Temporally Modulated Phase Retrieval Method for Weak Temporal Phase Measurement of Laser Pulses

We propose a simple iterative algorithm based on a temporally movable phase modulation process to retrieve the weak temporal phase of laser pulses. This unambiguous method can be used to achieve a high accuracy and to simultaneously measure the weak temporal phase and temporal profile of pulses, which are almost transform- limited. A detailed analysis shows that this iterative method has valuable potential applications in the charac- terization of pulses with weak temporal phase.

Time-Resolved Femtosecond Degenerate Four-Wave Mixing in LiNbO3：Fe,Mg Crystal

Forward degenerate four-wave mixing （DFWM） processes are investigated with a femtosecond pulsed laser in lithium niobate crystal doubly-doped with magnesium and iron （LiNbO3：Fe, Mg）. The pulse energy dependence reveals a pure third-order nonlinear response, and the third-order nonlinear susceptibility x^（3） in the material is evaluated to be 4.96 × 10^-13 esu. The time-resolved DFWM process shows a response time of x^（3） shorter than 100fs, which is due to the nonresonant electronic nonlinearities. Our results indicate that LiNbO3 crystals have potentials for ultrafast real-time optical processing systems, which require a large and fast x^（3） optical nonlinearity.

Measurement of the degree of temporal coherence of unpolarized light beams

We measure the electromagnetic degree of temporal coherence and the associated coherence time for quasi-monochromatic unpolarized light beams emitted by an LED, a filtered halogen lamp, and a multimode He–Ne laser.The method is based on observing at the output of a Michelson interferometer the visibilities(contrasts) of the intensity and polarization-state modulations expressed in terms of the Stokes parameters. The results are in good agreement with those deduced directly from the source spectra. The measurements are repeated after passing the beams through a linear polarizer so as to elucidate the role of polarization in electromagnetic coherence. While the polarizer varies the equal-time degree of coherence consistently with the theoretical predictions and alters the inner structure of the coherence matrix, the coherence time remains almost unchanged when the light varies from unpolarized to polarized. The results are important in the areas of applications dealing with physical optics and electromagnetic interference.

Spatio-temporal measures of electrophysiological correlates for behavioral multisensory enhancement during visual,auditory and somatosensory stimulation:A behavioral and ERP study

Multisensory enhancement,as a facilitation phenomenon,is responsible for superior behavioral performance when an individual is responding to cross-modal versus modality-specific stimuli.However,the event-related potential（ERP） counterparts of behavioral multisensory enhancement are not well known.We recorded ERPs and behavioral data from 14 healthy volunteers with three types of target stimuli（modality-specific,bimodal,and trimodal） to examine the spatio-temporal electrophysiological characteristics of multisensory enhancement by comparing behavioral data with ERPs.We found a strong correlation between P3 latency and behavioral performance in terms of reaction time（RT）（R = 0.98,P ＆lt;0.001）,suggesting that P3 latency constitutes a temporal measure of behavioral multisensory enhancement.In addition,a fast RT and short P3 latency were found when comparing the modality-specific visual target with the modality-specific auditory and somatosensory targets.Our results indicate that behavioral multisensory enhancement can be identified by the latency and source distribution of the P3 component.These findings may advance our understanding of the neuronal mechanisms of multisensory enhancement.