10,806 research outputs found
Thin On-Sensor Nanophotonic Array Cameras
Today's commodity camera systems rely on compound optics to map light
originating from the scene to positions on the sensor where it gets recorded as
an image. To record images without optical aberrations, i.e., deviations from
Gauss' linear model of optics, typical lens systems introduce increasingly
complex stacks of optical elements which are responsible for the height of
existing commodity cameras. In this work, we investigate flat nanophotonic
computational cameras as an alternative that employs an array of skewed
lenslets and a learned reconstruction approach. The optical array is embedded
on a metasurface that, at 700~nm height, is flat and sits on the sensor cover
glass at 2.5~mm focal distance from the sensor. To tackle the highly chromatic
response of a metasurface and design the array over the entire sensor, we
propose a differentiable optimization method that continuously samples over the
visible spectrum and factorizes the optical modulation for different incident
fields into individual lenses. We reconstruct a megapixel image from our flat
imager with a learned probabilistic reconstruction method that employs a
generative diffusion model to sample an implicit prior. To tackle
scene-dependent aberrations in broadband, we propose a method for acquiring
paired captured training data in varying illumination conditions. We assess the
proposed flat camera design in simulation and with an experimental prototype,
validating that the method is capable of recovering images from diverse scenes
in broadband with a single nanophotonic layer.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, to be published in ACM Transactions on Graphic
Orbital Angular Momentum Waves: Generation, Detection and Emerging Applications
Orbital angular momentum (OAM) has aroused a widespread interest in many
fields, especially in telecommunications due to its potential for unleashing
new capacity in the severely congested spectrum of commercial communication
systems. Beams carrying OAM have a helical phase front and a field strength
with a singularity along the axial center, which can be used for information
transmission, imaging and particle manipulation. The number of orthogonal OAM
modes in a single beam is theoretically infinite and each mode is an element of
a complete orthogonal basis that can be employed for multiplexing different
signals, thus greatly improving the spectrum efficiency. In this paper, we
comprehensively summarize and compare the methods for generation and detection
of optical OAM, radio OAM and acoustic OAM. Then, we represent the applications
and technical challenges of OAM in communications, including free-space optical
communications, optical fiber communications, radio communications and acoustic
communications. To complete our survey, we also discuss the state of art of
particle manipulation and target imaging with OAM beams
Seeing spin dynamics in atomic gases
The dynamics of internal spin, electronic orbital, and nuclear motion states
of atoms and molecules have preoccupied the atomic and molecular physics
community for decades. Increasingly, such dynamics are being examined within
many-body systems composed of atomic and molecular gases. Our findings
sometimes bear close relation to phenomena observed in condensed-matter
systems, while on other occasions they represent truly new areas of
investigation. I discuss several examples of spin dynamics that occur within
spinor Bose-Einstein gases, highlighting the advantages of spin-sensitive
imaging for understanding and utilizing such dynamics.Comment: Chapter in upcoming Review Volume entitled "From Atomic to Mesoscale:
The Role of Quantum Coherence in Systems of Various Complexities" from World
Scientifi
Performance of AAOmega: the AAT multi-purpose fibre-fed spectrograph
AAOmega is the new spectrograph for the 2dF fibre-positioning system on the
Anglo-Australian Telescope. It is a bench-mounted, double-beamed design, using
volume phase holographic (VPH) gratings and articulating cameras. It is fed by
392 fibres from either of the two 2dF field plates, or by the 512 fibre SPIRAL
integral field unit (IFU) at Cassegrain focus. Wavelength coverage is 370 to
950nm and spectral resolution 1,000-8,000 in multi-Object mode, or 1,500-10,000
in IFU mode. Multi-object mode was commissioned in January 2006 and the IFU
system will be commissioned in June 2006.
The spectrograph is located off the telescope in a thermally isolated room
and the 2dF fibres have been replaced by new 38m broadband fibres. Despite the
increased fibre length, we have achieved a large increase in throughput by use
of VPH gratings, more efficient coatings and new detectors - amounting to a
factor of at least 2 in the red. The number of spectral resolution elements and
the maximum resolution are both more than doubled, and the stability is an
order of magnitude better.
The spectrograph comprises: an f/3.15 Schmidt collimator, incorporating a
dichroic beam-splitter; interchangeable VPH gratings; and articulating red and
blue f/1.3 Schmidt cameras. Pupil size is 190mm, determined by the competing
demands of cost, obstruction losses, and maximum resolution. A full suite of
VPH gratings has been provided to cover resolutions 1,000 to 7,500, and up to
10,000 at particular wavelengths.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures; presented at SPIE, Astronomical Telescopes and
Instrumentation, 24 - 31 May 2006, Orlando, Florida US
MMTF: The Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter
This paper describes the Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter (MMTF) on the
Magellan-Baade 6.5-meter telescope. MMTF is based on a 150-mm clear aperture
Fabry-Perot (FP) etalon that operates in low orders and provides transmission
bandpass and central wavelength adjustable from ~5 to ~15 A and from ~5000 to
over ~9200 A, respectively. It is installed in the Inamori Magellan Areal
Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS) and delivers an image quality of ~0.5" over a
field of view of 27' in diameter (monochromatic over ~10'). This versatile and
easy-to-operate instrument has been used over the past three years for a wide
variety of projects. This paper first reviews the basic principles of FP
tunable filters, then provides a detailed description of the hardware and
software associated with MMTF and the techniques developed to observe with this
instrument and reduce the data. The main lessons learned in the course of the
commissioning and implementation of MMTF are highlighted next, before
concluding with a brief outlook on the future of MMTF and of similar facilities
which are soon coming on line.Comment: 38 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, now accepted for publication to the
Astronomical Journa
From white elephant to Nobel Prize: Dennis Gabor’s wavefront reconstruction
Dennis Gabor devised a new concept for optical imaging in 1947 that went by a variety of names over the following decade: holoscopy, wavefront reconstruction, interference microscopy, diffraction microscopy and Gaboroscopy. A well-connected and creative research engineer, Gabor worked actively to publicize and exploit his concept, but the scheme failed to capture the interest of many researchers. Gabor’s theory was repeatedly deemed unintuitive and baffling; the technique was appraised by his contemporaries to be of dubious practicality and, at best, constrained to a narrow branch of science. By the late 1950s, Gabor’s subject had been assessed by its handful of practitioners to be a white elephant. Nevertheless, the concept was later rehabilitated by the research of Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks at the University of Michigan, and Yury Denisyuk at the Vavilov Institute in Leningrad. What had been judged a failure was recast as a success: evaluations of Gabor’s work were transformed during the 1960s, when it was represented as the foundation on which to construct the new and distinctly different subject of holography, a re-evaluation that gained the Nobel Prize for Physics for Gabor alone in 1971. This paper focuses on the difficulties experienced in constructing a meaningful subject, a practical application and a viable technical community from Gabor’s ideas during the decade 1947-1957
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