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The efficiency of a hollow beam received by the Cassegrain antenna coupling into a single-mode fiber is low, and converting the hollow beam into a solid beam can remarkably improve the coupling efficiency. In this paper, shaping diffractive optical elements (DOEs) are designed through a modified Gerchberg–Saxton algorithm (MGS) with Fresnel diffraction. Further, the MGS algorithm can be applicable in the issue of circular symmetric beam shaping. The properties of the system with/without shaping DOEs are analyzed and compared. According to the simulation results, in consideration of the energy loss of the antenna, DOEs, and coupling lens, the total transmission efficiency of the receiving antenna system at 1550 nm wavelength can reach 77.81%. In addition, the system with shaping DOEs can better adapt for coupling lenses with different focal lengths, and the variation of the maximum coupling efficiency of the DOEs shaping system at different focal lengths studied in this paper is within 2.00%, which is 6.73% lower than that of the lens shaping system. The research results provide an idea of reverse design for improving a coupling system, which can also provide inspiration for other optical system designs.

Dark hollow beams (DHBs) possess great potential for material processing, holography, and vortex beams, and thus designing a high-Q DHB cavity is significant for these applications. In this Letter, a method of designing and optimizing a high-Q DHB cavity based on a one-dimensional topological photonic crystal (TPhC) is proposed. Furthermore, how the structural parameters control the performance of the cavity is analyzed with the help of finite-element-method (FEM) simulation. According to the simulation results, the Q factor of the designed cavity can reach the order of 105 with only 19 periods of layers. It is critical to mention that, although increasing the layers can improve the average Q of the cavity, it will cause serious fluctuation of both the Q factor and the divergence angle of the output beam. The design method proposed in this Letter may not only help designers of future DHB lasers but also promote the applications of DHBs in various fields.

A ring focus reflector is proposed for transmitting a perfect vortex (PV) beam, and the transmission characteristics of the PV beam with different topological charges in free space after passing through the reflector are studied. The reflector parameters can be determined by fitting the structural formula, and PV beams of different orders transmit with small spot sizes at the same time. The transmission trajectory calculated by the diffraction formula is consistent with the ray tracing results. The research results show that the reflector can achieve a high level of transmission efficiency of beams with different topological charges, which is conducive to the multiplexing of PV beams.

In this paper, a reflector antenna design method is proposed to improve transmission efficiency and control output intensity distribution. Primary and secondary mirrors are constructed segment by segment using a numerical method according to the law of energy conservation, the vector theory of reflection, and Fermat’s principle that the optical path length of each ray must be equal. To verify the effectiveness and practicability of this method, an example of an antenna with the prescribed intensity distribution of the output beam is given. The transmission efficiency of the antenna system designed by this method reaches 100% in theory. The effects of output intensity distribution and deviation on transmission efficiency were also analyzed. We believe that the results show that the proposed method is a highly efficient approach to the design of a freeform reflector antenna to improve transmission efficiency and control the output intensity distribution.

The ray transfer matrix method is widely used for analyzing beam-transmission properties and designing multi-pass systems. In this paper, a modified ray transfer matrix method is proposed for tracing an accurate non-sequential ray in three-dimensional space based on a vector reflection theory. The modified ray transfer matrix method can be utilized to analyze a ray transmitting between arbitrary surfaces, which is not confined to rotational symmetrical structures. There is no need to project rays onto two perpendicular planes, nor to introduce a paraxial approximation in our calculation. Since the length and angle of every ray can be calculated accurately, almost no deviation is accumulated in multi-pass system. The modified ray transfer matrix method can be applied in optical design, especially in the design of multi-pass cavities and multi-pass cells.

In this paper, the propagation properties of the Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beam passing through Cassegrain antenna system in a turbulent atmosphere have been researched. The accurate analytical function for the diffraction field of LG beam passing through Cassegrain antenna, the average intensity, and the cross-talk among different orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes of LG beam passing through Cassegrain antenna in Kolmogorov turbulent have been derived. The simulation results show that LG beam with ring-like distribution is selected to enhance the emission efficiency of Cassegrain antenna. The cross-talk among different OAM modes can remarkably reduce through using Cassegrain antenna. The analysis process can also apply to accurately analyzing the propagation properties of other kinds of beams through different optical systems in turbulent atmosphere.

With the improvement of the transmission efficiency, the Cassegrain antenna can be widely used in space optical communication. In this paper, the Bessel–Gaussian (BG) beam is used to avoid the central energy loss of a Cassegrain antenna system. The intensity distribution and the phase distribution of the BG beam passing through a Cassegrain antenna are theoretically derived and simulated. At a wavelength of 1550 nm, this method can theoretically improve the transmission efficiency to approach 100% under the situation in which the obscuration ratio is nonzero, and the transmission efficiency can reach more than 80% when obscuration ratio is in the range of from 0 to 0.1252 with l = 4 . The effects of on-axial defocusing on the light field and the transmission efficiency are studied. The method proposed in this paper can remarkably improve the transmission efficiency of a Cassegrain antenna in a practical and uncomplicated approach.

To improve the optical performance of the large-aperture optical antenna, the Cassegrain splicing receiving antenna consisting of spherical sub-mirrors with different curvatures is designed and optimized based on the three-dimensional (3-D) vector theory of rotation and reflection. Compared with the splicing antenna consisting of spherical sub-mirrors with the same curvatures, the antenna proposed in this paper can decrease the root mean square (RMS) of the spot radius at the receiving plane from 0.0202223 m to 0.0109724 m, and the spot size decreases 45.74%. Besides, the influence of on-axial defocusing and incident ray tilt on the performance of the optical antenna is analyzed. This paper provides not only a new antenna with better performance but also a new idea for designing large-aperture splicing optical antennas.

The low efficiency of coupling a hollow Gaussian beam into single-mode fiber terribly decreases the transmission efficiency of an optical communication system. In this paper, a coupling system containing a shaping lens and a coupling lens is designed based on the vector theory of refraction. The simulation results show that our coupling system can improve coupling efficiency to 81.45%, and the efficiency can still reach 74.73% even though chamfering and other factors are considered. This paper may not only provide engineers with a more efficient coupling system but also provide designers with ideas of hollow–solid (or solid–hollow) beam shaping systems.

Analyzing optical antenna systems through geometrical optics is quite popular for its convenience, which, however, may cause remarkable errors. This paper uses both geometrical optics and diffraction theory to analyze the performance of a traditional optical antenna system, and the results calculated through the two methods are carefully compared. Based on the comparison, it shows the situations in which geometric optics will cause significant errors. In addition, a parameter γ is defined to quickly determine whether geometrical optics is suitable for analyzing optical antenna systems under some situations. This paper can help engineers quickly choose the proper method for designing and analyzing optical antenna systems.

To solve the serious loss problem for central energy of the Cassegrain antenna, this paper designs a beam-shaping system, named E-A system, to convert the elliptical divergent beam with astigmatism from a laser diode into an annular collimation beam. This E-A system, comprised only of lenses with quadratic surfaces, can simultaneously realize four functions, i.e., aberration correction, beam circularization, beam collimation, and dark hollow beam generation. By adjusting the parameters, the E-A system can be used to shape elliptical astigmatic beams with different parameters. Further, the E-A system can maintain good performance at wavelengths from 500 to 1647 nm. After considering various practical factors, the transmission efficiency of the entire transmitting system can be increased to 93.91% at a wavelength of 1550 nm.

The laser beam with asymmetric divergence angle distribution generated by a laser diode (LD) terribly restricts its application in space laser communication. In this paper, an off-axis transmitting antenna with two parabolic cylindrical reflective mirrors is designed to simultaneously shape, collimate and transmit the laser beam. The simulation results demonstrated that the ratio of beam waist (RBW) of the output beam can be reduced from 2.9998 to 1.0003 and the maximum divergence angle of the output light is compressed to 3.98 μ rad. The performance of the system is evaluated under different astigmatism of LD and different transmitting distance. Compared with previous methods, the method proposed in this paper has three main advantages: non-dispersion, fewer reflective mirrors and processing convenience. This paper may not only provide engineers with more practical beam-shaping systems but also provided idea to the designers of off-axis system

Central energy loss is a critical factor decreasing the transmission efficiency of a Cassegrain antenna. In this paper, a pair of conic lenses are designed and set in front of a Cassegrain antenna to improve the transmission efficiency of the antenna instead of designing a complicated antenna structure. On the basis of the analysis, the optimized conic lens pair can theoretically improve the transmission efficiency up to 100% at a wavelength of 1550 nm under ideal conditions. After several practical factors are considered, such as the dispersion of the material, the transmissivity and chamfering of the conic lens, and the reflectivity of the mirrors composing the Cassegrain antenna, the conic lens pair can still increase the transmission efficiency of the Cassegrain antenna up to 92.37% at a wavelength of 1550 nm. Compared with designing a complicated antenna, the method proposed here provides a more practical approach to improve the transmission efficiency of a Cassegrain antenna.

In this paper, a method to suppress the higher-order modes in the negative curvature anti-resonance hollow core fibers (NC-AR-HCFs) by utilizing multiple resonant coupling is proposed. With this method, a hollow core fiber is designed. Based on multiple resonant coupling, the loss of LP11 mode even reaches more than 105 dB/km orders of magnitude over a wide wavelength band, and the loss ratio of LP11 mode to LP01 mode of the proposed fiber remains above 105 orders of magnitude in the range of 1200 ∼ 1550 nm, which shows excellent single-mode operation. The effect of multiple resonant coupling and the effective suppression of further-higher-order modes (LP21 mode and LP02 mode) are analyzed in detail. Moreover, we demonstrate that the extra loss caused by the node effect is reduced by changing the thickness of the outer tube that decreases the fractional optical power of the outer tube wall. And the restrictive relation between the higher-order modes suppression and the reduction of bend loss is discussed. The analysis guides the design of NC-AR-HCFs with effectively suppressing higher-order modes.

We propose a novel annular focus antenna with an off-axial parabolic primary mirror and slanting hyperbolic secondary mirror. Ray tracing based on three-dimensional vector reflection theory is utilized to design and analyze the structural parameters of the antenna. In ideal conditions, there is no geometric loss in theory and the transmitting efficiency increases by 24.54% compared with the conventional Cassegrain optical antenna. The transmitting efficiency is also calculated in the conditions of off-axial and on-axial defocus. The simulated results demonstrate that this design can increase transmission efficiency of the optical antenna effectively.

Designing a cavity with a high quality factor for omnidirectionally emitting laser (OEL) can extend its potential applications in optical communication and biomedical detection. We demonstrate a method including five steps to design a high-Q cavity for OEL using a one-dimensional topological photonic crystal heterostructure. A Si/SiO2 fiber cavity for OEL with solid gain medium Er-doped SiO2 is designed following our design steps. The designed fiber can axially transmit the pump energy at low confine loss and act as a cavity for the radial emission of the exited beam, simultaneously. The quality factor of this fiber cavity is on the order of magnitude of 108. Moreover, a method of further improving the Q-factor is proposed. The results in this paper are not restricted to the solid gain medium, and they also can be applied to designing a cavity for optofluidic OEL or quantum dot OEL. Our study may provide not only the reference for OEL manufacture, but also a route for improving the performance of OEL.

In this paper, an asymmetric large-mode-area photonic crystal fiber (LMA-PCF) with low bending loss at a smaller bending radius is designed. The finite-element method with a perfectly matched layer boundary is used to analyze the performance of the PCF. To achieve LMA-PCF with low bending loss, the air holes with double lattice constants and different sizes at the core are designed. Numerical results show that this structure can achieve low bending loss and LMA with a smaller bending radius at the wavelength of 1.55 μm. The effective mode area of the fundamental mode is larger than 1000 μm2 when the bending radius is ≥10 cm. The bending loss of the fundamental mode is just 0.0113 dB/m, and the difference between the fundamental and high-order modes of the bending loss is larger than 103 when the bending radius is 10 cm. Simulation results show this novel PCF can achieve LMA and have effective single-mode operation when the bending orientation angle ranges in ±110°. This novel photonic crystal has potential application in high-power fiber lasers.

In this work, a novel design of a high birefringence photonic crystal fiber (HB-PCF) with multimode and low confinement loss is proposed. To achieve high birefringence, the core is designed as an elliptical region, which is enclosed by twelve small holes. Based on this design, replacing the two circular holes at the top and bottom of the core region with two elliptical holes can further improve the birefringence. At the wavelength of 1.55 μm, the birefringence of the fundamental mode (LP01) and the second-order mode (LP11) are 1.70×10−2 and 1.85×10−2, respectively. Meanwhile, the confinement losses maintain on orders of 1×10−5 dB/km (LP01) and 1×10−1 dB/km (LP11). After the effective refractive indices of two types of the proposed HB-PCF are calculated by the finite element method, the birefringence, confinement loss, bending loss, dispersion, and nonlinear coefficient are studied. These results reveal that the HB-PCF might be applied for polarization-maintaining and nonlinear optics.