JEOS

BoX™ grinding technology has been adopted in our E-ELT segment process. The mid-spatial frequency features generated can be removed by several ‘smoothing’ processes. We have reported here a novel method that can smooth these features whilst avoiding edge down-turn. This process can be scaled up to E-ELT segment fabrication time-scale. It has been experimentally demonstrated that the surface quality is good enough for subsequent Zeeko form correction technology to achieve form specifications.

We report an ultra-long Raman laser with a 46 km fiber length that behaved as a Rayleigh back-scattering–based optical feedback. The laser was tunable from 1550 nm to 1571 nm (3 dB bandwidth) with the insertion of an optical grating filter. Evaluations on the spectral evolution and power development were also performed from the results obtained. In fact, it was discovered that the spectral broadening effect between the modeless spectra resembled the same process that happens in a typical fiber cavity that has high reflectors at each cavity end. In addition, the output power showed a square-root development with respect to the input power.

A discontinuous space variant sub-wavelength dielectric grating is designed and fabricated for generating radially polarized light in visible region (λ = 632.8 nm). The design is based on sub-wavelength silicon nitride structures introducing a retardation of π/2 by form birefringence, with space variant orientation of the optical axis. The pattern is divided into concentric ring segments with constant structural parameters, therefore reducing electron-beam writing time significantly. The design avoids the technological challenges encountered in the generation of a continuous space variant grating while maintaining good quality of the resulting polarization mode.

We probe chemotaxis of single neurons, induced by signalling molecules which were optically delivered from liposomes in the neighbourhood of the cells. We implemented an optical tweezers setup combined with a micro-dissection system on an inverted microscope platform. Molecules of Netrin-1 protein were encapsulated into micron-sized liposomes and manipulated to micrometric distances from a specific growth cone of a hippocampal neuron by the IR optical tweezers. The molecules were then released broken the liposomes with UV laser pulses. Chemotaxis induced by the delivered molecules was confirmed by the migration of the growth cone toward the liposome position. Since the delivery can be manipulated with high temporal and spatial resolution and the number of molecules released can be controlled quite precisely by tuning the liposome size and the solution concentration, this technique opens new opportunities to investigate the effect of physiological active compounds as Netrin-1 to neuronal signalling and guidance, which represents an important issue in neurobiology.

A numerical method is presented for sizing of highly conductive penetrable and perfectly electrically conducting (PEC) submicron wires on substrates. For efficiency, the Method of Auxiliary Sources is used in the forward model of the inverse Kirsch-Kress Method. The radius of the circular cross section of PEC and silver wires positioned on a semi-infinite silicon substrate is estimated based on numerically simulated scattered far field. The illumination is monochromatic, transverse electric (TE) polarised, and with fixed angle of incidence. Average relative errors smaller than 1% and 5% are achieved for PEC and penetrable wires, respectively, in the dynamic ranges 0.2–1.3 and 0.8–1.3 times the operating free-space wavelength, respectively. In all cases, the inversion time is less than 1 sec.

This paper reports the first use of terahertz time domain reflection imaging involving textiles on part of a complete human mummy, still in original wrapping. X-ray technique has been used extensively to investigate anatomical features, since X-ray pass through the wrapping. Terahertz waves, on the other hand, can penetrate into non-metallic materials and its reflection depends on the refractive index of materials at the interface, such as textiles and the air. The mummy of Kharushere (ca. 945-712 B.C.) was examined by using Terahertz time domain reflection imaging in the Egyptian galleries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Experimental results suggest that the Terahetz imaging is a promising technique for probing the fabric layers surrounding Egyptian mummies, although it is still very limited in its current state. In the future it could become a useful complement to CT scanning when materials with low radiographic density and contrast are being investigated.

The subwavelength structure of the core of a photonic crystal fibre can modify its dispersion characteristic and significantly shift the zero dispersion wavelength. The dispersion properties of photonic crystal fibres with core structures made of a 2D lattice of subwavelength air holes and various glass inclusions are studied. We show that a modification of the core structure can give flat dispersion over a range of over 300 nm and can shift the zero dispersion wavelength over 700 nm while the core diameter and photonic cladding remain unchanged. The developed photonic crystal fibre with nanorod core has successfully demonstrated supercontinuum generation in NIR.

In the present paper, we detail the implementation of a numerical scheme based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) dedicated to a tri-dimensional investigation of photo-induced thermal effects in arbitrary nano-structures. The distribution of Joule losses resulting from the scattering of an incident wave by an arbitrary object embedded in a multilayered media is used as source of a conductive thermal transient problem. It is shown that an appropriate and rigorous formulation of the FEM consists in reducing the electromagnetic scattering problem to a radiative one whose sources are localized inside the scatterer. This approach makes the calculation very tractable. Its advantage compared to other existing methods lies in its complete independence towards the geometric, optical and thermal properties of both the scatterer and the medium in which it lies. Among the wide range of domain of application of this numerical scheme, we illustrate its relevance when applied to two typical cases of laser damage of optical components in high power applications.

Based on existing exact and asymptotic Kirchhoff solutions for focused electromagnetic fields inside a dielectric slab we present numerical comparisons between them also for the special cases of focusing through a single interface or in a single medium. These comparisons show that the exact and asymptotic Kirchhoff solutions for focusing in a single medium or through a single interface agree well, except at observation points near to the interface while a small difference between the two solutions for the focused electrical field inside a dielectric slab is observed, especially at observation points near to one of the interfaces. This difference is believed to be due to contributions from surface waves, which are not accounted for in the asymptotic Kirchhoff solutions. At low Fresnel numbers focal shift phenomena are observed in all three cases.

A variational procedure is given for finding the pulses for which the initial temporal rms width and the rate of increase of this width are jointly minimized for propagation in non-absorbing media with arbitrary dispersive properties. We show that, while in linearly dispersive media the optimal pulses are Gaussian, in other situations such as a hollow metallic waveguide or for purely cubic dispersion departures from Gaussian behavior become evident. An interpretation of the results in terms of suitable phase-space representations is also given.

Digital holographic systems are a class of two step, opto-numerical, three-dimensional imaging techniques. The role of the digital camera in limiting the resolution and field of view of the reconstructed image, and the interaction of these limits with a general optical system is poorly understood. The linear canonical transform describes any optical system consisting of lenses and/or free space in a unified manner. Expressions derived using it are parametrised in terms of the parameters of the optical system, as well as those of the digital camera: aperture size, pixel size and pixel pitch. We develop rules of thumb for selecting an optical system to minimise mean squared error for given input and digital camera parameters. In the limit, our results constitute a point spread function analysis. The results presented in this paper will allow digital holography practitioners to select an optical system to maximise the quality of their reconstructed image using a priori knowledge of the camera and object.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a sensitive technique that has the potential to detect haemodynamic changes during the performance of specific activation tasks. However, in real situations, fNIRS recordings are often corrupted by physiological phenomena, especially by cardiac contraction, breathing and blood pressure fluctuations, and these forms of interference can severely limit the utility of fNIRS. We present a novel fNIRS enhancement based on the multidistance fNIRS method with short-distance and long-distance optode pairs. With this method empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is applied to decompose the superficial haemodynamic changes, derived from the short-distance fNIRS measurements, into a series of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). By utilizing the weighting parameters for the IMFs, we perform an estimation for global interference in the desired haemodynamic changes, derived from the long-distance fNIRS measurements. We recover the evoked brain activity by minimizing least squares between the desired haemodynamic changes and the estimated global interference. To accelerate the computation, we adopt the recursive least squares (RLS) to decrease the computation complexity due to the matrix inversion. Monte Carlo simulations based on a five-layered slab model of a human adult head was implemented to evaluate our methodology. The results demonstrate that the EMD-RLS method can effectively remove contamination from the evoked brain activity.

Temperature calibrated piezoelectric resonances of internal acoustic vibration modes of a nonlinear-optical crystal during its heating by high-power laser radiation are used for noncontact highly accurate measurements of both the non-uniform temperature distribution in the crystal volume and in the surrounding air. A novel notion of equivalent temperature of a crystal heated by laser radiation is introduced in laser physics. The true non-uniform crystal thermodynamic temperature at a given laser power is substituted by the measured equivalent crystal temperature, which is constant at that laser power. Using appropriate laser heating model the measured value of the equivalent crystal temperature allows one to calculate the unknown linear and nonlinear optical absorption coefficients as well as the heat transfer coefficient of the crystal with the surrounding air.

We establish analytical expressions that demonstrate that the beam produced after diffraction of a gaussian beam by an opaque disk and collimation by a lens can be approached by a diffraction-free J0 Bessel function. We further demonstrate that a similar analytical expression can be established in the case of femtosecond incident pulses

We consider the Raman amplification problem for silicon waveguides in the regime in which both the pump and signal pulses are relatively short but wide enough that their duration exceeds the phonon lifetime (about 3 ps in silicon). We use the coupled pump-signal equations for numerical simulations that include all competing nonlinear effects such as self- and cross-phase modulations, two-photon and free-carrier absorptions, and changes in the refractive index induced by the free carriers. However, numerical simulations do not provide much physical insight. For this reason, we also develop an approximate analytic approach for solving the Raman amplification problem. We introduce the concept of an effective Raman gain and show analytically how it depends on the pump bandwidth. As the pump spectrum broadens inside the silicon waveguide, the effective Raman gain is reduced considerably. We obtain an analytical form of the nonlinear phase accumulated during propagation inside a silicon waveguide and use it to calculate the total spectral broadening experienced by a pump pulse. Using this result, we can predict changes in the effective Raman gain as a function of pump pulse energy. A comparison of our predictions with the recent experimental data shows that our model is reasonable and captures the essential physics.

The application of diffractive optical elements can enhance the efficiency of the two-photon polymerization (TPP) process by multiplying the polymerizing beams. Spatial light modulators (SLMs) can dynamically change the light intensity pattern used for polymerization, making single shot polymerization possible. Most reflective, liquid crystal-based instruments, however, suffer from various surface aberrations. In order to enable SLMs to generate suitable polymerizing beams for TPP, these aberrations need to be corrected. Several methods were introduced earlier to compensate SLM aberrations in different applications. For the nonlinear process of TPP, we developed and specifically characterized a correction procedure. We used a simple interferometric method to determine the surface distortion of the SLM, calculated a correcting hologram and confirmed the correction with the polymerization of test structures. The corrected SLM was capable of parallel polymerization of 3D structures with a quality achievable with non-SLM beams.

Several quantities related to the Zernike circle polynomials admit an expression, via the basic identity in the diffraction theory of Nijboer and Zernike, as an infinite integral involving the product of two or three Bessel functions. In this paper these integrals are identified and evaluated explicitly for the cases of (a)~the expansion coefficients of scaled-and-shifted circle polynomials, (b)~the expansion coefficients of the correlation of two circle polynomials, (c)~the Fourier coefficients occurring in the cosine representation of the circle polynomials.

A theory of optical trapping at low Numerical Aperture (NA) is presented. The theory offers an analytical description of the competition between the stabilizing gradient and destabilizing scattering force. The trade-off can be characterized by a single dimensionless trapping parameter, which increases with bead size to wavelength ratio $a/\lambda$ and refractive index contrast $m$ and decreases with NA. The gradient force dominates for small trapping parameters, the scattering force for large trapping parameters. The potential well depth, maximum forces and trap stiffness as a function of the three parameters ($a/\lambda$, $m$, NA) can be mapped onto universal functions of the trapping parameter. These functions do not depend on any free parameter. The universal well depth and maximum force curves match with numerical results based on the exact multipole expansion of the optical trapping force. The paraxial limit of low NA is relevant for compact optical tweezers based on Optical Pickup Units known from optical data storage.

A microfiber loop resonator (MLR) is fabricated by coiling a microfiber which is fabricated using a flame heating technique, into itself. A temperature response on a comb spectrum of a fabricated MLR, which is embedded in a low refractive index polymer, is investigated. The spacing of the transmission comb spectrum of the MLR is observed to be unchanged with the temperature. However, the extinction ratio of the spectrum is observed to be linearly decreased with the temperature. The slope of the extinction ratio reduction against temperature was about 0.043dB/oC. The dependence of the extinction ratio on temperature is due to the change in the material’s refractive index.

In this work we investigated the scattering and absorption properties of nanofluids consisting in aqueous suspensions of single wall carbon nanohorns of different morphologies and prepared with different amounts of surfactant. The characteristics of these nanofluids were evaluated in order to use them as direct sunlight absorber fluids in solar devices. The differences in optical properties induced by carbon nanoparticles compared to those of pure water lead to a considerably higher sunlight absorption with respect to the pure base fluid. Scattered light over the total attenuation of light was found to be nearly negligible at NIR wavelengths. Both these effects, together with the possible chemical functionalization of carbon nanohorns, make this new kind of nanofluids very interesting for increasing the overall efficiency of the sunlight exploiting device.