SAP) has been playing a very important role in testing large aspheric optics. As one of most significant error sources that affects the test accuracy, misalignment error leads to low-order errors such as aspherical aberrations and coma apart from power. In order to analyze the effect of misalignment errors, the relation between alignment parameters and test results of axisymmetric optics is presented. Analytical solutions of SAP system errors from tested mirror misalignment, arm length L deviation, tilt-angle θ deviation, air-table spin error, and air-table misalignment are derived, respectively; and misalignment tolerance is given to guide surface measurement. In addition, experiments on a 2-m diameter parabolic mirror are demonstrated to verify the model; according to the error budget, we achieve the SAP test for low-order errors except power with accuracy of 0.1 μm root-mean-square.

Phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) has been widely used in various applications for its distributed measurement capability of dynamic disturbance along the entire sensing fiber. Commonly, the sensing system is considered to be only sensitive to the phase change and capable of detecting multiple vibration events. In application, once any of the vibration events leads to a local birefringence change, the polarization evolution of the signal will be disturbed along the following fiber, which will result in the generation of polarization-related noise and the failure of identification for multipoint vibration events. We will reveal the polarization-dependence of Φ-OTDR both theoretically and experimentally. To suppress the polarization-dependence of Φ-OTDR, an orthogonal-state of polarization pulse pair method has been proposed, making the sensing system purely phase-sensitive. The experiment result has shown that maximum noise suppression ratio of 11.2 dB and mean noise suppression ratio of 4.9 dB could be achieved, which confirmed the validity of the proposed method.

We propose a type of interference objective that extends the range of application for flexible microscope platforms to larger fields of view. The objective comprises a beamsplitter plate and a partially transparent reference mirror arranged coaxially with the objective lens system. The coaxial plates are slightly tilted to direct unwanted reflections outside of the imaging pupil aperture, providing high fringe contrast with spatially extended white-light illumination. Examples include a turret-mountable 1.4× magnification objective parfocal with high-magnification objectives up to 100× and a dovetail mount 0.5× objective with a 34×34  mm field. This design is a practical alternative to the classical Michelson and Mirau type objectives for low magnifications.

A position-movable lens driven by a dielectric elastomer (DE) actuator is demonstrated. With the aid of stretching/contracting of the DE actuator, the lens can do a reciprocating motion in the direction perpendicular to its optical axis. For our DE with 1-mm thick, a voltage pulse of V=5.5  kV can cause the lens to shift ∼1.7  mm. The stretching time and contracting time of the actuator are ∼3.5 and ∼4  s, respectively. When the lens integrates with another solid lens, a variable focal length can be obtained. Although the driving voltage is relatively high, the actuator is electrically stable and the power consumption is extremely low. Our lens with movable position has potential applications in imaging, information storage, beam steering, and bifocal technology.

Conventional subwavelength grating concentrating lenses are designed based on calculated phase overlap, wherein the phase change is fixed by the grating thickness, bar-width, and airgap, and therefore the focus. We found that certain concentration effects can still be maintained by changing the grating thickness with the same bar-widths and airgap dimensions. Following that, we discovered the existence of the grating thickness threshold; light concentration intensity spikes upon exceeding this limit. However, the light concentration property does not change continuously with respect to a steady increase in grating thickness. This observation indicates that there exists a concentration mode self-interference effect along the light propagation direction inside the gratings. Our results may provide guidance in designing and fabricating microlenses in a potentially more easy and controllable manner. Such approaches can be utilized in various integrated nanophotonics applications ranging from optical cavities and read/write heads to concentrating photovoltaics.

The use of light pipes is an efficient and low-cost technique to get a homogeneous illumination for laser-gated viewing systems. However, this technique suffers from drawbacks when used with coherent sources like solid-state lasers. Compacting light pipe-based laser illuminators involves working with small light pipe sections, and experiments show that interference fringes appear on the laser illumination profiles. The principle of light pipe homogenization has been reviewed using geometrical optics to understand the phenomenon better, and a pragmatic light pipe design method, based on laser-gated viewing system parameters, is proposed. Another original solution based on optical stepper is studied to reduce both interference fringes and speckle noise to increase the homogeneity of laser illumination profiles.

A free-form (FF) surface design method is proposed for a nonaxial-symmetrical projector system comprising an FF reflector and a light source. The profile of the reflector is designed using a nonaxial-symmetrical FF (NFF) surface construction method such that each incident ray is directed in such a way as to form a user-specified image pattern on the target region of the image plane. The light ray paths within the projection system are analyzed using an exact analytical model and a skew-ray tracing approach. The validity of the proposed NFF design method is demonstrated by means of ZEMAX simulations. It is shown that the image pattern formed on the target region of the image plane is in good agreement with that specified by the user. The NFF method is mathematically straightforward and easily implemented in computer code. As such, it provides a useful tool for the design and analysis stages of optical systems design.

A colorless wavelength division multiplexed-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-passive optical network (WDM-OFDM-PON) is presented, which is capable of supporting symmetric 10 Gbps downlink direct detection (DD) OFDM unicast signal, broadcast signal, and uplink on–off keying (OOK) signal up to 60 km that includes both single mode and dispersion compensation fiber. At each optical network unit (ONU), DD has been used to receive downlink unicast and broadcast OFDM data. A delay interferometer (DI) has been used at a central office to achieve 10 Gbps uplink signal transmission over 60 km distance utilizing a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (bandwidth=1.5  GHz) at the ONU because DI works as a vestigial sideband filter and an optical equalizer. Broadcast channel does not affect the system performance because it generates a limited interference of the order of 0.1 to 0.28 dB to downlink and uplink channels, and this interference is distributed to every ONU. For bit error rate of 10−⁹, the receiver sensitivity of −24, −23.1, and −20.14  dBm is achieved by simulating downlink OFDM unicast channels, OFDM broadcast channel, and uplink OOK unicast channels, respectively, for a symmetric data rate of 10 Gbps over 60 km.

A design for a compact Si photonic two mode demultiplexer for mode division multiplexing (MDM) applications is presented. The design uses the self-imaging in multimode interference structures to achieve MDM with an insertion loss less than 0.5 dB and a cross talk better than 20 dB over the C band. The imaging is achieved within a length that is half the length reported in the literature, and its overall dimensions are 42 μm×3 μm. The minimum cross talk is affected by the structure geometry. The tolerance of the design to variations in the dimensions is also studied.

The impact of physical parameters such as grating length, effective index of grating, and apodization on the performance of 5×5 reconfigurable multiwavelength optical cross connect based on tunable fiber Bragg grating and optical circulator in DWDM system with 0.8-nm channel spacing at 15×10  Gbps is evaluated. It is observed that least BER is achieved at the minimum input transmission power with specific values of grating length, effective index of grating, and apodization change of a T-FBG. It shows that BER increases as the values of T-FBG grating length, effective index of grating, and apodization decrease. The data can be transmitted over a distance of 60 km in the presence of fiber nonlinearities without optical amplifier and dispersion compensating techniques.

We report on a method to enhance the temporal contrast of optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifiers (OPCPAs) by smoothing pump noise. The instantaneous parametric gain in OPCPA couples the temporal modulation on the pump pulses to spectral variations of the intensity of the stretched signal pulses being amplified. In this way, pump noise significantly degrades the temporal contrast of the amplified pulses after recompression. Cascaded second harmonic generation (SHG) is adopted to smooth modulation on the pump pulses in the proposed method. Apparent reduction of modulation on the pump pulses is observed in the experiments. Numerical simulation reproduces the experimental results. Simulation results show that cascaded SHG with stable output 2 ω can enhance the temporal contrast for OPCPAs with four to five orders. It is believed that this new method can be widely adopted to build high-contrast OPCPA systems.

Alamouti space-time coding is modified in the form of polarization-time coding to combat against polarization mode dispersion (PMD) impairments in exploiting a polarization diversity multiplex (PDM) gain with simple intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) in optical transmission systems. A theoretical model for the proposed IM/DD Alamouti polarization-time coding (APTC-IM/DD) using nonreturn-to-zero on-off keying signal can surprisingly eliminate the requirement of channel estimation for decoding in the low PMD regime, when a two-transmitter and two-receiver channel is adopted. Even in the high PMD regime, the proposed APTC-IM/DD still reveals coding gain demonstrating the robustness of APTC-IM/DD. In addition, this scheme can eliminate the requirements for a polarization state controller, a coherent receiver, and a high-speed analog-to-digital converter at a receiver. Simulation results reveal that the proposed APTC scheme is able to reduce the optical signal-to-noise ratio requirement by ∼3  dB and significantly enhance the PMD tolerance of a PDM-based IM/DD system.

We propose a strain fiber sensor that is interrogated via longitudinal mode beat frequency with a linear chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG). Unlike conventional sensors, in the proposed sensor, the CFBG is used to convert wavelength changes into resonant cavity length changes. Further, the beat frequency stability of the fiber laser is fully utilized to significantly improve measurement accuracy. Consequently, because cavity changes account for 5.1% of the total cavity length, the measurement accuracy can be as large as 7.06×10⁻⁷ ϵ—i.e., approximately five times greater than the accuracy obtained by stretching the resonant cavity fiber. The maximum experimental strain error range is ±14.5  μϵ.

Spatial temperature and gas concentration distributions are crucial for combustion studies to characterize the combustion position and to evaluate the combustion regime and the released heat quantity. Optical computer tomography (CT) enables the reconstruction of temperature and gas concentration fields in a flame on the basis of line-of-sight tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (LOS-TDLAS). A pair of H₂O absorption lines at wavelengths 1395.51 and 1395.69 nm is selected. Temperature and H₂O concentration distributions for a flat flame furnace are calculated by superimposing two absorption peaks with a discrete algebraic iterative algorithm and a mathematical fitting algorithm. By comparison, direct absorption spectroscopy measurements agree well with the thermocouple measurements and yield a good correlation. The CT reconstruction data of different air-to-fuel ratio combustion conditions (incomplete combustion and full combustion) and three different types of burners (one, two, and three flat flame furnaces) demonstrate that TDLAS has the potential of short response time and enables real-time temperature and gas concentration distribution measurements for combustion diagnosis.

A method is proposed to achieve multichannel mode conversion and multiplexing by dividing a single spatial light modulator into several blocks with the mode conversion pattern and blazed grating loaded on each block. The conversion patterns realize the precise excitation of higher order modes using combined amplitude and phase modulation. The blazed gratings bring together incident beams, so these beams can be coupled into few-mode fiber (FMF). In the experiment, four higher order modes are precisely excited and converge with a tilt angle. Through the simulation method, these beams can be coupled into FMF with small tilt angles (0.0344 deg for LP₁₁ mode).

We experimentally demonstrate a linearly polarized, passively Q-switched, erbium (Er)-doped fiber laser using a saturable absorber (SA) based on a composite consisting of a bulk-structured bismuth telluride (Bi₂Te₃) topological insulator (TI) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). The SA was constructed on a polarization maintaining (PM) fiber ferrule platform, which had a sandwich structure. Its saturation intensity and modulation depth were measured to be ∼47.56  MW/cm² and ∼4.1%, respectively. Using the prepared Bi₂Te₃/PVA SA in a PM Er-doped fiber ring laser, stable Q-switched pulses with a degree of polarization of ∼98.6% and an azimuth angle of ∼−0.34  deg were demonstrated. The minimum pulse width was measured to be ∼1.58  μs at a repetition rate of 47.1 kHz. This experimental demonstration verifies that a thin film based on a bulk-structured Bi₂Te₃ TI can fit into a sandwich-structured SA based on PM fiber ferrules.

A physical encryption scheme for discrete Hartley transform (DHT) precoded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) visible-light communication (VLC) systems using frequency domain chaos scrambling is proposed. In the scheme, the chaos scrambling, which is generated by a modified logistic mapping, is utilized to enhance the physical layer of security, and the DHT precoding is employed to reduce of OFDM signal for OFDM-based VLC. The influence of chaos scrambling on peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and bit error rate (BER) of systems is studied. The experimental simulation results prove the efficiency of the proposed encryption method for DHT-precoded, OFDM-based VLC systems. Furthermore, the influence of the proposed encryption to the PAPR and BER of systems is evaluated. The experimental results show that the proposed security scheme can protect the DHT-precoded, OFDM-based VLC from eavesdroppers, while keeping the good BER performance of DHT-precoded systems. The BER performance of the encrypted and DHT-precoded system is almost the same as that of the conventional DHT-precoded system without encryption.

As the scale of the intra-data center network (DCN) grows even larger, the traditional electrical switching has reached a bottle neck in terms of energy consumption, bandwidth provision, and end-to-end latency. Different approaches have been made by employing the optical switch instead of the electrical ones to solve the bandwidth as well as the energy efficiency and the latency problem. We propose a DCN architecture based on cascaded microelectromechanical systems switches for dynamic DCN connectivity provisioning. This architecture provides high port count, which attributes to the demands of the intradata center traffic. Multiple points to one point switching scenario is experimentally demonstrated through this data center interconnect. Numerical simulation is employed to investigate the performance of the proposed architecture. The results show that the blocking probability and latency decrease as the scale of the architecture is upgraded.

This paper presents the hot-embossing replication of self-centering fiber alignment structures for high-precision, single-mode optical fiber connectors. To this end, a metal mold insert was fabricated by electroforming a polymer prototype patterned by means of deep proton writing (DPW). To achieve through-hole structures, we developed a postembossing process step to remove the residual layer inherently present in hot-embossed structures. The geometrical characteristics of the hot-embossed replicas are compared, before and after removal of the residual layer, with the DPW prototypes. Initial measurements on the optical performance of the replicas are performed. The successful replication of these components paves the way toward low-cost mass replication of DPW-fabricated prototypes in a variety of high-tech plastics.

The output properties of the ∼980-nm Yb-doped fiber laser versus pump power and core–cladding ratio of gain fiber, also the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) at different wavelengths of seed laser, are investigated theoretically. An all-fiber amplifier based on different wavelengths of seed laser at 974.4, 977, and 981.7 nm brings the studies on parasitic oscillation and ASE in the ∼980-nm Yb-doped fiber amplifier. Through the theoretical and experimental research, we found that the controlling of three-level ASE around ∼980-nm is pivotal for obtaining a high-power 980-nm Yb-doped fiber amplifier.

We report on a polymer-based porous-core photonic crystal fiber for simultaneous high-birefringent and low-loss propagation of narrowband terahertz (THz) electromagnetic waves. The high birefringence is induced by using rotated elliptical air holes inside the porous-core. The fiber is numerically analyzed with an efficient finite-element method. The simulation results exhibit an extremely high birefringence of ∼0.042 and a very low effective material loss of ∼0.07  cm⁻¹ at an operating frequency of 1 THz. Moreover, we have found an optimal rotation angle (θ)=n30  deg (n is an odd integer). Other modal features of the fiber, such as confinement loss, power fraction, effective area, bending loss, and dispersion, also have been analyzed. We anticipate that the proposed fiber would be suitable in polarization maintaining THz wave guidance applications.

Mode-locked generation of erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) with MoSe₂ thin film as saturable absorber is practically demonstrated. Bulk MoSe₂ is exfoliated into few-layer MoSe₂, which is achieved based on the liquid phase exfoliation technique. The few-layer MoSe₂ is mixed with polyvinyl alcohol to become a thin film. Mode-locked occurs between pump powers of 65 and 218 mW. The mode-locked is operated at fundamental frequency of 8.8 MHz, and the spectrum is centered at 1560 nm. The SNR of mode-locked EDFL is more than 50 dB. At pump power of 218 mW, 91.3 pJ of pulse energy is achieved.

The gain recovery dynamic characteristics of the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) with distributed feedback (DFB) grating are theoretically investigated. The interaction of the grating structure and the assist light is used to accelerate the gain recovery process in the SOA. The effects of the assist light that is injected into the SOA with DFB structure on the gain recovery dynamics, the steady-state carrier density, and field intensity distributions are analyzed, respectively. Results show that the recovery time in the DFB SOA is successfully reduced by injecting relatively high power assist light, whose wavelength is set at the gain region. Finally, under assist light injection, the effects of DFB grating on the gain recovery process are also discussed. It is shown that the gain recovery in the SOA with DFB grating is faster than that in the SOA without DFB grating. In addition, the coupling factor in the DFB grating structure can be optimized to shorten the gain recovery time.

A porous-core octagonal photonic crystal fiber (PC-OPCF) with ultralow effective material loss (EML), high core power fraction, and ultra flattened dispersion is proposed for terahertz (THz) wave propagation. At an operating frequency of 1 THz and core diameter of 345  μm, simulation results display an extremely low EML of 0.047  cm⁻¹, 49.1% power transmission through core air holes, decreased confinement loss with the increase of frequency, and dispersion variation of 0.15  ps/THz/cm. In addition, the proposed PCF can successfully operate in single-mode condition. All the simulations are performed with finite-element modeling package, COMSOL v4.2. The design can be fabricated using a stacking and drilling method. Thus, the proposed fiber has the potential of being an effective transmission medium of broadband THz waves.

For uncoupled mode-division-multiplexed systems in weakly coupled (WC) few-mode fibers (FMFs), we numerically investigate the effect of splices on the statistical regularities of WC property preservation along the transmission link. At each splice, the probability density functions of intermodal cross talk (XT) for the transmitted linearly polarized mode(s) are numerically analyzed by using Gaussian fitting. Under the assessment criterion of accumulated intermodal XT affected by discrete splices, we give an empirical evaluation on the uncoupled probability value versus transmission distance, for WC FMF links with different splicing qualities.

A versatile signal processing strategy for eliminating the residual amplitude modulation (RAM) and distortion in tunable diode laser wavelength modulation spectroscopy is theoretically demonstrated and experimentally validated. The strategy involves logarithmic transformation and differential detection, which are achieved using a homemade circuit. Through the logarithmic transformation, the optical intensity modulation of the laser, which performs as the source of RAM and distortion, is separated from the absorption-induced power attenuation and further balanced during the differential detection. The first harmonic, which is proportional to the first-order derivative of the absorption line profile in the case of a small modulation index, is extracted along with the second harmonic and is integrated for the recovery of the absorption line profile. The experiments are carried out for CH₄ at its R(3) absorption line of the 2ν3 overtone for validation of the system, and the derived results are found to be in good agreement with the theoretical simulations. These promising results indicate the high potential of the strategy for absorption spectrum-based determination of gas properties.

Modeling of a fused silica (SiO₂) glass prism-based plasmonic structure comprising of indium oxide (In₂O₃)–zirconium dioxide (ZrO₂)–silver (Ag)–zinc oxide (ZnO) intermediate layers showing enhancement in sensitivity and figure-of-merit (FOM) in visible and infrared regime has been reported in this paper. Performance of the proposed plasmonic structure has been demonstrated in terms of sensitivity, half width (HW), detection accuracy (DA), and FOM parameters in visible (632.8 nm) and infrared (1200 nm) wavelength of light. High sensitivity of fused silica glass material, In₂O₃, ZnO films along with high DA and high FOM of Ag and inclusion of ZrO₂ as an oxidation protective layer in between In₂O₃ and Ag have been the most exciting and advantageous features of our proposed structure. Simulated sensitivity values of our proposed structure were found to be 73.8  deg/RIU at 632.8 nm wavelength and it was found enhanced to 109.6  deg/RIU at 1200 nm wavelength and simulated FOM values were also found enhanced from 23.3544  RIU−¹ at 632.8 nm to 62.6285  RIU−¹ at 1200 nm wavelength for change in sensing layer refractive indices from 1.30 RIU to 1.35 RIU.

It is well known that the phase change in total internal reflection (TIR) is a function of the refractive indices of the pair of media involved. The spatial phase variations in a totally internally reflected beam are accurately measured using a Mach Zehnder interferometer employing polarization phase shifting technique. The evaluated phase change is then related to the refractive index variations of the rarer medium. One of the salient features of the proposed technique is that, unlike most interferometric methods where the measured phase is a function of the sample thickness, TIR phase is independent of the sample thickness as long as the evanescent wave field is fully confined within the sample. The theory of the technique is discussed and experimental results showing the three-dimensional profiles of the measured refractive indices and its spatial variations are presented.

A detailed analysis of the optical reflectivity of a monolithic, T-shaped surface relief grating structure is carried out. It is shown that by changing the groove depths and widths, the frequency-dependent reflectivity of the diffraction grating can be greatly modified to obtain various specific optical elements. The basic T-shaped grating structure is optimized for three specific applications: a perfect mirror with a wide maximal reflection plateau, a bandpass filter, and a dichroic beam splitter. These specific mirrors could be used to steer the propagation of bichromatic laser fields, in situations where multilayer dielectric mirrors cannot be applied due to their worse thermomechanical properties. Colored maps are presented to show the reflection dependency on the variation of several critical structure parameters. To check the accuracy of the numerical results, four independent methods are used: finite-difference time-domain, finite-difference frequency-domain, method of lines, and rigorous coupled-wave analysis. The results of the independent numerical methods agree very well with each other indicating their correctness.

A multifunctional combinational logic module capable of performing several signal manipulation tasks all-optically, such as half-addition/subtraction, single-bit comparison, and 2-to-4 decoding simultaneously is proposed. Several logic functions (A+B¯, A.B, A¯.B, A.B¯, A⊕B, and A⊙B) between two input signals A and B are implemented by harnessing a number of nonlinear effects, such as cross-phase modulation (XPM), cross-gain modulation (XGM), and four-wave mixing (FWM) inside only two highly nonlinear fibers (HNLF) arranged in a parallel structure. The NOR gate (A+B¯) is realized by the means of XPM effect in the first HNLF, whereas, A‾.B, A.B¯, and A.B logics have relied on utilization of XGM and FWM processes, respectively, in parametric medium made up of the second HNLF of parallel arrangement. The remaining A⊕B and A⊙B logics required for successful implementation of the proposed simultaneous scheme are attained by temporally combining previously achieved (A‾.B and A.B‾) and (A.B and A+B‾) logics. Quality-factor ≥7.4 and extinction ratio ≥12.30  dB have been achieved at repetition rates of 100 Gbps for all logic functions (A+B¯, A.B, A¯.B, A.B¯, A⊕B, and A⊙B), suggesting successful simultaneous implementation.

This work represents experimental and simulation analysis of photonic crystal waveguide (PCW)-based biosensor structures, which is used for detection of the Escherichia coli (E. coli) cell. A method is adopted for E. coli culture to measure length, diameter, and refractive index to finalize the structural design and to verify the suitability of PCW as a biosensor. This method is tested using DH5α strains of E. coli. The typical precisions of measurements are varied in ranges from 1.132 to 1.825  μm and from 0.447 to 0.66  μm for pathogen’s length and diameter, respectively. The measured distribution of samples over length and diameter are in correlation with the measurements performed by scanning electron microscope. After obtaining average length and diameter of cylindrical shaped E. coli cell, we consider these values for simulation analysis of designed PCW biosensor. E. coli cell is trapped in the middle of the PCW biosensor having three different types of waveguides, i.e., gallium arsenide/silicon dioxide (GaAs/SiO₂), silicon/silicon dioxide (Si/SiO₂), or silicon nitride/silicon dioxide (Si₃N₄/SiO₂) to observe the maximum resonance shift and sensitivity. It is observed from the simulation data analysis that GaAs/SiO₂ is the preferred PCW biosensor for the identification of E. coli.