We develop a regularization-based algorithm for reconstructing the Cn2 profile using the profile of Fried’s transverse coherent length (r0) of differential column image motion (DCIM) lidar. This algorithm consists of fitting the set of measured data to a spline function and a two-stage inversion method based on regularized least squares QR-factorization (LSQR) in combination with an adaptive selection method. The performance of this algorithm is analyzed by a simulated profile generated from the HV5/7 model and experimental DCIM lidar data. Both the simulation and experiment support the presented approach. It is shown that the algorithm can be applied to estimate a reliable Cn2 profile from DCIM lidar.

As an extension of the Mie lidar technique to measure the extinction coefficient of the surface particles, a horizontally pointing Mie lidar is used for determining the optical properties of Asian dust, which is an approach without knowing the actual lidar ratio. A long lasting dust event is observed based on this approach in May 2014. The “no dust,” “pure dust,” and “polluted dust” stage is observed during this event, and their optical and hygroscopic properties are discussed. Some new optical and hygroscopic features are observed, which benefit from the quantitative, multi-wavelength, and continuous measurement of the extinction related optical properties of dust particles.

We design a new kind of phase zone plates (PZPs) to improve the diffraction efficiency of soft x ray zone plates (ZPs). The design replaces blank parts of PZPs with metals of negative phase shift at the working energy, which is called as the positive and negative PZPs (PNPZPs). According to the calculation, PNPZPs have a higher maximum efficiency than conventional ZPs with the same zone width. With the help of a negative phase coefficient, it is much easier to achieve a π phase shift in one period, resulting in a smaller zone height. This design can help fabricate finer PZPs to achieve a better image resolution.

Passively Q-switched ytterbium-doped fiber lasers (YDFLs) incorporating a molybdenum sulfide selenide (MoSSe)-based saturable absorber (SA) are demonstrated. The modulation depth and saturation intensity of the MoSSe-based SA are measured to be approximately 25.0% and 0.002 MW/cm2, respectively, using the twin detector technique. The YDFL’s output has a center wavelength of 1038.5 nm with a top pulse width and energy of 1.2 μs and 18.9 nJ, respectively, at a pump power of 333 mW. The MoSSe-based SA has a good linear optical response, providing significant opportunity for use in applications over an ultra-broadband spectrum, particularly spectroscopy and biomedical diagnostics.

Free space optical interconnections (FSOIs) are anticipated to become a prevalent technology for short-range high-speed communication. FSOIs use lasers in board-to-board and rack-to-rack communication to achieve improved performance in next generation servers and are expected to help meet the growing demand for massive amounts of inter-card data communication. An array of transmitters and receivers arranged to create an optical bus for inter-card and card-to-backplane communication could be the solution. However, both chip heating and cooling fans produce temperature gradients and hot air flow that results in air turbulence inside the server, which induces signal fading and, hence, influences the communication performance. In addition, the proximity between neighboring transmitters and receivers in the array leads to crosstalk in the received signal, which further contributes to signal degradation. In this Letter, the primary objective is to experimentally examine the off-axis crosstalk between links in the presence of turbulence inside a server chassis. The effects of geometrical and inter-chassis turbulence characteristics are investigated and first-and second-order statistics are derived.

We propose a temperature-insensitive refractive index (RI) fiber sensor based on a Mach–Zehnder interferometer. The sensor with high sensitivity and a robust structure is fabricated by splicing a short photonic crystal fiber (PCF) between two single-mode fibers, where two microcavities are formed at both junctions because of the collapse of the PCF air holes. The microcavity with a larger equatorial dimension can excite higher-order cladding modes, so the sensor presents a high RI sensitivity, which can reach 244.16 nm/RIU in the RI range of 1.333–1.3778. Meanwhile it has a low temperature sensitivity of 0.005 nm/°C in the range of 33°C–360°C.

A method is proposed to realize accurate spatial complex modulation based on the spatial cross-modulation method (SCMM) via a phase-only spatial light modulator. The conventional SCMM cannot achieve high quality reconstruction, especially when the diffusion ratio is small. We propose an iterative algorithm in the calculation of a computer-generated hologram to implement accurate complex modulation. It enables us to generate a high quality reconstruction under a small diffusion ratio. The feasibility of the method is verified by both a numerical simulation and an optical experiment.

We present in this work a new mathematical model to analyze and evaluate optical phenomena occurring in the nonuniform optical waveguide used in integrated optics as an optical coupler. By introducing some modifications to the intrinsic integral, we perfectly assess the radiation field present in the adjacent medium of the waveguide and, thus, follow the evolution of the optical coupling from the taper thin film to the substrate and cladding until there is a total energy transfer. The new model that is introduced can be used to evaluate electromagnetic field distribution in three mediums that constitute any nonuniform optical couplers presenting great or low wedge angles.

The propagation of a filamentary laser beam at an air-glass surface is studied by setting the incident angle satisfying the total reflection condition. The images of the trajectory of the filamentary laser beam inside the sample and the output far-field spatial profiles are measured with varying incident laser pulse energies. Different from the general total reflection, a transmitted laser beam is detected along the propagation direction of the incident laser beam. The energy ratio of the transmitted laser beam depends on the pulse energies of the incident laser beam. The background energy reservoir surrounding the filament core can break the law of total reflection at the air-glass surface, resulting in the regeneration of the transmitted laser beam.

A scheme for measuring the intra-cavity round-trip loss of an all-solid-state single-frequency laser by inserting a type-I noncritical phase-matching nonlinear crystal introducing nonlinear loss into the resonator is presented. The intra-cavity round-trip loss is theoretically deduced by analyzing the dependence of the fundamental-wave (FW) and second-harmonic-wave (SHW) powers on the pump factor and the nonlinear conversion factor of the single-frequency laser and experimentally measuring them by recording different FW and SHW powers, which are decided by the temperature of the nonlinear crystal. The measured intra-cavity round-trip loss and pump factor are 4.84% and 6.91% W 1, respectively. The standard deviations of the measured intra-cavity round-trip loss and the pump factor are 0.26% and 0.07%, respectively. This scheme is very suitable for measuring the intra-cavity round-trip loss of a high-gain solid-state single-frequency laser.

A burst of six pulses with an average power of 38.7 W are obtained for a pulse-burst picosecond 1064 nm laser system at 1 kHz. The six pulses have equal amplitudes and pulse spacings of 800 ps, the beam quality of the M2 factor is less than 2, and the pulse width is 67 ps. Seed pulses are broadened from 22 to 136 ps by single-pass volume Bragg gratings. A laser-diode end-pump Nd:YVO4 beam-splitting amplifier is used to divide and amplify a single pulse into six pulses. An Nd:YAG regenerative amplifier and a single-pass high-gain amplifier are applied.

A constant elastic alloy is a widely used material with a high elastic modulus and an excellent wave velocity consistency. Different morphologies on the constant elastic alloy surface are observed through femtosecond laser irradiation. When the laser average fluence is set to 0.58 J/cm2 and 200 laser pulses, with the increasing depth of distilled water, the period of the laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) becomes shorter accordingly. The higher the ethanol concentration is, the more spot-shaped structures will be formed among the surface structures when the depth of the coverage of ethanol is 2 mm. The period of the LIPSS reaches its maximum when the concentration of ethanol is 80%.

Back conversion is an intrinsic phenomenon in nonlinear frequency down-conversion processes. However, the physical reason for its occurrence is not well understood. Here, we theoretically reveal that back conversion is the result of a π-phase jump associated with the depletion of one interacting wave. By suppressing the idler phase jump through a deliberate crystal absorption, the back conversion can be inhabited, thus enhancing the conversion efficiency from the pump to the signal. The results presented in this Letter will further the understanding of nonlinear parametric processes and pave the way toward the design of highly efficient down-conversion systems.

This Letter reports the formation of periodic surface structures on Ni–Fe film irradiated by a single femtosecond laser pulse. A concave lens with a focus length of 150 mm is placed in front of an objective (100×, NA=0.9), which transforms the Gaussian laser field into a ring distribution by the Fresnel diffraction. Periodic ripples form on the ablation area after the irradiation of a single femtosecond laser pulse, which depends on the laser polarization and laser fluence. We propose that the ring structure of the laser field leads to a similar transient distribution of the permittivity on the sample surface, which further launches the surface plasmon polaritons. The interaction of the incident laser with surface plasmon polaritons dominates the formation of periodic surface structures.

The spin Hall effect of light (SHEL) can be observed by the dark strip resulting from weak measurement. We find that the SHEL of a partially coherent beam (PCB) has a similar phenomenon as well. However, the dark strip in the SHEL of a PCB cannot be explained by considering the beam as an assemblance of coherent speckles. Also, the dark strip in a PCB is not purely dark. By analyzing the autocorrelation, we show that the SHEL of a PCB is the result of overlapping coherent speckles’ SHEL. We further prove our conclusion by adjusting convergence and incident angles. Finally, we develop a qualitative theory to clarify the SHEL of a PCB.

A novel design of a two-channel optical add–drop multiplexer based on a self-rolled-up microtube (SRM) is presented. This design consists of an SRM that has a parabolic lobe-like pattern along the tube’s axial direction, as well as straight silicon waveguides and a 180° waveguide bend. The vertical configuration of the SRM and waveguides is analyzed by the coupled mode theory for achieving the optimum gap. In the critical coupling regime, when the device serves as an optical demultiplexer, the minimum insertion loss is 1.94 dB, and the maximum channel crosstalk is 6.036 dB. Also, as an optical multiplexer, the maximum crosstalk becomes 11.9 dB.

We extensively discuss 25 Gb/s per wavelength capacity in both IEEE and ITU-T standardization to support the increasing bandwidth requirement. In this Letter, we propose to use the optical dispersion compensation technique in an optical line terminal (OLT) combined with a bandwidth-limited electro-absorption modulated laser in an optical network unit to achieve 25 Gb/s capacity for the upstream link. We evaluate the positive and negative dispersion tolerances of 25 Gb/s electrical duo-binary (EDB) and pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM-4) signals. We achieve 39.5 and 31 dB upstream loss budgets for the 25 Gb/s EDB and PAM-4 signals by using 600 and 500 ps/nm optical dispersion compensation in OLT, respectively, both supporting 0–40 km differential reach.

In this Letter, we propose an efficient compression algorithm for multi-spectral images having a few bands. First, we propose a low-complexity removing spectral redundancy approach to improve compression performance. Then, a bit plane encoding approach is applied to each band to complete the compression. Finally, the experiments are performed on multi-spectral images. The experiment results show that the proposed compression algorithm has good compressive property. Compared with traditional approaches, the proposed method can decrease the average peak signal noise ratio by 0.36 dB at 0.5 bpp. The processing speed reaches 23.81 MPixels/s at the working frequency of 88 MHz, which is higher than the traditional methods. The proposed method satisfies the project application.