28,000 research outputs found
An ultrafast reconfigurable nanophotonic switch using wavefront shaping of light in a nonlinear nanomaterial
We demonstrate a new concept for reconfigurable nanophotonic devices
exploiting ultrafast nonlinear control of shaped wavefronts in a multimode
nanomaterial consisting of semiconductor nanowires. Femtosecond pulsed laser
excitation of the nanowire mat is shown to provide an efficient nonlinear
mechanism to control both destructive and constructive interference in a shaped
wavefront. Modulations of up to 63% are induced by optical pumping, due to a
combination of multimode dephasing and induced transient absorption. We show
that part of the nonlinear phase dynamics can be inverted to provide a
dynamical revival of the wavefront into an optimized spot with up to 18%
increase of the peak to background ratio caused by pulsed laser excitation. The
concepts of multimode nonlinear switching demonstrated here are generally
extendable to other photonic and plasmonic systems and enable new avenues for
ultrafast and reconfigurable nanophotonic devices.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figure
Ultra-compact optical auto-correlator based on slow-light enhanced third harmonic generation in a silicon photonic crystal waveguide
The ability to use coherent light for material science and applications is
directly linked to our ability to measure short optical pulses. While
free-space optical methods are well-established, achieving this on a chip would
offer the greatest benefit in footprint, performance, flexibility and cost, and
allow the integration with complementary signal processing devices. A key goal
is to achieve operation at sub-Watt peak power levels and on sub-picosecond
timescales. Previous integrated demonstrations require either a temporally
synchronized reference pulse, an off-chip spectrometer, or long tunable delay
lines. We report the first device capable of achieving single-shot time-domain
measurements of near-infrared picosecond pulses based on an ultra-compact
integrated CMOS compatible device, with the potential to be fully integrated
without any external instrumentation. It relies on optical third-harmonic
generation in a slow-light silicon waveguide. Our method can also serve as a
powerful in-situ diagnostic tool to directly map, at visible wavelengths, the
propagation dynamics of near-infrared pulses in photonic crystals.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, 38 reference
Control of light transmission through opaque scattering media in space and time
We report the first experimental demonstration of combined spatial and
temporal control of light trajectories through opaque media. This control is
achieved by solely manipulating spatial degrees of freedom of the incident
wavefront. As an application, we demonstrate that the present approach is
capable to form bandwidth-limited ultrashort pulses from the otherwise randomly
transmitted light with a controllable interaction time of the pulses with the
medium. Our approach provides a new tool for fundamental studies of light
propagation in complex media and has potential for applications for coherent
control, sensing and imaging in nano- and biophotonics
The Chemical Properties of Milky Way and M31 Globular Clusters: I. A Comparative Study
A comparative analysis is performed between high-quality integrated spectra
of 30 globular clusters in M31, 20 Milky Way clusters, and a sample of field
and cluster elliptical galaxies. We find that the Lick CN indices in the M31
and Galactic clusters are enhanced relative to the bulges of the Milky Way,
M31, and elliptical spheroids. Although not seen in the Lick CN indices, the
near-UV cyanogen feature (3883 A) is strongly enhanced in M31 clustesr with
respect to the Galactic globulars at metallicities, --1.5<[Fe/H]<--0.3. Carbon
shows signs of varying amongst these two groups. For [Fe/H]>--0.8, we observe
no siginificant differences in the Hdelta, Hgamma, or Hbeta indices between the
M31 and Galactic globulars. The sample of ellipticals lies offset from the loci
of all the globulars in the Cyanogen--[MgFe], and Balmer--[MgFe] planes. Six of
the M31 cluster spectra appear young, and are projected onto the M31 disk.
Population synthesis models suggest that these are metal-rich clusters with
ages 100--800 Myr, metallicities --0.20 < [Fe/H] <0.35, and masses 0.7
-7.0x10^4 Msun. Two other young clusters are Hubble V in NGC 205, and an older
(~3 Gyr) cluster ~7 kpc away from the plane of the disk. The six clusters
projected onto the disk rotate in a similar fashion to the HI gas in M31, and
three clusters exhibit thin disk kinematics (Morrison et al.). Dynamical masses
and structural parameters are required for these objects to determine whether
they are massive open clusters or globular clusters. If the latter, our
findings suggest globular clusters may trace the build up of galaxy disks. In
either case, we conclude that these clusters are part of a young, metal-rich
disk cluster system in M31, possibly as young as 1 Gyr old.Comment: 52 pages, 14 figures, 8 tables, minor revisions in response to
referee, conclusions remain the same. Scheduled to appear in the October 2004
issue of The Astronomical Journa
Pigment Melanin: Pattern for Iris Recognition
Recognition of iris based on Visible Light (VL) imaging is a difficult
problem because of the light reflection from the cornea. Nonetheless, pigment
melanin provides a rich feature source in VL, unavailable in Near-Infrared
(NIR) imaging. This is due to biological spectroscopy of eumelanin, a chemical
not stimulated in NIR. In this case, a plausible solution to observe such
patterns may be provided by an adaptive procedure using a variational technique
on the image histogram. To describe the patterns, a shape analysis method is
used to derive feature-code for each subject. An important question is how much
the melanin patterns, extracted from VL, are independent of iris texture in
NIR. With this question in mind, the present investigation proposes fusion of
features extracted from NIR and VL to boost the recognition performance. We
have collected our own database (UTIRIS) consisting of both NIR and VL images
of 158 eyes of 79 individuals. This investigation demonstrates that the
proposed algorithm is highly sensitive to the patterns of cromophores and
improves the iris recognition rate.Comment: To be Published on Special Issue on Biometrics, IEEE Transaction on
Instruments and Measurements, Volume 59, Issue number 4, April 201
- …