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Polarization-resolved second harmonic generation (P-SHG) microscopy has evolved as a promising technique to reveal subresolution information about the structure and orientation of ordered biological macromolecules. To extend the adoption of the technique, it should be easily integrated onto commercial laser scanning microscopes. Furthermore, procedures for easy calibration and assessment of measurement accuracy are essential, and measurements should be fully automated to allow for analysis of large quantities of samples. In this paper we present a setup for P-SHG which is readily incorporated on commercial multiphoton microscopes. The entire system is completely automated which allows for rapid calibration through the freely available software and for automated imaging for different polarization measurements, including linear and circular polarization of the excitation beam. The results show that calibration settings are highly system dependent. We also show that the accuracy of the polarization control is easily quantified and that it varies between systems. The accuracy can be tuned by iterative alignment of optics or a more fine-grained calibration procedure. Images of real samples show that the red accuracy of the results is easily visualized with the automated setup. Through this system we believe that P-SHG could develop a wider adoption in biomedical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explain and demonstrate a new method of force and position calibrations for optical tweezers with back-focal-plane photodetection. The method combines power spectral measurements of thermal motion and the response to a sinusoidal motion of a translation stage. It consequently does not use the drag coefficient of the trapped object as an input. Thus, neither the viscosity, nor the size of the trapped object, nor its distance to nearby surfaces needs to be known. The method requires only a low level of instrumentation and can be applied in situ in all spatial dimensions. It is both accurate and precise: true values are returned, with small error bars. We tested this experimentally, near and far from surfaces in the lateral directions. Both position and force calibrations were accurate to within 3%. To calibrate, we moved the sample with a piezoelectric translation stage, but the laser beam could be moved instead, e.g., by acousto-optic deflectors. Near surfaces, this precision requires an improved formula for the hydrodynamical interaction between an infinite plane and a microsphere in nonconstant motion parallel to it. We give such a formula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A jitter-free vector frequency-domain measurement technique to characterize optical reference receivers is presented. The system is based on a Mach-Zehnder integrated-optic modulator (IOM). Results from this new technique and those obtained by optical impulse and heterodyne methods are compared up to 76 GHz An IOM down-conversion scheme was used to measure the heterodyne beat frequency to >106 GHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A frequency-stabilised, 25 GHz-spaced optical comb over the S-, C- and L-bands has been developed with MHz-accuracy for precise optical frequency domain characterisation including performance evaluation and the wavelength calibration of various types of WDM equipment and components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]