Novel approaches to power scaling of single-frequency photonic crystal fiber amplifiers

This dissertation presents experimental and theoretical studies of high power, single-frequency, ytterbium-doped photonic crystal fiber amplifiers. The objective of this effort is to identify issues which limit power scaling and develop novel techniques to overcome these limitations. Historically, stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) has been the primary obstacle in the realization of high power single-frequency fiber amplifiers. A novel acoustically tailored photonic crystal fiber design, having a reduced Brillouin gain coefficient of 1.2x10-11 m/W, is demonstrated. The fiber design is such that it may be used in conjunction with other SBS mitigation techniques, which increases the nonlinear threshold beyond the current state of the art. In the successful suppression of SBS, a new regime of single-frequency photonic crystal fiber amplifier power scaling is explored. Instabilities in the transverse mode is observed at increasing output powers. Mitigation of this effect is demonstrated experimentally. This empirical data is used as the basis for a theoretical treatment of the problem, which provides direction for future fiber amplifier designs. The culmination of this work results in the successful utilization of the acoustically tailored photonic crystal fiber in a single-frequency counter-pumped amplifier configuration, yielding close to 500 W output power and near diffraction-limited beam quality

Treating Offshore Submerged Lands as Public Lands: A Historical Perspective

When President Harry Truman proclaimed federal control over the United States’ continental shelf in 1945, he did so primarily to secure the energy resources—oil and gas—embedded in those submerged lands. Nevertheless, the mineral wealth of the continental shelf spurred two critical legal battles over their control and disposition: first, whether the federal government had any interest in the first three miles of continental shelf; and second, if so, whether the federal government had authority to regulate the continental shelf under traditional federal public land laws, such as the Minerals Leasing Act. Congress’s reactions to federal courts’ resolutions of these questions, embodied in 1953 in the Submerged Lands Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, continue to provide the foundations for state and federal management of the nation’s continental shelf and its energy resources. Nevertheless, the Outer Continental Shelf’s status as federal public lands remains ambiguous. This Article takes a historical approach to assessing that issue, reviewing the traditional definition of federal “public lands” and the historical context of the public lands issues that arose for the Outer Continental Shelf. It concludes that the Outer Continental Shelf, from a natural resources perspective, qualifies as the newest of the federal public lands, but it also acknowledges that—unlike for many other public lands—federal statutes repeatedly and consistently exclude the states from gaining ownership of those submerged lands

Law Professor Amicus Brief in Massachusetts Lobstermen\u27s Association v. Ross Regarding the Legality of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument

This amicus brief discusses how, under domestic law, the President can establish national monuments, pursuant to the Antiquities Act, in the ocean. It focuses on the seabed\u27s status as land owned or controlled by the federal government under U.S. law, as the Antiquities Act requires, and on the President\u27s authority to regulate fishing within marine national monuments

George Perkins Marsh: Anticipating the Anthropocene

This chapter, part of the forthcoming volume PIONEERS OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW, explores the vision of humanity\u27s influence on social-ecological systems that George Perkins Marsh provided to the world in his 1964 work, MAN AND NATURE, OR PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION, republished in 1874 as THE EARTH AS MODIFIED THROUGH HUMAN ACTION. In addition to tracing how Marsh and these publications influenced nature resources and environmental law in the United States well into the 20th century, this chapter also argues that Marsh anticipated, in many respects, the environmental legal and policy issues of the Anthropocene by tracing clearly how human development can substantially alter ecological processes at a large geographic scale

Agencies Interpreting Courts Interpreting Statutes: The Deference Conundrum of a Divided Supreme Court

Plurality decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court demand interpretation, especially because they tend to occur when the Court faces important but divisive legal issues. Most courts, agencies, and scholars have assumed that federal agencies are in no better position to interpret plurality decisions than the lower federal courts when confronted with a potentially precedential Supreme Court plurality decision--the agency must construe the Justices--various opinions in search of a controlling rationale

Fostering Adaptive Marine Aquaculture through Procedural Innovation in Marine Spatial Planning

Worldwide, as wild-caught commercial fisheries plateau and human demands for protein increase, marine aquaculture is expanding. Much marine aquaculture is inherently adaptable to changing climatic and chemical conditions. Nevertheless, siting of marine aquaculture operations is subject to competing environmental, economic, and social demands upon and priorities for ocean space, while some forms of marine aquaculture can impose other externalities on marine systems, such as pollution from wastes (nutrients) and antibiotics, consumption of wild fish as food, and introduction of non-native or genetically modified species. As a result, governmental policy decisions to promote both marine aquaculture that can adapt to a changing ocean and adaptive governance for that aquaculture can become contested, requiring attention to their social legitimacy. This article explores how the law can promote the adaptability of marine aquaculture to climate change and ocean acidification — adaptive marine aquaculture — while still preserving key rule-of-law values, such as public participation and accountability. Perhaps most obviously, law can establish substantive requirements for marine aquaculture that minimize its impacts, promoting marine resilience overall. However, to foster truly adaptive marine aquaculture, including adaptive governance institutions, coastal nations should also procedurally reform their marine spatial planning efforts to legally connect the procedures for aquaculture permitting, marine spatial planning (MSP), and adaptive management. One goal of such connections, moreover, should be to mandate new forums for public participation and creative collaboration, promote experimentation with accountability that leads to increased knowledge, and foster the emergence of adaptive governance regarding the use of marine space

Trickster Law: Promoting Resilience and Adaptive Governance by Allowing Other Perspectives on Natural Resource Management

The Anthropocene requires a new approach to natural resources law and policy, an approach that this short article terms trickster law. Trickster law incorporates insights from resilience theory, adaptive governance scholarship, and cultural/anthropological studies of trickster tales to create a legal approach to natural resource management that is precautionary, engaged in proactive planning, based in principled flexibility, and pluralistic. This article focuses on the pluralism component, presenting three examples of how law modified to be more inclusive and respect different value systems has generated new approaches to natural resources management that better promote social-ecological resilience to climate change and other anthropogenic stressors

Water Law and Climate Change in the United States: A Review of the Scholarship

Climate change’s effects on water resources have been some of the first realities of ecological change in the Anthropocene, forcing climate change adaptation efforts even as the international community seeks to mitigate climate change. Water law has thus become one vehicle of climate change adaptation. Research into the intersections between climate change and water law in the United States must contend with the facts that: (1) climate change affects different parts of this large country differently; and (2) United States water law is itself a complicated subject, with each state having its own laws for surface water and groundwater and the federal government playing a significant role in interstate and international waters, in building and managing large water infrastructure, and in creating water rights for Native American tribes and other federal reservations. Within this complexity, legal research to date has tended to focus on the law governing surface water in the American West, enumerating various problems with the prior appropriation doctrine as the West grows hotter and drier and offering multiple suggestions to increase legal flexibility so that western water can be re-allocated to reflect changing social-ecological realities. These suggestions extend to new, more comprehensive, and more adaptive water governance approaches. Far less scholarly attention has focused on eastern riparian rights, the various groundwater doctrines at play in the United States, or the increasing role of tribes in managing water resources, but these areas warrant future attention

Treating Offshore Submerged Lands as Public Lands: A Historical Perspective

When President Harry Truman proclaimed federal control over the United States’ continental shelf in 1945, he did so primarily to secure the energy resources—oil and gas—embedded in those submerged lands. Nevertheless, the mineral wealth of the continental shelf spurred two critical legal battles over their control and disposition: first, whether the federal government had any interest in the first three miles of continental shelf; and second, if so, whether the federal government had authority to regulate the continental shelf under traditional federal public land laws, such as the Minerals Leasing Act. Congress’s reactions to federal courts’ resolutions of these questions, embodied in 1953 in the Submerged Lands Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, continue to provide the foundations for state and federal management of the nation’s continental shelf and its energy resources. Nevertheless, the Outer Continental Shelf’s status as federal public lands remains ambiguous. This Article takes a historical approach to assessing that issue, reviewing the traditional definition of federal “public lands” and the historical context of the public lands issues that arose for the Outer Continental Shelf. It concludes that the Outer Continental Shelf, from a natural resources perspective, qualifies as the newest of the federal public lands, but it also acknowledges that—unlike for many other public lands—federal statutes repeatedly and consistently exclude the states from gaining ownership of those submerged lands