Synchronization of Fourier-Synthesized Optical Pulses to a Mode-Locked Optical Clock

A Fourier-synthesized 40-GHz optical pulse train was successfully synchronized to an 8-GHz optical clock generated from a mode-locked fiber ring laser. The measured timing jitter of the synchronization was 0.43 ps.

Sharp photonic Crystal Defect Modes and Their Response to Ultrashort Optical Pulses

Single photonic crystal defects based on an air-bridge structure were fabricated. We obtained sharp defect modes with quality factors higher than 600 and observed their response to ultrashort optical pulses by utilizing two-photon absorption.

Phase matched scanning optical parametric chirped pulse amplification based on pump beam deflection

Combined with the optical beam deflection,a novel approach of phase matched broadband scanning optical parametric chirped pulse amplification(OPCPA)was proposed.For this scheme,there was no superfluous operations to the chirped signal pulse which propagated in a changeless direction straightforward,but the pump beam were deflected in space with time by passing through a KTN crystal,which was applied with varied driving voltage.The theories of phase matching of each chirped signal frequency based on pump beam deflection was analyzed detailedly.And the type-I amplification of chirped signal with 800 nm central wavelength and 20 nm bandwidth pumped by 532 nm in BBO crystal was simulated as a case in point.The simulation results showed that the spectral distribution of chirped signal pulse was almost the same as the initial form,i.e.,there was nearly no narrowing on the amplified spectrum by using of the scanning OPCPA based on pump beam deflection.In addition,the simulations demonstrated that it was worth minimizing the voltage deviation applied to KTN crystal as much as possible for the sake of better waveform,larger bandwidth and higher conversion efficiency of amplified signal pulse in the proposed scanning OPCPA.

High-Stability High-Energy Picosecond Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplifier as a Preamplifier in Nd：Glass Petawatt System for Contrast Enhancement

We demonstrate a novel picosecond optical parametric preamplification to generate high-stability, high-energy and high-contrast seed pulses. The 5 ps seed pulse is amplified from 60 pJ to 300μJ with an 8.6 ps/3 mJ pump laser in a signal stage of short pulse non-collinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification. The total gain is more than 10~6 and the rms energy stability is under 1.35%. The contrast ratio is higher than 10~8 within a scale of 20 ps before the main pulse. Consequently, the improvement factor of the signal contrast is approximately equal to the gain 10~6 outside the pump window.

10-GHz broadband optical frequency comb generation at 1550/1310 nm

The generation of high-repetition rate(frep≥10 GHz)ultra-broadband optical frequency combs(OFCs)at 1550 nm and 1310 nm is investigated by seeding two types of highly nonlinear fibers(HNLFs)with 10 GHz picosecond pulses at the pump wavelength of 1550 nm.When pumped near the zero dispersion wavelength(ZDW)in the normal dispersion region of a HNLF,10 GHz flat-topped OFC with 43 nm bandwidth within 5 dB power variation is generated by self-phase modulation(SPM)-based OFC spectral broadening at 26.5 dBm pump power,and 291 fs pulse trains with 10 GHz repetition rate are obtained at 18 dBm pump power without complicated pulse shaping methods.Furthermore,when pumped in the abnormal dispersion region of a HNLF,OFCs with dispersive waves around 1310 nm are studied using a common HNLF and fluorotellurite fibers,which maintain the good coherence of the pump light at 1550 nm.At the same time,sufficient tunability of the generated dispersive waves is achieved when tuning the pump power or ZDW.

High-efficiency bismuth borate-based optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier with approximately 2.1 mJ,38 fs output pulses at approximately 2150 nm

We present a compact and cost-effective mJ-level femtosecond laser system operating at a center wavelength of approximately 2.15μm.An affordable two-stage ytterbium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet(Yb:YAG)chirped pulse amplifier provides more than 10 mJ,approximately 1.2 ps pulses at 1030 nm to pump a three-stage optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier(OPCPA)based on bismuth borate crystals and to drive the supercontinuum seed in the YAG crystal.The energy of the amplified pulses in the wavelength range of 1.95–2.4μm reached 2.25 mJ with a pump-tosignal conversion efficiency of approximately 25%in the last OPCPA stage.These pulses were compressed to 38 fs in a pair of Suprasil 300 glass prisms.

Memristive Artificial Synapses for Neuromorphic Computing

Neuromorphic computing simulates the operation of biological brain function for information processing and can potentially solve the bottleneck of the von Neumann architecture.This computing is realized based on memristive hardware neural networks in which synaptic devices that mimic biological synapses of the brain are the primary units.Mimicking synaptic functions with these devices is critical in neuromorphic systems.In the last decade,electrical and optical signals have been incorporated into the synaptic devices and promoted the simulation of various synaptic functions.In this review,these devices are discussed by categorizing them into electrically stimulated,optically stimulated,and photoelectric synergetic synaptic devices based on stimulation of electrical and optical signals.The working mechanisms of the devices are analyzed in detail.This is followed by a discussion of the progress in mimicking synaptic functions.In addition,existing application scenarios of various synaptic devices are outlined.Furthermore,the performances and future development of the synaptic devices that could be significant for building efficient neuromorphic systems are prospected.

Performance study of optical triangular-shaped pulse generation with full duty cycle

A scheme of triangular-shaped pulses with full duty cycle generation is proposed and analyzed.Benefiting from the feature of orthogonal polarization,two approximate sinusoidal signals on different polarization states can be combined without inducing coherent interference.By tuning the time mismatching between the two signals,an approximately triangular-shaped profile can be obtained in the optical intensity.It is found that the modulation index β is no longer a fixed one,but it can be aligned within a proper range of 0.92 to 1.57.To evaluate the proposal,impacts of radio frequency voltage fluctuation,bias voltage drift,and time mismatching are discussed.Within the defined fitting error(η≤ 3%),the tolerable range of the modulation index,time mismatching,and voltage have been found,which insures a simple operation in practice.

Effects of Chirped Super-Gaussian Pulses on Optical Communication System Using Midway Optical Phase Conjugation

Relationship between the initial chirp of super-Gaussian pulse and dispersion and nonlinearity effects of a single-mode fiber in the optical communication system using midway optical phase conjugation is analyzed. The results of numerical simulations are useful for improving compensation for pulse distortion.

Recent improvements on the pulsed optically pumped rubidium clock at SIOM

We report the recent progress of our pulsed optically pumped(POP) vapor cell rubidium clock with dispersive detection.A new compact physics package is made.A rubidium cell with a high precision buffer gases mixing ratio is obtained,and the temperature controlling system is renovated to reduce fractional frequency sensitivity to temperature variation.The resolution of the servo control voltage is also optimized.With these improvements,a clock frequency stability of 3.53×10^(-13) at 1s is obtained,and a fractional frequency stability of 4.91×10^(-15) is achieved at an average time of τ=2000 s.

SNR improvement in self-heterodyne detection Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer using Golay pulse codes

The application of Golay pulse coding technique in spontaneous Brillouin-based distributed temperature sensor based on self-heterodyne detection of Rayleigh and Brillouin scattering is theoretically and experimentally analyzed. The enhancement of system signal to noise ratio(SNR) and reduction of temperature measurement error provided by coding are characterized. By using 16-bit Golay coding, SNR can be improved by about 2.77 d B, and temperature measurement error of the 100 m heated fiber is reduced from 1.4 °C to 0.5 °C with a spatial resolution of 13 m. The results are believed to be beneficial for the performance improvement of self-heterodyne detection Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer.

Pulse reference-based compensation technique for intensity-modulated optical fiber sensors

We propose a compensation technique based on pulse reference for intensity-modulated optical fiber sensors that can compensate the power fluctuation of the light source, the change of optical components transmission loss,and the coupler splitting ratio. The theoretical principle of this compensation technique is analyzed and a temperature sensor based on fiber coating-covered optical microfiber is carried out to demonstrate the compensation effect. The system noise is measured to be 0.0005 d B with the temperature sensitivity reaching-0.063 dB∕°C, and the output drift is 0.006 dB in 2h at room temperature. The output shows a slight variation(0.0061 dB) when the light source and the common light path suffer a 3 dB attenuation fluctuation.

Effect of nitrogen pressure on optical properties and microstructure of diamond-like carbon films grown by pulsed laser deposition

The effect of nitrogen pressure on optical properties of hydrogen-free diamond-like carbon (DLC) films deposited by pulsed laser ablation graphite in different background pressures of nitrogen is reported. By varying nitrogen pressures from 0.05 to 15.00 Pa, the photoluminescence is gradually increased and optical transmittance is gradually decreased. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is used to observe the surface morphology of the DLC films. The results indicate that the surface becomes unsmoothed and there are some globose particles on the films surface with the rise of nitrogen pressures. The microstructure of the films is characterized using Raman spectroscopy.

A Mutual Pulse Injection-Seeding Scheme for Optical Short Pulse Generation

A mutual pulse injection-seeding scheme is developed to produce wavelength tunable optical short pulse generation. The sidemode suppression ratio obtained is more than 31 dB over the wavelength-tuning rang of 18 nm.

Intra-Channel Nonlinear Effect on Optical PPM Pulse Transmission

PPM encoded Gaussian pulse sequence shows more immunity than non-PPM schemes on optical fiber intra-channel nonlinearity and demonstrated by a numerical study of IXPM and IFWM effects deploying on 100Gb/s single channelsystem.

Attosecond Optical and Ramsey-Type Interferometry by Postgeneration Splitting of Harmonic Pulse

Attosecondattosecond science;extreme ultraviolet;high-order harmonic generation;Ramsey-type spectroscopy Optical and Ramsey-Type Interferometry by Postgeneration Splitting of Harmonic PulseTime domain Ramsey-type interferometry is useful for investigating spectroscopic information of quantum states in atoms and molecules.The energy range of the quantum states to be observed with this scheme has now reached more than 20 eV by resolving the interference fringes with a period of a few hundred attoseconds.This attosecond Ramsey-type interferometry requires the irradiation of a coherent pair of extreme ultraviolet(XUV)light pulses,while all the methods used to deliver the coherent XUV pulse pair until now have relied on the division of the source of an XUV pulse in two before the generation.In this paper,we report on a novel technique to perform attosecond Ramsey-type interferometry by splitting an XUV high-order harmonic(HH)pulse of a sub-20 fs laser pulse after its generation.By virtue of the postgeneration splitting of the HH pulse,we demonstrated that the optical interference emerging at the complete temporal overlap of the HH pulse pair seamlessly continued to the Ramsey-type electronic interference in a helium atom.This technique is applicable for studying the femtosecond dephasing dynamics of electronic wavepackets and exploring the ultrafast evolution of a cationic system entangled with an ionized electron with sub-20 fs resolution.

Ultra-Short Pulse Tracking by Using Wavelength Dispersion for a Short-Time Optical Buffer

To synchronize a control signal with a packet signal in response to changing timing jitter, we investigate ultra-short pulse tracking by using wavelength dispersion for a short-time optical buffer in an optical router.

Study on the optical system for the record of the pulsed acoustic field and the scattering of the cylindrical-like objects buried in underwater sand

The response of the two working mode of the optical systems, the schlieren mode and shadowgraph mode, for taking of optical photograph of the pulsed acoustic field in liquid are studied. It shows that, the response of the optical intensity on the screen to the acoustic pressure is linear for shadowgraph mode and nonlinear for the schlieren mode. Because the function of shadowgraph mode has no limit on working frequency, it is suitable for the studies of the acoustic field of laboratory model of the seabed or the buried objects at low ultrasonic range. The ultrasonic pulse scattered by the cylindrical-like objects buried in underwater sand was studied experimentally by the shadowgraph mode at low ultrasonic frequency. There are five kinds of the scattered waves from the half-buried object and three kinds of the waves from the full-buried objects were recorded. The two kinds of creeping waves (the longitudinal wave and the shear wave of the object) appear in both of the two cases.

Intense,wideband optical waveform generation by self-balanced amplification of fiber electro-optical sideband modulation

We demonstrate a simple method to obtain accurate optical waveforms with a gigahertz-level programmable modulation bandwidth and a watt-level output power for wideband optical control of free atoms and molecules.Arbitrary amplitude and phase modulations are transferred from microwave to light with a low-power fiber electro-optical modulator.The sub-milliwatt optical sideband is co-amplified with the optical carrier in a power-balanced fashion through a tapered semiconductor amplifier(TSA).By automatically keeping TSA near saturation in a quasi-continuous manner,typical noise channels associated with pulsed high-gain amplifications are efficiently suppressed.As an example application,we demonstrate interleaved cooling and trapping of two rubidium isotopes with coherent nanosecond pulses.

Pulse control of frequency and width for a real-time independently adjustable laser source

A set of semiconductor laser pulse seed sources based on an embedded chip is proposed.The greatest feature is that the optical pulse frequency and width can be independently adjusted in real time.The pulse seed sources can be switched independently and online from the gain-switched mode to the quasi-continuous wave mode to obtain optimal optical parameters for specific applications.To explore the physical mechanism of the semiconductor laser source,the rate equation that describes the carrier-photon transient change in a semiconductor laser cavity is numerically derived and solved.Subsequently,problems that need to be considered while designing the drive circuit are identified.The system evaluation indicates that the optical pulse frequency adjustment range is 250 Hz to 42 MHz,and the narrowest optical pulse output width is 80 ps.The pulse seed source can drive semiconductor lasers with different central wavelengths(1064,1550,and 1970 nm),and can also simultaneously drive two semiconductor lasers and output dual-band optical pulses.It can be used as a seed source for general high-power optical systems,and exhibits good application value and extensive market prospects.