6 research outputs found
High-temperature optically activated GaAs power switching for aircraft digital electronic control
Gallium arsenide high-temperature devices were fabricated and assembled into an optically activated pulse-width-modulated power control for a torque motor typical of the kinds used in jet engine actuators. A bipolar heterojunction phototransistor with gallium aluminum arsenide emitter/window, a gallium arsenide junction field-effect power transistor and a gallium arsenide transient protection diode were designed and fabricated. A high-temperature fiber optic/phototransistor coupling scheme was implemented. The devices assembled into the demonstrator were successfully tested at 250 C, proving the feasibility of actuator-located switching of control power using optical signals transmitted by fibers. Assessments of the efficiency and technical merits were made for extension of this high-temperature technology to local conversion of optical power to electrical power and its control at levels useful for driving actuators. Optical power sources included in the comparisons were an infrared light-emitting diode, an injection laser diode, tungsten-halogen lamps and arc lamps. Optical-to-electrical power conversion was limited to photovoltaics located at the actuator. Impedance matching of the photovoltaic array to the load was considered over the full temperature range, -55 C to 260 C. Loss of photovoltaic efficiency at higher temperatures was taken into account. Serious losses in efficiency are: (1) in the optical source and the cooling which they may require in the assumed 125 C ambient, (2) in the decreased conversion efficiency of the gallium arsenide photovoltaic at 260 C, and (3) in impedance matching. Practical systems require improvements in these areas
Eigenvector Expansion and Petermann Factor for Ohmically Damped Oscillators
Correlation functions in ohmically damped
systems such as coupled harmonic oscillators or optical resonators can be
expressed as a single sum over modes (which are not power-orthogonal), with
each term multiplied by the Petermann factor (PF) , leading to "excess
noise" when . It is shown that is common rather than
exceptional, that can be large even for weak damping, and that the PF
appears in other processes as well: for example, a time-independent
perturbation \sim\ep leads to a frequency shift \sim \ep C_j. The
coalescence of () eigenvectors gives rise to a critical point, which
exhibits "giant excess noise" (). At critical points, the
divergent parts of contributions to cancel, while time-independent
perturbations lead to non-analytic shifts \sim \ep^{1/J}.Comment: REVTeX4, 14 pages, 4 figures. v2: final, 20 single-col. pages, 2
figures. Streamlined with emphasis on physics over formalism; rewrote Section
V E so that it refers to time-dependent (instead of non-equilibrium) effect
Chaotic Waveguide-Based Resonators for Microlasers
We propose the construction of highly directional emission microlasers using
two-dimensional high-index semiconductor waveguides as {\it open} resonators.
The prototype waveguide is formed by two collinear leads connected to a cavity
of certain shape. The proposed lasing mechanism requires that the shape of the
cavity yield mixed chaotic ray dynamics so as to have the appropiate (phase
space) resonance islands. These islands allow, via Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle, the appearance of quasi bound states (QBS) which, in turn,
propitiate the lasing mechanism. The energy values of the QBS are found through
the solution of the Helmholtz equation. We use classical ray dynamics to
predict the direction and intensity of the lasing produced by such open
resonators for typical values of the index of refraction.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure