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The beam propagation method (BPM) can be viewed as a chain of alternating convolutions and multiplications, as filtering operations alternately in the space and frequency domains or as multiplication operations sandwiched between linear canonical or fractional Fourier transforms. These structures provide alternative models of inhomogeneous media and potentially allow mathematical tools and algorithms associated with these transforms to be applied to the BPM. As an example, in the case where quadratic approximation is possible, it is shown that the BPM can be represented as a single LCT system, leading to significantly faster computation of the output field.

This work presents a linear algebraic theory of partial coherence for optical fields of continuous variables. This approach facilitates use of linear algebraic techniques and makes it possible to precisely define the concepts of incoherence and coherence in a mathematical way. We have proposed five scalar measures for the degree of partial coherence. These measures are zero for incoherent fields, unity for fully coherent fields, and between zero and one for partially coherent fields.

The course Science, Technology, and Society is taken by about 500 engineering students each year at Bilkent University, Ankara. Aiming to complement the highly technical engineering programs, it deals with the ethical, social, cultural, political, economic, legal, environment and sustainability, health and safety, reliability dimensions of science, technology, and engineering in a multidisciplinary fashion. The teaching philosophy and experiences of the instructor are reviewed. Community research projects have been an important feature of the course. Analysis of teaching style based on a multi-dimensional model is given. Results of outcome measurements performed for ABET assessment are provided. Challenges and solutions related to teaching a large class are discussed.

We show how to explicitly determine the space-frequency window (phase-space window) for optical systems consisting of an arbitrary sequence of lenses and apertures separated by arbitrary lengths of free space. If the space-frequency support of a signal lies completely within this window, the signal passes without information loss. When it does not, the parts that lie within the window pass and the parts that lie outside of the window are blocked, a result that is valid to a good degree of approximation for many systems of practical interest. Also, the maximum number of degrees of freedom that can pass through the system is given by the area of its space-frequency window. These intuitive results provide insight and guidance into the behavior and design of systems involving multiple apertures and can help minimize information loss.

A sampling-based framework for finding the optimal representation of a finite energy optical field using a finite number of bits is presented. For a given bit budget, we determine the optimum number and spacing of the samples in order to represent the field with as low error as possible. We present the associated performance bounds as trade-off curves between the error and the cost budget. In contrast to common practice, which often treats sampling and quantization separately, we explicitly focus on the interplay between limited spatial resolution and limited amplitude accuracy, such as whether it is better to take more samples with lower amplitude accuracy or fewer samples with higher accuracy. We illustrate that in certain cases sampling at rates different from the Nyquist rate is more efficient.

We consider the problem of representation of a finite-energy optical field, with a finite number of bits. The optical field is represented with a finite number of uniformly spaced finite-accuracy samples (there is a finite number of amplitude levels that can be reliably distinguished for each sample). The total number of bits required to encode all samples constitutes the cost of the representation. We investigate the optimal number and spacing of these samples under a total cost budget. Our framework reveals the trade-off between the number, spacing, and accuracy of the samples. When we vary the cost budget, we obtain trade-off curves between the representation error and the cost budget. We also discuss the effect of degree of coherence of the field.

Fresnel integrals corresponding to different distances can be interpreted as scaled fractional Fourier transformations observed on spherical reference surfaces. Transverse samples can be taken on these surfaces with separation that increases with propagation distance. Here, we are concerned with the separation of the spherical reference surfaces along the longitudinal direction. We show that these surfaces should be equally spaced with respect to the fractional Fourier transform order, rather than being equally spaced with respect to the distance of propagation along the optical axis. The spacing should be of the order of the reciprocal of the space-bandwidth product of the signals. The space-dependent longitudinal and transverse spacings define a grid that reflects the structure of Fresnel diffraction., (© 2012 Optical Society of America)

Imperfections and nonrobust behavior of practical multilevel spatial light modulators (SLMs) degrade the performance of many proposed full-complex amplitude modulation schemes. We consider the use of more robust binary SLMs for this purpose. We propose a generic method, by which, out of K binary (or 1 bit) SLMs of size M×N, we effectively create a new 2(K)-level (or K bit) SLM of size M×N. The method is a generalization of the well-known concepts of bit plane representation and decomposition for ordinary gray scale digital images and relies on forming a properly weighted superposition of binary SLMs. When K is sufficiently large, the effective SLM can be regarded as a full-complex one. Our method is as efficient as possible from an information theoretical perspective. A 4f system is discussed as a possible optical implementation. This 4f system also provides a means for eliminating the undesirable higher diffraction orders. The components of the 4f system can easily be customized for different production technologies.

Fresnel integrals corresponding to different distances can be interpreted as scaled fractional Fourier transformations observed on spherical reference surfaces. We show that by judiciously choosing sample points on these curved reference surfaces, it is possible to represent the diffracted signals in a nonredundant manner. The change in sample spacing with distance reflects the structure of Fresnel diffraction. This sampling grid also provides a simple and robust basis for accurate and efficient computation, which naturally handles the challenges of sampling chirplike kernels.

Computation of a binary spatial light modulator (SLM) pattern that generates a desired light field is a challenging quantization problem for which several algorithms have been proposed, mainly for far-field or Fourier plane reconstructions. We study this problem assuming that the desired light field is synthesized within a volumetric region in the non-far-field range after free space propagation from the SLM plane. We use Fresnel and Rayleigh-Sommerfeld scalar diffraction theories for propagation of light. We show that, when the desired field is confined to a sufficiently narrow region of space, the ideal gray-level complex-valued SLM pattern generating it becomes sufficiently low pass (oversampled) so it can be successfully halftoned into a binary SLM pattern by solving two decoupled real-valued constrained halftoning problems. Our simulation results indicate that, when the synthesis region is considered, the binary SLM is indistinguishable from a lower resolution full complex gray-level SLM. In our approach, free space propagation related computations are done only once at the beginning, and the rest of the computation time is spent on carrying out standard image halftoning.

A fast and accurate algorithm is developed for the numerical computation of the family of complex linear canonical transforms (CLCTs), which represent the input-output relationship of complex quadratic-phase systems. Allowing the linear canonical transform parameters to be complex numbers makes it possible to represent paraxial optical systems that involve complex parameters. These include lossy systems such as Gaussian apertures, Gaussian ducts, or complex graded-index media, as well as lossless thin lenses and sections of free space and any arbitrary combinations of them. Complex-ordered fractional Fourier transforms (CFRTs) are a special case of CLCTs, and therefore a fast and accurate algorithm to compute CFRTs is included as a special case of the presented algorithm. The algorithm is based on decomposition of an arbitrary CLCT matrix into real and complex chirp multiplications and Fourier transforms. The samples of the output are obtained from the samples of the input in approximately N log N time, where N is the number of input samples. A space-bandwidth product tracking formalism is developed to ensure that the number of samples is information-theoretically sufficient to reconstruct the continuous transform, but not unnecessarily redundant.

Linear canonical transforms (LCTs) form a three-parameter family of integral transforms with wide application in optics. We show that LCT domains correspond to scaled fractional Fourier domains and thus to scaled oblique axes in the space-frequency plane. This allows LCT domains to be labeled and ordered by the corresponding fractional order parameter and provides insight into the evolution of light through an optical system modeled by LCTs. If a set of signals is highly confined to finite intervals in two arbitrary LCT domains, the space-frequency (phase space) support is a parallelogram. The number of degrees of freedom of this set of signals is given by the area of this parallelogram, which is equal to the bicanonical width product but usually smaller than the conventional space-bandwidth product. The bicanonical width product, which is a generalization of the space-bandwidth product, can provide a tighter measure of the actual number of degrees of freedom, and allows us to represent and process signals with fewer samples.

We report a fast and accurate algorithm for numerical computation of two-dimensional non-separable linear canonical transforms (2D-NS-LCTs). Also known as quadratic-phase integrals, this class of integral transforms represents a broad class of optical systems including Fresnel propagation in free space, propagation in graded-index media, passage through thin lenses, and arbitrary concatenations of any number of these, including anamorphic/astigmatic/non-orthogonal cases. The general two-dimensional non-separable case poses several challenges which do not exist in the one-dimensional case and the separable two-dimensional case. The algorithm takes approximately N log N time, where N is the two-dimensional space-bandwidth product of the signal. Our method properly tracks and controls the space-bandwidth products in two dimensions, in order to achieve information theoretically sufficient, but not wastefully redundant, sampling required for the reconstruction of the underlying continuous functions at any stage of the algorithm. Additionally, we provide an alternative definition of general 2D-NS-LCTs that shows its kernel explicitly in terms of its ten parameters, and relate these parameters bidirectionally to conventional ABCD matrix parameters.

We present a fast NlogN time algorithm for computing quadratic-phase integrals. This three-parameter class of integrals models propagation in free space in the Fresnel approximation, passage through thin lenses, and propagation in quadratic graded-index media as well as any combination of any number of these and is therefore of importance in optics. By carefully managing the sampling rate, one need not choose N much larger than the space-bandwidth product of the signals, despite the highly oscillatory integral kernel. The only deviation from exactness arises from the approximation of a continuous Fourier transform with the discrete Fourier transform. Thus the algorithm computes quadratic-phase integrals with a performance similar to that of the fast-Fourier-transform algorithm in computing the Fourier transform, in terms of both speed and accuracy.

The problem of recovering a complex signal from the magnitudes of any number of its fractional Fourier transforms at any set of fractional orders is addressed. This problem corresponds to the problem of phase retrieval from the transverse intensity profiles of an optical field at arbitrary locations in an optical system involving arbitrary concatenations of lenses and sections of free space. The dependence of the results on the number of orders, their spread, and the noise is investigated. Generally, increasing the number of orders improves the results, but with diminishing return beyond a certain point. Selecting the measurement planes such that their fractional orders are well separated or spread as much as possible also leads to better results.

Continuum extensions of common dual pairs of operators are presented and consolidated, based on the fractional Fourier transform. In particular, the fractional chirp multiplication, fractional chirp convolution, and fractional scaling operators are defined and expressed in terms of their common nonfractional special cases, revealing precisely how they are interpolations of their conventional counterparts. Optical realizations of these operators are possible with use of common physical components. These three operators can be interpreted as fractional lenses, fractional free space, and fractional imaging systems, respectively. Any optical system consisting of an arbitrary concatenation of sections of free space and thin lenses can be interpreted as a fractional imaging system with spherical reference surfaces. As a special case, a system departing from the classical single-lens imaging condition can be interpreted as a fractional imaging system.

A linear algebraic theory of partial coherence is presented that allows precise mathematical definitions of concepts such as coherence and incoherence. This not only provides new perspectives and insights but also allows us to employ the conceptual and algebraic tools of linear algebra in applications. We define several scalar measures of the degree of partial coherence of an optical field that are zero for full incoherence and unity for full coherence. The mathematical definitions are related to our physical understanding of the corresponding concepts by considering them in the context of Young's experiment.

Owing to the nonlinear nature of the problem, the transform orders in fractional Fourier-domain filtering configurations have usually not been optimized but chosen uniformly. We discuss the optimization of these orders for multi-channel-filtering configurations by first finding the optimal filter coefficients for a larger number of uniformly chosen orders, and then maintaining the most important ones. The method is illustrated with the problem of synthesizing desired mutual-intensity distributions. The method we propose allows those fractional Fourier domains, which add little benefit to the filtering process but increase the overall cost, to be pruned, so that comparable performance can be attained with less cost, or higher performance can be obtained with the same cost. The method we propose is more likely to be useful when confronted with low-cost rather than high-performance applications, because larger improvements are obtained when the use of a smaller number of filters is desired.

Perspective projections in the space-frequency plane are analyzed, and it is shown that under certain conditions they can be approximately modeled in terms of the fractional Fourier transform. The region of validity of the approximation is examined. Numerical examples are presented.

Phase spaces are different ways to represent signals. Owing to their properties, they are often used for signal compression and recognition with high discrimination abilities. We present several recently introduced Wigner-related sets of representations that have improved signal processing performance, and we introduce an optical implementation. This study deals with the generalized Wigner spaces, the fractional Fourier transform, and the x-p and the r-p representations. The optical implementations are demonstrated and discussed.

Several approaches to three-dimensional integration of conventional electronic circuits have been pursued recently. To determine whether the advantages of optical interconnections are negated by these advances, we compare the limitations of fully three-dimensional systems interconnected with optical, normally conducting, repeatered normally conducting, and superconducting interconnections by showing how system-level parameters such as signal delay, bandwidth, and number of computing elements are related. In particular, we show that the duty ratio of pulses transmitted on terminated transmission lines is an important optimization parameter that can be used to trade off signal delay and bandwidth so as to optimize applicable measures of performance or cost, such as minimum message delay in parallel computation.

Previous generalizations of the fractional Fourier transform to two dimensions assumed separable kernels. We present a nonseparable definition for the two-dimensional fractional Fourier transform that includes the separable definition as a special case. Its digital and optical implementations are presented. The usefulness of the nonseparable transform is justified with an image-restoration example.

One can obtain either exact realizations or useful approximations of linear systems or matrix-vector products that arise in many different applications by implementing them in the form of multistage or multichannel fractional Fourier-domain filters, resulting in space-bandwidth-efficient systems with acceptable decreases in accuracy. Varying the number and the configuration of filters enables one to trade off between accuracy and efficiency in a flexible manner. The proposed scheme constitutes a systematic way of exploiting the regularity or structure of a given linear system or matrix, even when that structure is not readily apparent.

We provide a general treatment of optical two-dimensional fractional Fourier transforming systems. We not only allow the fractional Fourier transform orders to be specified independently for the two dimensions but also allow the input and output scale parameters and the residual spherical phase factors to be controlled. We further discuss systems that do not allow all these parameters to be controlled at the same time but are simpler and employ a fewer number of lenses. The variety of systems discussed and the design equations provided should be useful in practical applications for which an optical fractional Fourier transforming stage is to be employed.

By systematically examining the tree of possibilities for optoelectronic computing architectures and offering arguments that allow one to prune suboptimal branches of this tree, I come to the conclusion that electronic circuit planes interconnected optically according to regular connection patterns represent an alternative that is reasonably close to the best possible, as defined by physical limitations. Thus I propose that this foundation architecture should provide a basis for future research and development in this area.

Various issues pertaining to the physical construction of systems that are based on regularly interconnected device planes, such as heat removal and extensibility of the optical interconnections for larger systems, are discussed. Regularly interconnected device planes constitute a foundation architecture that is reasonably close to the best possible as defined by physical limitations. Three application platforms based on the foundation architecture described are offered.

We consider optical systems composed of an arbitrary number of lenses and filters, separated by arbitrary distances, under the standard approximations of Fourier optics. We show that every such system is equivalent to (i) consecutive filtering operations in several fractional Fourier domains and (ii) consecutive filtering operations alternately in the space and the frequency domains.

Analog Fourier optical processing systems can perform important classes of signal processing operations in parallel, but suffer from limited accuracy. Digital-optical equivalents of such systems could be built that share many features of the analog systems while allowing greater accuracy. We show that the digital equivalent of any system consisting of an arbitrary number of lenses, niters, spatial light modulators, and sections of free space can be constructed. There are many possible applications for such systems as well as many alternative technologies for constructing them; this paper stresses the potential of free-space interconnected active-device-plane-based optoelectronic architectures as a digital signal processing environment. Implementation of the active-device planes through hybridization of optoelectronic components with silicon electronics should allow the realization of systems whose performance exceeds that of purely electronic systems.

Optical signal processing can be done with time-lens devices. A temporal processor based on chirp-z transformers is suggested. This configuration is more compact than a conventional 4-ƒ temporal processor. On the basis of implementation aspects of such a temporal processor, we did a performance analysis. This analysis leads to the conclusion that an ultrafast optical temporal processor can be implemented.

Recently two optical interpretations of the fractional Fourier transform operator were introduced. We address implementation issues of the fractional-Fourier-transform operation. We show that the original bulk-optics configuration for performing the fractional-Fourier-transform operation [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 10, 2181 (1993)] provides a scaled output using a fixed lens. For obtaining a non-scaled output, an asymmetrical setup is suggested and tested. For comparison, computer simulations were performed. A good agreement between computer simulations and experimental results was obtained.

Recently, optical interpretations of the fractional-Fourier-transform operator have been introduced. On the basis of this operator the fractional correlation operator is defined in two different ways that are both consistent with the definition of conventional correlation. Fractional correlation is not always a shift-invariant operation. This property leads to some new applications for fractional correlation as shift-variant image detection. A bulk-optics implementation of fractional correlation is suggested and demonstrated with computer simulations.

In the Wigner domain of a one-dimensional function, a certain chirp term represents a rotated line delta function. On the other hand, a fractional Fourier transform (FRT) can be associated with a rotation of the Wigner-distribution function by an angle connected with the FRT order. Thus with the FRT tool a chirp and a delta function can be transformed one into the other. Taking the chirp as additive noise, the FRT is used for filtering the line delta function in the appropriate fractional Fourier domain. Experimental filtering results for a Gaussian input function, which is modulated by an additive chirp noise, are shown. Excellent agreement between experiments and computer simulations is achieved.

The complex amplitude distributions on two spherical reference surfaces of given curvature and spacing are simply related by a fractional Fourier transform. The order of the fractional Fourier transform is proportional to the Gouy phase shift between the two surfaces. This result provides new insight into wave propagation and spherical mirror resonators as well as the possibility of exploiting the fractional Fourier transform as a mathematical tool in analyzing such systems.

Two definitions of a fractional Fourier transform have been proposed previously. One is based on the propagation of a wave field through a graded-index medium, and the other is based on rotating a function's Wigner distribution. It is shown that both definitions are equivalent. An important result of this equivalency is that the Wigner distribution of a wave field rotates as the wave field propagates through a quadratic graded-index medium. The relation with ray-optics phase space is discussed.

We discuss both numerically and analytically how the space-bandwidth product and the information density of lenses scale as functions of their diameter and f-number over many orders of magnitude. This information may be useful for the design of optical computing and interconnection systems. For diffractive lenses, cost is defined as the number of resolution elements the lithographic production system must have; the relationship of this quantity to the space-bandwidth product and information density is also given.

We present a textbooklike treatment of hybrid systems employing both optical and electrical interconnections. We investigate how these two different interconnection media can be used in conjunction to realize a system not possible with any alone. More specifically, we determine the optimal mix of optical and normally conducting interconnections maximizing a given figure-of-merit function. We find that optical interconnections have relatively little to offer if the optical paths are constrained to lie on a plane (such as in an integrated optics system). However, if optical paths are permitted to leave the plane, they may enable considerable increase in performance. In any event the prize in terms of performance is accompanied by a penalty in terms of system power and/or size.

The analogy between optical one-to-one point transformations and optical one-to-one interconnections is discussed. Methods for performing both operations are reviewed and compared. The multifacet and multistage architectures have the flexibility to implement any arbitrary one-to-one transformation or interconnection pattern. The former would be preferred for low-cost and low-resolution applications, whereas the latter would be preferred for high-cost and high-performance applications.

Heat removal, rather than finite interconnect density, is the major mechanism that limits how densely we can pack three-dimensional computing systems of increasing numbers of elements. Thus highly interconnected approaches can be employed without a further increase in system size. The use of optical interconnections for implementing the longer connections of such systems is advantageous. In fact, if the optical communication energy is sufficiently low and large-bit repetition rates are employed, conductors are useful for only the shortest connections and can be dispensed with altogether with little disadvantage. This justifies consideration of an optical digital computer.