The characterization of x-shaped antenna arrays operating in the mid-infrared is proposed. An equivalent circuit model for the resonant characteristic of the x-shaped nanoaperture antenna arrays is also included. In order to understand the resonance behavior of the structure, a detailed study of the field-enhancement capabilities and light transmission characteristics of the structure is proposed. In the experimental studies, the transmission characteristics of the periodic x-apertures are analyzed by varying the geometrical dimensions. Consequently, it is observed that the periodic subwavelength x-apertures show extremely high near-field optical resolution and enhanced transmission compared with the other nm-sized apertures.

A simple modal analysis (MA) method to explain the diffraction process of 0th order nulled phase mask is presented. In MA, multiple reflections of the grating modes at grating interfaces are considered by introducing equivalent Fresnel coefficients. Analytical expressions of the diffraction efficiencies and modal guidelines for the 0th order nulled phase grating design are also presented. The phase mask structure, which comprises a high-index contrast HfO2 grating and a fused-silica substrate, is optimized using rigorous coupled-wave analysis around the 800-nm wavelength, after which the modal guideline for cancellation of the 0th order in a phase mask is verified. The proposed MA method illustrates the inherent physical mechanism of multiple reflections of the grating modes in the diffraction process, which can help to analyze and design both low-contrast and high-contrast gratings.

A multichannel fiber-optic Fabry-Perot (F-P) demodulator based on nonscanning correlation demodulation is proposed. The demodulator principle is analyzed, and the prototype of nonscanning correlation demodulation fiber-optic F-P demodulator is made and tested. The measurement range of the prototype is from 10 to 40 μm, the demodulation resolution is 8 nm, and its stability is 7 nm. This method provides a feasible solution, which guarantees the practicability of the fiber-optic F-P sensor network.

The modulation instability (MI) induced by cross-phase modulation (XPM) in dispersion-decreasing fiber (DDF), whose dispersion decreases along the direction of propagation, is solved and analyzed by the perturbation method for the extended nonlinear Schr¨odinger equation, considering the higher-order dispersion. The change of the gain spectra with incident power and dispersion decaying factor are also given respectively. Due to the fourth-order dispersion, XPM occurs at two gain spectral regions in both the normal and the anomalous dispersion regimes of DDF. The two gain spectral regions in the anomalous dispersion regime are larger than those in the normal dispersion regime. Moreover, the gain spectrum of the second region in the anomalous dispersion regime is near zero compared with that in the normal dispersion regime, indicating that XPM can be easily produced in the anomalous dispersion regime. The spectral width increases with the increase of the incident optical power and the dispersion decaying factor.

An optical frequency comb generation scheme using time-to-frequency conversion and optical fiber-loop modulation is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. Flat-top optical pulse train from an intensity modulator is injected into a fiber loop, which includes a phase modulator and an amplifier and is cyclically modulated by the phase modulator, to generate abundant optical comb lines. A total of 110 comb lines with 3-dB spectral power variation and 10-GHz frequency spacing are obtained. The proposed scheme is relatively simple and uses only one intensity modulator and one phase modulator.

A fiber Bragg grating-based accelerometer with a fully metalized package is presented. Magnetron sputtering and electroplating techneques are successively adopted to metalize bare SiO2 fiber with a single Bragg grating. Laser welding techneque is adopted to fix the metal-coated fiber on the sensor component to obtain a fully metallized package without adhesives. Vibration test results demonstrate that the accelerometer has a flat frequency response over a 1-kHz bandwidth, with a resonance frequency of 3.6 kHz, wide linear measurement range of up to 8 g, and sensitivity of 1.7 pm/g.

With the emergence of high-bitrate applications, cross stratum optimization (CSO) attracts the interest of network operators because of its application in the joint optimization of optical networks and application stratum resources. Given the large-scale growth and high complexity of optical networks, achieving a more effective, accurate, and practical CSO becomes an important research focus. In this letter, we present a CSO-oriented, unified control architecture for OpenFlow-enabled triple-M optical networks. A novel dynamic global load balancing (DGLB) strategy with dynamic resource rating for CSO is presented based on the proposed architecture. The DGLB strategy is then compared with four other strategies by conducting experiments on a SOFT-based testbed with 1000 virtual nodes.

An all-fiber optical laser pulse multi-pass stretcher using a chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG) is demon- strated. Pulses from a 1 053-nm mode-locked fiber seed oscillator are stretched by multiple passing through a chirped fiber grating set in a fiber regenerative amplifier structure. We stretch the pulse from 16 ps to 1.855 ns after it transmits seven loops in the stretcher. The main factors that affect the stretching results are discussed.

We propose a one-dimensional integral imaging (1DII) display that consists of a display panel and a gradient-aperture parallax barrier. The gradient-aperture parallax barrier is symmetrical, and its slit widths gradually increase from both sides to the middle. The leftmost and rightmost slits are used to fix the viewing angle, whereas the other slits are used to increase the optical efficiency. A prototype of the proposed 1DII display is developed. Its optical efficiency is higher than that of the conventional display, but the viewing angles are the same.

A novel broadband transmission method to determine polymer film thickness during manufacturing is proposed, and a measurement system is developed based on this method. The relationship between broadband optical power and film thickness is deduced according to the Lambert–Beer law. The system is composed of a halogen light and an optical power meter. Results show that the measurement error of this method is approximately 1 \mm m, and the resolution of the system is below 0.4 \mu m for polymer films with less than 100-\mm m thickness.

We measure the half-wave voltage of LiNbO3 phase modulators in a 26-GHz wideband frequency range, and then analyze it by the phase modulation photonic peak gain linked to the interferometric demodulation. The optical interferometer is constructed with two 50:50 couplers and two fiber arms with a 1-m difference in fiber length. The photonic link gain peaks are frequency dependent, as indicated by the differential time delay in the interferometer. The procedure described is a new and practical half-wave voltage measurement method that can accurately predict the nonlinear frequency characteristics of the phase modulator. Moreover, the method can be applied to various types of LiNbO3 phase modulators.

A switchable multiwavelength laser with a continuously tunable spacing is proposed and illustrated based on cascaded interactions of the second harmonic and difference-frequency generations in an aperiodically poled MgO-doped lithium niobate (MgO:APPLN) waveguide. The wavelengths and wavelength spacings of the four outputs are continuously varied and controlled by changing the two input pump wavelengths and spacings within a 3-nm flattop bandwidth of MgO:APPLN. In addition, the switchable states of the four outputs can be selected by inputting proper powers of the two pumps. The number of output wavelengths can also be increased by choosing the proper APPLN structure, the total length of MgO:APPLN, and higher powers of input pump lights.

A Q-switched distributed Bragg reflector fiber laser using a graphene passive saturable absorber is proposed in a cavity consisting of a fiber Bragg grating and Faraday rotator mirror as end mirrors, together with a highly doped erbium-doped fiber as a gain source. The laser has a Q-switched threshold of about 28 mW and a tunable repetition rate of 10.4–18.0 kHz with varying pump power. The shortest pulse width obtained from the system is 3.7 μs, with a maximum pulse energy and peak power of 22.2 nJ and 3.4 mW, respectively.

A high-repetition rate master oscillator power amplifier pumped with laser diodes (LDs) is reported. An injection seeding single-frequency electro-optical Q-switched Nd:YAG laser is used as an oscillator, and a conductively cooled Nd:YAG zigzag slab with a bounce-pumped architecture is utilized as a power amplifier. Pulse energies of over 800 mJ at 1 064 nm and 400 mJ at 532 nm, corresponding to average powers of 200 and 100W, respectively, are achieved with a 12.6-ns pulse width at 250 Hz. Output frequency fluctuations and single-frequency operation are further monitored. Experimental results reveal that the proposed system, which features a single-pass amplified configuration, is a promising design for space-based applications.

A double-slit ghost interference experiment performed on an entangled resource using type-II non-collinear degenerate spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) is demonstrated. The influence of the distance between the double-slit and the bucket detector preceded by a pinhole is studied. The experimental results show that the interference fringes become increasingly distinct with higher visibility when the pinhole-double-slit distance increases. A first-order classical theory based on the Klyshko's two-photon advanced-wave picture, and a second-order quantum-image theory are provided for explanations. The fitting results indicate that the divergence of the converted fluorescence significantly affects the ghost fringes.

We report the direct fabrication of a microfluidic chip composed of two high-aspect ratio microfluidic channels with lengths of 3.5 cm and 8 mm in a glass substrate by femtosecond laser micromachining. The fabrication mainly consists of two steps: 1) writing microchannels and microchambers in a porous glass by scanning a tightly focused laser beam; 2) high-temperature annealing of the glass sample to collapse all the nanopores in the glass. Migration of derivatized amino acids is observed in the microfluidic channel by applying electric voltage across the long-migration microchannel.

We report an optically addressed liquid crystal light valve, a home-made device that has solved the problem of low transmittance caused by opaque electrodes in present transmissive spatial light modulators. The operating characteristic of the light valve is analyzed. The optimum driving voltage of this device is 27 V at 300 Hz, as deduced from the equivalent electric model. Its transmittance reaches 80% and its contrast is approximately 40:1. Its dynamic performance, especially its ability to obscure laser light at programmed locations, is demonstrated. The results are in good agreement with the desired shape, which indicates that our light valve performs very well.

We prepare CdS/CdSe/ZnS thin films by successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction method. Results show a wider photoresponse range of TiO2 mesopores from the ultraviolet region to the visible light region. Sequentially assembled CdS/CdSe/ZnS quantumdots exhibit significantly improved light-harvesting ability and photocurrent efficiency. A high efficiency of 1.059354% is obtained.

An adaptive filter for cancelling noise contained in the direct absorption spectra is reported. This technique takes advantage of the periodical nature of the repetitively scanned spectral signal, and requires no prior knowledge of the detailed properties of noises. An experimental system devised for measuring CH4 is used to test the performance of the filter. The measurement results show that the signal-to-noise (S/N) value is improved by a factor of 2. A higher enhancement factor of the S/N value of 5.4 is obtained through open-air measurement owing to higher distortions of the raw data. In addition, the response time of this filter, which characterizes the real-time detection ability of the system, is nine times shorter than that of a conventional signal averaging solution, under the condition that the filter order is 100.

An analytical model is derived to describe the stress mechanism in a thin film against the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) based on the thermal transfer equation. Different structures of high-reflection films at 355 nm are prepared to validate this model. LIDTs are found to have a linear relationship with stress. Furthermore, predictions from the simple model agree with the experiments.

We demonstrate a switchable Q-switched and mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) operating in the L-band region using the nonlinear polarization rotation effect. The switching operation is achieved by controlling intensity-dependent loss using a polarization controller. In Q-switching mode, the EDFL produces a pulse train with a repetition rate of 21.1 kHz, pulse width of 7.7 μs, and pulse energy of 13.6 nJ. The EDFL also generates a multi-wavelength comb with a very narrow and constant wavelength spacing of 0.045 nm and optical signal-to-noise ratio of at least 10 dB. During mode locking, the EDFL produces stretched pulses with 3-dB bandwidth of 26.2 nm, pulse width of 350 fs, repetition rate of 2.38 MHz, and pulse energy of 48.56 pJ.

A psychophysical experiment is carried out to evaluate the color difference between pairs of color digital images and their modulated versions, which are displayed on a professional liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor, using the category judgment method. The modulated images for six original images are generated with variations in five attributes, namely, lightness, chroma, hue, resolution, and sharpness, considering both their chromatic and spatial characteristics. Several color difference evaluation methods, namely, CIELAB, CIEDE2 000, CAM02-UCS, S-CIELAB, and iCAM, are compared based on the experimental data. The results demonstrate that the performance of iCAM is the best for predicting image color difference.