1,449 research outputs found
Compact Laser Multi-gas Spectral Sensors for Spacecraft Systems
The objective of this research effort has been the development of a new gas sensor technology to meet NASA requirements for spacecraft and space station human life support systems for sensitive selective and real time detection of trace gas species in the mid-infrared spectral region
Quantum Cryptography using entangled photons in energy-time Bell states
We present a setup for quantum cryptography based on photon pairs in
energy-time Bell states and show its feasability in a laboratory experiment.
Our scheme combines the advantages of using photon pairs instead of faint laser
pulses and the possibility to preserve energy-time entanglement over long
distances. Moreover, using 4-dimensional energy-time states, no fast random
change of bases is required in our setup : Nature itself decides whether to
measure in the energy or in the time base.Comment: 4 pages including 2 figure
Compact sound-speed sensor for quartz enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy based applications
A compact sound-speed sensor based on a phase difference method was developed. The sensor employs a U-shaped stainless steel tube with two holes located on its front and back ends, which serves as a sound wave guide. The phase difference between the two holes was measured using two mini-microphones by means of a phase-sensitive detection technique. This method offers the advantage of eliminating the influence of signal fluctuations. The frequency of a sound source offered by a loudspeaker can be scanned between 1 kHz and 50 kHz. The slope of the phase difference as a function of frequency was obtained by scanning the frequency of the sound source. The speed of sound was retrieved from the rate of change of the phase difference. The performance of the sensor was evaluated over a wide range of speeds of sound from 260 m/s to 1010 m/s in different gas mixtures. The measured speed of sound was found to be in good agreement with the theoretical value for the sound-speed sensor
Counter-Intuitive Vacuum-Stimulated Raman Scattering
Vacuum-stimulated Raman scattering in strongly coupled atom-cavity systems
allows one to generate free-running single photon pulses on demand. Most
properties of the emitted photons are well defined, provided spontaneous
emission processes do not contribute. Therefore, electronic excitation of the
atom must not occur, which is assured for a system adiabatically following a
dark state during the photon-generation process. We experimentally investigate
the conditions that must be met for adiabatic following in a time-of-flight
driven system, with atoms passing through a cavity and a pump beam oriented
transverse to the cavity axis. From our results, we infer the optimal intensity
and relative pump-beam position with respect to the cavity axis.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Piezo activated mode tracking system for widely tunable mode-hop-free external cavity mid-IR semiconductor lasers
A widely tunable, mode-hop-free semiconductor laser operating in the mid-IR comprises a QCL laser chip having an effective QCL cavity length, a diffraction grating defining a grating angle and an external cavity length with respect to said chip, and means for controlling the QCL cavity length, the external cavity length, and the grating angle. The laser of claim 1 wherein said chip may be tuned over a range of frequencies even in the absence of an anti-reflective coating. The diffraction grating is controllably pivotable and translatable relative to said chip and the effective QCL cavity length can be adjusted by varying the injection current to the chip. The laser can be used for high resolution spectroscopic applications and multi species trace-gas detection. Mode-hopping is avoided by controlling the effective QCL cavity length, the external cavity length, and the grating angle so as to replicate a virtual pivot point
Spectrally compensated sum-frequency mixing scheme for generation of broadband radiation at 193 nm
A dispersively compensated scheme for sum-frequency mixing of broadband ultrashort laser pulses is reported. An increase of the bandwidth of the sum-frequency mixing process by 12 times compared with the noncompensated bandwidth of the given crystal has been demonstrated. Mixing radiation at 266 and 707 nm in a 1-mm-thick beta-barium metaborate crystal by using the compensated scheme results in an output bandwidth of 0.6 nm at 193 nm, which corresponds to a minimum output pulse duration of 90 fs
Ultrahigh-brightness, femtosecond ArF excimer laser system
An ultrahigh-brightness ArF excimer laser system is described that is capable of generating pulse energies of 60 mJ with a pulse duration of ~700 fs. The system utilizes a newly developed seed pulse generation scheme based on spectrally compensated sum-frequency mixing in beta-barium metaborate (BBO), and a double-pass discharge pumped ArF excimer preamplifier followed by an electron beam pumped power amplifier
Femtosecond gain characteristics of the discharge-pumped ArF excimer amplifier
The gain characteristics of a discharge-pumped ArF excimer amplifier are measured with ~700-fs-long pulses. The small-signal gain and saturation energy are found to be 0.17 cm-1 and 3.65 ± 0.15 mJ/cm2, respectively. The maximum output energy density extracted from the deeply saturated amplifier is as much as 10 mJ/cm2. The demonstrated femtosecond gain characteristics of ArF indicate that, by utilizing sufficiently high seed pulse energies, the ArF excimer laser is expected to show a performance similar to a femtosecond high-brightness KrF excimer laser system
Quantum noise limited interferometric measurement of atomic noise: towards spin squeezing on the Cs clock transition
We investigate theoretically and experimentally a nondestructive
interferometric measurement of the state population of an ensemble of laser
cooled and trapped atoms. This study is a step towards generation of (pseudo-)
spin squeezing of cold atoms targeted at the improvement of the Caesium clock
performance beyond the limit set by the quantum projection noise of atoms. We
calculate the phase shift and the quantum noise of a near resonant optical
probe pulse propagating through a cloud of cold 133Cs atoms. We analyze the
figure of merit for a quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement of the
collective pseudo-spin and show that it can be expressed simply as a product of
the ensemble optical density and the pulse integrated rate of the spontaneous
emission caused by the off-resonant probe light. Based on this, we propose a
protocol for the sequence of operations required to generate and utilize spin
squeezing for the improved atomic clock performance via a QND measurement on
the probe light. In the experimental part we demonstrate that the
interferometric measurement of the atomic population can reach the sensitivity
of the order of N_at^1/2 in a cloud of N_at cold atoms, which is an important
benchmark towards the experimental realisation of the theoretically analyzed
protocol.Comment: 12 pages and 9 figures, accepted to Physical Review
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