Search

Symbol-level fiber-longitudinal power profile estimation (PPE) greatly reduces the implementation complexity compared with the waveform-level PPE using oversampled data. However, symbol-rate data cannot account for the inter-sample interaction, which leads to inaccuracy of the absolute power estimation. To realize an accurate symbol-level PPE, we provide an in-depth analysis of the differences between symbol-level and waveform-level perturbation matrices and propose a power calibration method based on the trace of the inverse matrix. Evaluated in the probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) 64QAM 130 Gbaud 5 × 50 km optical links, the root mean squared error (RMSE) of the symbol-level PPE decreases by 0.98 and 0.62 dB at erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) positions and all estimated positions with the aid of matrix calibration.

In this Letter, we propose a multifunctional imaging system enabled by a single geometric-phase-based liquid crystal (LC) element, which integrates chiral polarization and edge enhancement imaging. The element is located at the frequency domain plane in a 4F imaging system, and the phase profile of the element consists of a fork grating in the x direction and a grating in the y direction, which provide edge enhancement and chiral polarization imaging capabilities. Benefiting from the tunable property of the LC, the system can be switched from a polarization and edge imaging mode to the normal conventional imaging mode which is capable of conveniently acquiring the needed image information. Experiments demonstrate that the system can easily achieve multifunctional and switchable imaging, which agrees well with our design, and our LC element can work in the broadband spectrum because of the geometric phase modulation. The multifunctional strategy used here can effectively avoid the need to increase the size of the original microscopic system and the need for additional mechanical rotation of components. We believe that the proposed system with the additional advantages of electric control and tunability can find applications in biological imaging, medical detection, and optical computing.

Conventional optical imaging systems usually utilize several lenses within a precise assembly to eliminate chromatic aberration, which increases the difficulty of system integration. In recent years, with the rapid development of metasurfaces and liquid crystals (LCs), planar optical elements provide feasible solutions to realize flexible light manipulation and lightweight systems. However, there also exists chromatic aberration, which can be corrected but at the cost of a complex device design. Here, a geometric-phase-based axicon lens is utilized to correct chromatic aberration across a broadband wavelength with the assistance of a post-process algorithm. The axicon lens is fabricated through arranging orientations of liquid-crystal molecules with a standard photoalignment technique, and it produces an approximately invariant point spread function (PSF) at several discrete wavelengths, which is used as the prior information to extract the object in the blurred image. In the experiment, the reconstruction quality is significantly improved after the post-process algorithm. We expect our work to provide further development to reduce the dispersion with both the device design and the computational image technique.

Parity time symmetry breaking was obtained in a specially designed fiber ring laser with a homemade tunable isolator in the cavity. The dynamic evolution of the cavity eigenmodes around the exceptional point (EP) was further experimentally studied. We showed that operating the laser near the EP can facilitate single longitudinal mode lasing. A single-frequency fiber laser with a linewidth of 163 Hz was first, to the best of our knowledge, demonstrated near the EP of the cavity without using any filter with a narrow bandwidth.

Strong and narrow spectral feedback plays a key role in self-injection locking (SIL) single-frequency lasers, especially in the stabilization of single longitudinal mode (SLM) operation of a multi-mode laser. Here, we report on a narrow linewidth SIL fiber laser that adopts a fiber add-drop configuration composing of two tapered fibers and a high-Q MgF 2 crystalline whispering-gallery-mode resonator. The feedback from the drop port could be controlled and optimized for stable SLM lasing of multi-mode fiber lasers. A stable single-frequency fiber laser with white frequency noise as low as ∼0.4 Hz 2 /Hz, corresponding to an instantaneous linewidth of ∼1.26 Hz, is demonstrated. Compact, controllable, and all-fiber configuration in this work to achieve an ultra-narrow linewidth laser will attract interest in many applications.

We report on the high-power operation of an Er:Y 2 O 3 ceramic laser at approximately 1.6 µm using a low-scattering-loss, 0.25 at. % Er 3+ -doped ceramic sample fabricated in-house via a co-precipitation process. The laser is in-band pumped by an Er, Yb fiber laser at 1535.6 nm and generates 10.2 W of continuous-wave (CW) output power at 1640.4 nm with a slope efficiency of 25% with respect to the absorbed pump power. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an approximately 1.6 µm Er:Y 2 O 3 laser at room temperature. The prospects for further scaling of the output power and lasing efficiency via low Er 3+ doping and reduced energy-transfer upconversion are discussed.

We propose a parabolic W-type thulium-doped fiber for the 1.7 µm high-energy femtosecond pulsed laser. Despite its attractive normal dispersion, the fiber offers high gain in 1.7 µm region thanks to its distributed short-pass filtering effect. With a proper dispersion management in an all-fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) scheme, we demonstrate so far the highest pulse energy of 128.0 nJ in a stable pulse of 174 fs in the 1.7-1.8 µm region, which marks above an order of magnitude improvement in pulse energy while exhibiting the shortest pulse duration among fiber-based CPA works at 1.7 µm. Hence, we provide a pathway to an energy scalable and efficient femtosecond laser at 1.7 µm via a compact and elegant all-fiber solution.

Direct generation of ultrashort few-optical-cycle pulses in various wavelength regions has attracted great attention in recent decades. In this paper, generation of less than five-optical-cycle pulses from a Kerr-lens mode-locked ${\rm Yb}{:}{\rm CaYAlO}_4$ laser is demonstrated. Pumped by a 976 nm fiber laser, stable near-Fourier-transform-limited ultrashort soliton pulses centered around 1080 nm with a repetition rate of ${\sim}{113.7}\;{\rm MHz}$ were obtained. The obtained pulses have a pulse duration as short as 17 fs if a ${{\rm Sech}^2}$-shaped pulse profile is assumed, corresponding to about 4.68 optical cycles. To the best of our knowledge, this is the shortest pulse directly generated from mode-locked rare-earth-doped solid-state oscillators.

In this Letter, transverse and longitudinal liquid crystal bifocal lenses (LCBLs) are proposed to continuously control the relative intensity of two foci through a simple polarization control. The modulation of a LCBL comes from the geometric phase control and is designed through the principle of holography, where the object wave is a light field from two foci respectively formed by the left-circular polarized (LCP) and right-circular polarized (RCP) light, and the reference wave is the incident plane wave. Constructed millimeter-scale LCBLs are verified experimentally, and the foci are precisely formed at the preset plane. Besides, the relative intensity can be easily controlled with different weights of LCP and RCP light. The proposed strategy overcomes the shortcomings of previous bifocal lenses, such as a complex design method, a long optimization time, and an unchangeable relative intensity, and it is expected to find potential applications in parallel optical processing and optical interconnections.

Optical super-oscillatory lenses based on planar micro/nano structures have been demonstrated as promising alternatives for shaping wavefronts of light and realizing super-resolution images in a NA-limited optical system. However, as the super-oscillatory foci originated from the delicate interference of the light, the change of the parameters might destroy the hotspots, such as the incident wavelength. Here, a multiwavelength achromatic super-oscillatory metasurface (ASOM) is proposed through simultaneously controlling distinct wavelength-dependent wavefronts. The constructed multiwavelength ASOM is then verified numerically, and the foci are precisely formed at the same axial plane for the design wavelengths with resolution beyond the diffraction limit. We expect that our proposed multiwavelength controllable method will give more freedom for the designs of planar and lightweight components, which would be useful in optical applications, such as data storage, super-resolution imaging, holography, etc.

We demonstrate efficient laser operation using a H o : Y 2 O 3 ceramic with low scattering loss and excellent optical quality fabricated in-house through an improved technique in support of high-power laser operation. The H o : Y 2 O 3 ceramic laser was in-band pumped by a Tm-fiber laser of 1931 nm at room temperature. With an optically polished but uncoated sample of 0.5 at. % H o 3+ doping, up to 113.6 W continuous-wave output power at 2117 nm has been generated with a slope efficiency of 55.6% with respect to the absorbed pump power. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power achieved with a Ho-doped ceramic.

We demonstrate, to the best of our knowledge, the first direct vortex beam generation in the 3 μm spectral region by employing an Er:Y 2 O 3 ceramic laser. Controllable handedness with high purity is achieved by introducing asymmetric cavity loss and reducing the number of longitudinal modes. The average orbital angular momentum of the produced scalar vortex beam is quantitatively evaluated to be 0.95ħ for the LG 0,+1 mode and -0.94ħ for the LG 0,-1 mode. The corresponding optical spectrum is centered at 2710.8 and 2710.5 nm, respectively.

We report on dissipative soliton resonance (DSR) and its transformation into a type of burst-like emission in a holmium-doped fiber (HDF) laser in the large normal dispersion regime. A nonlinear amplifying loop mirror incorporating ∼118  m large normal dispersion fiber acts as an artificial saturable absorber. To the best of our knowledge, the HDF laser has the largest net normal dispersion so far. As the pump power is increased from ∼1.72  W to ∼4.80  W, the produced single pulse linearly broadens from ∼6.7  ns to ∼68.0  ns, while the output pulse peak power is clamped around ∼180.5  mW due to the peak-power-clamping effect with DSR. The sharp spectral peak indicates that DSR is realized with a large normal dispersion. With further manipulation of the polarization state, DSR can evolve into a type of burst-like emission. It is further revealed that this burst-like emission could be caused by a type of peak-power-depressing effect, which results from the competition between DSR and soliton formation.

Improving luminescence efficiency is of vital importance for applications of rare-earth-doped upconversion materials. Herein, we present highly efficient upconversion nanocrystal, which is brighter than the state-of-the-art Er 3+ /Yb 3+ co-doped core-shell material, through Er 3+ heavily doping and 1530 nm excitation. Moreover, upconversion characteristics and mechanisms of Er 3+ heavily doped core nanocrystals and their core-shell counterparts are investigated carefully.