Low threshold random lasing from phase separated optical fibers.

In this thesis, a low threshold novel random fiber laser, integrating a passive optical fiber with a phase separated aluminosilicate core – silica cladding as the feedback medium, is proposed and presented. The core exhibits greatly enhanced Rayleigh scattering, therefore requiring a significantly reduced length of scattering fiber (4 m) for lasing. The enhanced Rayleigh scattering was verified through measurements and a new figure of merit called effective power reflectivity was also developed to quantify random feedback. With a Yb-doped fiber as the gain medium, the fiber laser operates at 1050 nm with low threshold power, with a tractable lasing wavelength and maximum linewidth, and possesses an output that can be amplified through conventional means. Furthermore, the laser was found to have a high degree of spatial coherence, spectral broadening with increasing input power, and temporal spectral variation. The random lasing action was confirmed both by the use of RF beat spectra measurements and the trends in the Lévy exponent α obtained from the statistics of spectral intensity variation. Cutback experiments carried out shed light on the evolution of lasing behavior with P-SOF length and the impact of feedback on the lasing behavior. The minimum length of P-SOF required for maximum Rayleigh-distributed feedback was also determined to be ~ 2.5 m. This facile setup and results herein pave the way for further study and applications based on low threshold and compact random fiber lasers

Using Creative Reconstructions as Care Based Strategies in Exploring the Unsaid

Using Creative Reconstructions as Care Based Strategies in Exploring the Unsaid While discourse analysis provides us with important understandings of how our life worlds are shaped by communicative legitimisations of different forms of social action, analytical processes through which we could uncover important discourses from what has been left unsaid in narrative data are still not fully clear. In this study, we indicate care based strategies for creatively reconstructing narrative data in order to analyse what may have been left unsaid in narratives accessed by qualitative researchers. We draw upon extended fieldwork conducted by one of the authors of the study in the state of Taminadu in India where he accessed narratives of fifty marginal entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs belong to a caste based community known as Nadars who run small street-corner provision stores to eke out their livelihoods. We adopted care based strategies of being attentive to the shifts between generic and specific tropes to dialogically uncover the unsaid in our data. We creatively reconstructed our data in order to pay greater attention to the contradictions that shape the subjectivities of respondents

Truths and Unfreedoms of Regimes of Insecurity and the Resistance of the Commons

Purpose This paper aims to explore narratives of insecurity to understand how the casualisation of the employment relationship makes life more fragile and precarious. The authors engage in an inquiry about how multinational enterprises (MNEs) structure precariousness for workers in emerging economies. The authors attempt to understand how workers analyse their experiences of precariousness and what form their resistance takes as a result of their analysis. Design/methodology/approach The authors engage with the narratives of eight Indian workers/trade union activists working in different marginal spaces of the Indian economy to uncover a commons where we are the multitude. By commons, the authors imply shared forms of property, which stand against the concept of private property that is central to the social relations of capitalism. The authors are performing the data of workers by interspersing them in an analysis of angst and hope. Findings Workers understand their experiences of precariousness as emerging from a complex political economy structured by MNEs, which involves multiple fronts of marginalisation. Workers realize that they need to engage in comprehensive forms of resistance to undo the regimes of precariousness. Workers create shared universes of grief to relate to each other’s experiences of precariousness. The unfreedoms experienced by workers lead to a sharing of the social relations of commons where workers can resist by expressing solidarity with each other. Practical implications The authors contribute to practice by arguing that workers’ collectives should not accept the naturalisation of precariousness. By staging a dialogue about the injuries of precariousness, they can craft a politics of resistance that begins the process of commoning. Social implications Workers’ politics of resistance can significantly democratise the global political economy in important ways by advancing the potential for commons. Originality/value The authors make an original contribution to the study of precariousness in the context of international business by arguing that the experience of precariousness can lead to a commons where workers resist structures of injustice