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At least 1,099 records · Page 61Linked to original sources

Liquid-level sensor with a high-birefringence-fiber loop mirror.

A novel liquid-level sensor with a high-birefringence-fiber loop mirror (HBFLM) based on a uniform-strength cantilever beam (UCB) is proposed and demonstrated. Part of the high-birefringence fiber is pasted onto the central surface of the UCB. A hollow suspending pole is utilized to apply force at the end of the beam. The applied force varies with the change of the liquid level, leading to a change of transmission intensity. Thus the variation of liquid level can be determined via the laser wavelength within the quasi-linear transmission range of the HBFLM filter. Its sensitivity, resolution, and linear measurement range reach 0.047/cm, 10 mm, and 140 mm, respectively. The advantages of the sensor include simple structure, high sensitivity, low cost, and good repeatability, etc. The sensing signal can be directly detected by a photodetector and does not require complicated demodulation devices.

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Ceramic dielectric mirrors for the terahertz range.

We have produced a rigid dielectric terahertz mirror by tape casting and sintering 25 stacked ceramic layers of alumina and alumina-zirconia. Our structure shows a pronounced stop band between 0.3 and 0.38 THz. The experimental data agree well with transfer matrix calculations.

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Stability of electrostatic actuated membrane mirror devices.

Membrane mirrors with transparent electrodes were fabricated for adaptive optics. These devices are capable of generating large, low-spatial-order deformations but exhibit instability for high-order deformations. A variational calculation of the electrostatic and mechanical energy of such membrane devices leads to criteria for stable operation. Simulations based upon this calculation are able to reproduce the observed behavior of fabricated devices and suggest suitable device parameters for improved performance with high-order deformations.

Computer Simulation↗

Paraxial matrix description of astigmatic and cylindrical mirror resonators with twisted axes for laser spectroscopy.

A complete matrix description of ray-optic propagation in an astigmatic multipass cell is presented, with expressions for the coupling of coordinates. A pair of transforms puts the 4 x 4 paraxial system matrix into block-diagonal form, allowing a solution using Sylvester's theorem. A variation on the Jones matrix calculus is employed wherein the ray coordinates on both resonator mirrors are simultaneously represented as a single state of the system. The formulations are applicable to resonators with any degree of astigmatism and axial twist. Examples are presented of beam paths and the boundary shapes of beam spots. The shape of the pattern boundaries, as a function of the coordinate coupling coefficient, influences the practical availability of patterns.

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Spatial-scale contribution to the detection of mirror symmetry in fractal noise.

We investigated how the detection of mirror symmetry depends on the distribution of contrast energy across spatial scales. Stimuli consisted of vertically symmetric noise patterns with fractal power spectra defined by 1/f beta slopes (-2 < or = beta < or = 5). While overall rms contrast remained fixed at 25%, symmetry-detection thresholds were obtained by corrupting the signal with variable amounts of noise with identical spectral characteristics. A first experiment measured thresholds as a function of spectral slope, and performance was found to be substantially facilitated in images with power spectra that characterize natural scenes (1.2 < or = beta < or = 3.2). In a second experiment, symmetry was removed from randomly chosen octave bands and replaced by noise with the same spectral profile. Results revealed that only in images with 1/f2 spectra does performance decrease by constant amounts across all frequency bands. Together, the results imply that symmetry mechanisms extract equal amounts of information from constant-octave frequency bands but lack the ability to whiten stimuli whose spectral slopes differ from those of natural scenes. Results are qualitatively well predicted by a multichannel model that (1) relies on spatial filters with equal-volume point-spread functions and constant-octave frequency bandwidths and (2) restricts the computation of symmetry to spatial regions whose dimensions are proportional to the filters' spatial scale. These findings are also consistent with the notion that mechanisms that mediate the perception of form exploit the ability of early vision to reduce second-order redundancy in natural scenes.

Artifacts↗

Control of the unilluminated deformable mirror actuators in an altitude-conjugated adaptive optics system

Off-axis observations made with adaptive optics are severely limited by anisoplanatism errors. However, conjugating the deformable mirror to an optimal altitude can reduce these errors; it is then necessary to control, through extrapolation, actuators that are not measured by the wave-front sensor (unilluminated actuators). In this study various common extrapolation schemes are investigated, and an optimal method that achieves a significantly better performance is proposed. This extrapolation method involves a simple matrix multiplication and will be implemented in ALTAIR, the Gemini North Telescope adaptive optics system located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. With this optimal method, the relative H-band Strehl reduction due to extrapolation errors is only 5%, 16%, and 30% when the angular distance between the guide source and the science target is 20, 40 and 60 arc sec, respectively. For a site such as Mauna Kea, these errors are largely outweighed by the increase in the size of the isoplanatic field.

Journal Article↗

Focusing of electromagnetic waves by paraboloid mirrors. I. Theory.

We derive a solution to the problem of a plane electromagnetic wave focused by a parabolic mirror. The solution is obtained from the Stratton-Chu integral by solving a boundary-value problem. Our solution can be considered self-consistent. We also derive the far-field, i.e., Debye, approximation of our formulas. The solution shows that when the paraboloid is infinite, its focusing properties exhibit a dispersive behavior; that is, the structure of the field distribution in the vicinity of the focus strongly depends on the wavelength of the illumination. We show that for an infinite paraboloid the confinement of the focused energy worsens, with the energy distribution spreading in the focal plane. 2000 Optical Society of America [S0740-3232(00)01309-0] OCIS codes: 260.0260, 260.2110, 050.1960, 260.5430.

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Propagation and focusing of Gaussian beams generated by Gaussian mirror resonators.

The propagation and focusing properties of a class of Gaussian beams generated by optical resonators with Gaussian reflectivity mirrors are investigated. Attention is concentrated on the following two beams in this class: (a) the annular Gaussian beam (the Gaussian doughnut mode) and (b) the flat-topped Gaussian beam. A class of flat-topped Gaussian beams is introduced. All analysis is limited to a coherent superposition scheme of the lowest-order Gaussian modes (TEM00) that have different parameters.

Journal Article↗

Perfect lenses made with left-handed materials: Alice's mirror?

In a recent paper, Pendry [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3966 (2000)] mentioned the possibility of making perfect lenses by using a slab of left-handed material with relative permeability and permittivity equal to -1, a property first stated by Veselago [Sov. Phys. Usp. 10, 509 (1968)]. Pendry gave a demonstration of the vital effect of the evanescent waves in this process, arguing that these waves are amplified inside the slab. We present first a very simple theoretical demonstration that a homogeneous material with both relative permittivity and permeability equal to -1 cannot exist, even for a unique frequency. This demonstration shows that the perfect lens proposed by Pendry can be interpreted as a means to move in real space the virtual perfect image of a point source given by a plane mirror. We show that, owing to evanescent waves, the concept of effective medium for heterogeneous materials is questionable, even when the wavelength of the incident light is much larger than the size of the heterogeneities. The effect of heterogeneities is compared with that of absorption. We conclude that a material able to focus the light more efficiently than the current devices (but not perfectly) could exist.

Journal Article↗

Designing a mirror to realize a given projection.

I present a design technique for realizing given projections as catadioptric sensors. In general, these problems do not have solutions, but approximate solutions may often be found that are visually acceptable. The method described reduces the problem to solving a linear system. A given transformation from the image plane to an object surface is shown to determine a vector field that is normal to the surface in the case where the vector field is a gradient. For the case when the vector field is not a gradient, several functionals are presented that may be minimized to give approximate solutions. As an application several new designs are described, including a mirror that directly gives a full 360-deg cylindrical projection without the need for any digital processing.

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Optical intensity distribution of a plano-convex solid immersion mirror.

Ignoring the effect of the small aperture, we deduce the optical field distribution of the so-called plano-convex solid immersion mirror with a small aperture on the apex (PC-SIM) by using the vector diffraction theory. The simulation results show that a PC-SIM, like a solid immersion lens (SIL), can achieve high resolution. Unlike the SIL, the PC-SIM can effectively reduce the spreading of the spot size with increasing distance from the interface. The size and intensity of the spot are related not only to the refractive index of the solid immersion medium but also to the structure parameter of the PC-SIM. The size of a spot smaller than a quarter wavelength can be obtained simply by optimizing the structure parameter of a PC-SIM but not by decreasing the size of the small aperture.

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Amplification and compression of ultrashort fundamental solitons in an erbium-doped nonlinear amplifying fiber loop mirror.

A nonlinear amplifying loop mirror constructed from erbium-doped fiber is proposed for simultaneous amplification and compression of ultrashort fundamental solitons. Numerical simulations show that, unlike conventional erbium-doped fiber amplifiers in which nonlinear effects lead to serious degradation of pulse quality, the proposed device performs efficient high-quality amplification and compression of ultrashort fundamental solitons while it almost completely preserves the soliton nature of the input pulses. Moreover, the performance of the device is insensitive to small variations in the loop length and in the power-splitting ratio of the coupler.

Journal Article↗

Electrostatic micromachine scanning mirror for optical coherence tomography.

Compact electrostatic micromirror structures for use in the scanning arm of an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system are described. These devices consist of millimeter-scale mirrors resting upon micrometer-scale polyimide hinges that are tilted by a linear micromachine actuator, the integrated force array (IFA). The IFA is a network of deformable capacitor cells that electrostatically contract with an applied voltage. The support structures, hinges, and actuators are fabricated by photolithography from polyimide-upon-silicon wafers. These devices were inserted into the scanning arm of an experimental OCT imaging system to produce in vitro and in vivo images at frame rates of 4 to 8 Hz.

Electricity↗

Damage to extreme-ultraviolet Sc/Si multilayer mirrors exposed to intense 46.9-nm laser pulses.

The damage threshold and damage mechanism of extreme-ultraviolet Sc/Si multilayer mirror coatings are investigated with focused nanosecond pulses at 46.9-nm radiation from a compact capillary-discharge laser. Damage threshold fluences of approximately 0.08 J/cm2 are measured for coatings deposited on both borosilicate glass and Si substrates. The use of scanning and transmission electron microscopy and small-angle x-ray diffraction techniques reveals the thermal nature of the damage mechanism. The results are relevant to the use of newly developed high-flux extreme-ultraviolet sources in applications.

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Analysis of high-reflectivity metal-dielectric mirrors for edge-emitting lasers.

A metal-dielectric mirror is shown as a simple solution for high-reflectivity coatings on cleaved-facet edge-emitting lasers, as well as a means to provide wavelength stabilization and spectral filtering. We show, through the use of a simple SiO2/Ti/Au coating, reflectivities better than 90% and a 25% reduction in the 30-dB linewidth of the output spectrum. Wavelength filtering and varying reflectivities are described as the result of multiple reflections and a coupled-cavity effect.

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High-numerical-aperture focusing of radially polarized doughnut beams with a parabolic mirror and a flat diffractive lens.

Recently, Dorn et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 233901 (2003)] demonstrated the significance of radially polarized doughnut beams in obtaining very small focal spots (with an area of approximately 0.26 lambda2) with high-numerical-aperture (NA) aplanatic microscope objectives. We propose two simple alternative ways to focus such radially polarized beams: a parabolic mirror and a flat diffractive lens. Because of their large apodization factor for a high NA, a significant further reduction in spot area (up to a factor of 1.76 at a NA of 1) compared with the aplanatic system can be achieved.

Journal Article↗

4-ps passively mode-locked Nd:Gd0.5Y0.5VO4 laser with a semiconductor saturable-absorber mirror.

We have demonstrated a passively mode-locked diode end-pumped all-solid-state laser, which is composed of a Nd:Gd0.5Y0.5VO4 crystal and a folded cavity with a semiconductor saturable-absorber mirror grown by metal-organic chemical-vapor deposition. Stable cw mode locking with a 3.8-ps pulse duration at a repetition rate of 112 MHz was obtained. At 13.6 W of the incident pump power, a clean mode-locked fundamental-mode average output power of 3.9 W was achieved with an overall optical-to-optical efficiency of 29.0%, and the slope efficiency was 38.1%.

Journal Article↗