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We investigate an improvement in the pump slope efficiency for an erbium-doped fiber-ring laser. The method is based on the residual pump power reused by means of a fiber mirror. Under the conditions of a 4-m erbium-doped fiber (EDF), 10 mW of pump power, and a 99% reflectivity of a fiber-Bragg grating, the pump slope efficiency may reach 19.70% compared to 15.37% for a conventional fiber-ring laser. The maximum lasing power is increased from 14.6 to 18.7 mW corresponding to a 1.07-dB lasing power enhancement. The side-mode suppression ratio is as high as 67.6 dB with a line width of less than 0.05 nm.

We present the results and critical analyses of recent studies of ultrafast optical nonlinearities of liquid crystals in the isotropic and ordered phases for time scales spanning femtoseconds – microseconds. Pure undoped liquid crystals as well as liquid crystals containing plasmonic nano-particles have been investigated. Individual molecular electronic optical nonlinearities are found to be useful for femtoseconds – nanoseconds nonlinear transmission clamping applications. On the other hand, laser induced order parameter and birefringence modification in aligned nematic cells allow very rapid transmission switching of visible as well as near infrared lasers with response times in the sub-microseconds - few nanoseconds regime.

Sound transmission and absorption of multi-layer sound absorbents are discussed in this manuscript. A new matrix formulation based on four pole parameters is utilized to derive the transmission loss and absorption coefficient of the absorbents. A transfer matrix relating pressure to acoustic velocity provides the required information to calculate the transmission loss and absorption coefficient. The multi-layer sound absorbents considered are structural panels, elastic porous linings and air-gaps. No limitations are imposed on the number of layers. Some realistic configurations of a multi-layer sound absorbent are studied to demonstrate the applicability of the four-pole parameter technique.