Highlights of 2016

We report on an external-cavity diamond Raman laser (DRL) pumped with a Q-switched Nd:YAG and generating at 1st and 2nd Stokes (1240 nm and 1485 nm) with enhanced output energy. The slope efficiency of 54% and output energy as high as 1.2 mJ in single pulse at 1240 nm have been achieved with optimized cavity, while the pulse energy of 0.70 mJ was obtained in the eye-safe spectral region at 1485 nm. Calculations of thermal lensing effect indicate it as a possible reason for the observed decrease in conversion efficiency at the highest pump energies.

In this work, we investigated the thermo-optical properties of highly Nd³⁺ doped YAG ceramics. The normalized lifetime thermal lens method was used to obtain the fluorescence quantum efficiency (η) versus Nd³⁺ concentration (N_t) and to study the energy transfer microparameters C_DD and C_DA. The N_t dependence of η was compared to the results of the previous literature. The C_DA found is very similar to those of the previous literature, while the C_DD is very different and higher than C_DA, although the main dependence of η with N_t is assigned to C_DA. The figure of merit (η.N_t versus N_t) indicated a maximum around 3.8 at.% Nd₂O₃, which in addition to the very low ds/dT value, evidences the YAG ceramic as an excellent material for an ultra-high-power microchip laser system and for devices requiring minimum pump-induced local heating generation.

Characteristics of a room temperature laser on polycrystalline ZnS:Fe²⁺ subjected to diffuse doping from two sides were investigated. The sample was pumped by a non-chain electrodischarge HF laser with the FWHM duration of the radiation pulse of ~140 ns. The diameter of the pumping radiation spot on the surface of the crystal was 3.8 mm. Further increases in the size of the pumping spot were limited by parasitic generation arising due to a high concentration of Fe ions in the near-surface layer of the sample at a relatively small depth of doping (short length of active medium). The generation energy of 25.5 mJ was obtained at a slope efficiency of 12% with respect to the energy incident on the sample. Characteristics of lasers on polycrystalline ZnS:Fe²⁺ and ZnSe:Fe²⁺ have been compared in equal pumping conditions. The slope efficiencies of ZnSe:Fe²⁺ and ZnS:Fe²⁺ lasers with respect to the absorbed energy were 34% and 20%, respectively. At equal pumping energy absorbed in the samples, the duration of the ZnSe:Fe²⁺ laser radiation pulse was longer than that of the ZnS:Fe²⁺ laser. Possibilities of increasing the efficiency of ZnS:Fe²⁺ laser operation at room temperature by improving the technology of sample manufacturing and reducing the duration of the pumping pulse are discussed in this letter.

In this work a very simple continuously tunable laser based on an erbium ring cavity and a silicon wafer is presented. This laser can be tuned with very fine steps, which is a compulsory characteristic for gas sensing applications. Moreover the laser is free of mode hopping within a spectral range sufficiently wide to match one of the ro-vibrational lines of a target molecule. Here the proposed laser reached, at ~1530 nm, a continuous tuning range of around 950 pm (>100 GHz) before mode hopping occurred, when a silicon wafer of 355 μm thickness was used. Additionally, the laser can be finely tuned with small tuning steps of  <12 pm, achieving a resolution of 84.6 pm °C⁻¹ and by using a thermo-electric cooler (TEC) the laser showed a high wavelength stability over time. These tuning characteristics are sufficient to detect molecules such as acetylene in which the mean separation between two ro-vibrational lines is around 600 pm. Finally, it is shown that the tuning range can be modified by using wafers with different thickness.

A broadband wavelength tunable mode-locked Tm³⁺-doped fiber laser operating in the 2 μm region based on a graphene saturable absorber is experimentally investigated. A section of graphene film is transferred on a microfiber, which allows light-graphene interaction via evanescent field. The microfiber based graphene not only acts as an excellent saturable absorber for mode-locking, but also induces a polarizing effect to form an artificial birefringent filter for wavelength selection. By tuning the polarization states in the laser cavity, the laser exhibits tunable wavelength mode-locked pulses over a wide range from 1880 to 1940 nm. Such a system provides a compact, user friendly and low cost wavelength tunable ultrashort pulse source in the 2 μm region.

We report on a home-made 2 kW (2  +  1) GT-wave fiber, and demonstrated its use in the creation of a bidirectional pump amplifier. The constructed all-fiber master oscillator power amplifier system allowed for 2.65 kW aggregated pump power from four 976 nm-laser-diode ports simultaneously and generated a 2.02 kW laser output with optical-to-optical efficiency of 67.8% at 1064 nm. This bi-directional pump GT-wave fiber amplifier sytem showed excellent stability at 1.35 kW, and the laser beam quality factor M² was measured to be 2.8.

The possibility to realize multiple nonlinear optical processes in a single crystal as means to produce multicolor quantum states favours stability and compactness of optical settings. Hence, this approach can be advantageous compared to the traditional one based on cascaded arrangement of optical elements. However, it comes with an obstacle—the class of accessible quantum states is narrower than that of the cascade counterpart. In this letter, we study this task using an example of three coupled nonlinear optical processes, namely, one parametric down-conversion and two of sum-frequency generation. To this end, the singular value decomposition has been applied to find the cascade representation of the compound field evolution. We have found the link between the parameters of the multiwave processes and the relevant cascade parameters—beam-splitting and squeezing parameters, by means of which the generated quantum states have been characterized. The relation between the squeezing parameters that has been found in the course of this work shows that the squeezing resource, produced in the parametric down-conversion, is shared among the modes involved in the compound interactions. Moreover, we have shown that the degree of two-mode entanglement carried by the up-converted frequencies cannot exceed that of the down-converted frequencies.

We delve a little deeper into the construction of shortcuts to adiabatic passage for three-level systems by iterative interaction picture (multiple Schrödinger dynamics). As an application example, we use the deduced iterative based shortcuts to rapidly generate the Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state in a three-atom system with the help of quantum Zeno dynamics. Numerical simulation shows the dynamics designed by the iterative picture method is physically feasible and the shortcut scheme performs much better than that using the conventional adiabatic passage techniques. Also, the influences of various decoherence processes are discussed by numerical simulation and the results prove that the scheme is fast and robust against decoherence and operational imperfection.

We propose a realistic scheme to directly probe the Chern number of topological Weyl semimetals in optical lattices. The Weyl semimetal states can be realized with ultracold fermionic atoms trapped in three-dimensional optical lattices, and are topologically characterized by k_z-dependent Chern number, where k_z is the out-of-plane quasimomentum. We demonstrate with numerical simulations that this characteristic topological invariant can be extracted from the shift of the hybrid Wannier center in the optical lattice, based on the particle pumping approach. Through in situ measurement of atomic density, the topological properties of the Weyl semimetal states are then directly revealed.

We report on the drift and noise measurement of the carrier–envelope phase (CEP) of ultrashort pulses in a three-pass Ti:sapphire-based amplifier. Spectrally and spatially resolved interferometry makes it possible to investigate the absolute CEP changes due exclusively to the amplifier, that is, entirely separated from the incidental phase fluctuations of the oscillator. We found that propagation through the amplifier crystal could result in an increase up to 30 mrad noise depending on the repetition rate, cooling, and pumping conditions. Most of this noise is related to mechanical vibrations and thermal instabilities. The absolute CEP drift of thermal origin can be as large as 11 mrad/°C for each mm of the amplifier crystal, originating from inefficient heat conduction during the absorption of pump pulses. The noise of the thermal CEP drift is inversely proportional to the repetition rate, as was shown experimentally and proven by simulations.

A cylinder reflective mirror was used to increase incident pulse energy to multi-millijoules in the research of temporal contrast enhancement based on a self-diffraction (SD) process. A 170 μJ first-order SD pulse with temporal contrast improved by 4 orders of magnitude was obtained when incident pulse energy was 5.1 mJ. In order to improve energy-conversion efficiency, a 67/33 beam splitter was used to replace the original 50/50 one. A 265 μJ first-order SD signal was achieved without damage of the glass plate at 3.7 mJ input pulse energy with an energy-conversion efficiency of about 7.1%. The generated SD pulse is expected to be used as the seed of high-contrast and high-power laser systems.

A novel method is suggested for temporal and spatial cleaning of high-brightness laser pulses, which seems more energy-scalable than that based on crossed polarizers and offers better contrast improvement compared to the plasma mirror technique. The suggested arrangement utilizes nonlinear modulation of the beam in the Fourier-plane leading both to directional and to temporal modulation. By the use of a 'conjugate' aperture arrangement before and after the nonlinear spatial selector, intensity dependent transmission is obtained; simultaneous temporal and spatial filtering can be realized both for amplitude and phase modulation. In the case of phase modulation introduced by plasma generation in noble gases the experimental observations are in good agreement with the theory; demonstrating  >10³ improvement in the temporal contrast, ~40% throughput, associated with effective spatial filtering. Due to the broad spectral and power durability of the optical arrangement used here, the method is widely applicable for energetic beams even of UV wavelengths, where most of the former techniques have limited throughput.

Experimental and numerical studies of a temporal evolution of a light bullet formed in isotropic LiF by mid-IR femtosecond pulse (2600–3350 nm) of power, slightly exceeding the critical power for self-focusing, are presented. For the first time regular oscillations of the light bullet field peak amplitude during its propagation in a filament were registered by investigation of induced color centers in LiF. It was revealed that color centers in a single laser pulse filament have the strictly periodic structure with a length of separate sections about 30 μm, which increases with a laser pulse wavelength decreasing. It was shown that the origin of a light bullet modulation is a periodical change of the light field amplitude of a near single-cycle wave packet in a filament, due to a difference of the wave packet group velocity and the carrier wave phase velocity.

An original method for retrieving the Kerr nonlinear index was proposed and implemented for TF12 heavy flint glass. Then, a defocusing lens made of this highly nonlinear glass was used to generate an almost constant spectral broadening across a Gaussian beam profile. The lens was designed with spherical curvatures chosen in order to match the laser beam profile, such that the product of the thickness with intensity is constant. This solid-state optics in combination with chirped mirrors was used to decrease the pulse duration at the output of a terawatt-class femtosecond laser. We demonstrated compression of a 33 fs pulse to 16 fs with 170 mJ energy.

For the first time, an experimentally measured seed pulse gain of about 2 cm⁻¹ allows possibilities in the scaling power of such a femtosecond laser system in terawatts. The concept of a subterawatt power level hybrid femtosecond mid-IR (4–5 μm) laser system, based on a weak pulse from an optical parametric mid-IR seeder that is amplified in chalcogenide monocrystalline Fe²⁺:ZnSe, to gain medium has been proposed and designed. The method and approach for optimizing the choice of nonlinear medium, its length, and the required light intensity for the efficient non-linear self-compression of an ultrashort pulse has also been proposed and considered.

The atom source is a relevant component in many atomic molecular optics experiments. The compactness and efficiency of the source are fundamental issues, acquiring more importance as the complexity of the experiments increases. Characterizing new techniques to produce high atom flux is necessary to know the efficiency and peculiarities of each one. This allows choosing the most suitable source for a specific experiment. In this work, we show a direct comparison between a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (2D-MOT) and a Zeeman slower (ZS) as source of cold sodium atoms to load a standard three-dimensional magneto-optical trap. The optimum parameters for each case are obtained by observing the loading rate and the final number of atoms in the 3D-MOT. We conclude that the 2D-MOT provides a high flux of atoms comparable with that produced by the ZS, but with an enormous advantage with respect to the size of the apparatus.

We study the statics and dynamics of anisotropic, stable, bright and dark-in-bright dipolar quasi-two-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) solitons on a one-dimensional (1D) optical-lattice (OL) potential. These solitons mobile in a plane perpendicular to a 1D OL trap can have both repulsive and attractive contact interactions. Dark-in-bright solitons are the excited states of bright solitons. The solitons, when subjected to a small perturbation, exhibit sustained breathing oscillation. Dark-in-bright solitons can be created by phase imprinting a bright soliton. At medium velocities the collision between two solitons is found to be quasi-elastic. Results are demonstrated by a numerical simulation of the three-dimensional mean-field Gross–Pitaevskii equation in three spatial dimensions employing realistic interaction parameters for a dipolar ¹⁶⁴Dy BEC.

Non-invasive measurement of carotenoid antioxidants in human skin is one of the important tasks to investigate the skin physiology in vivo. Resonance Raman spectroscopy and reflection spectroscopy are the most frequently used non-invasive techniques in dermatology and skin physiology. In the present study, an improved method based on multiple spatially resolved reflection spectroscopy (MSRRS) was introduced. The results obtained were compared with those obtained using the 'gold standard' resonance Raman spectroscopy method and showed strong correlations for the total carotenoid concentration (R  =  0.83) as well as for lycopene (R  =  0.80). The measurement stability was confirmed to be better than 10% within the total temperature range from 5 °C to  +  30 °C and pressure contact between the skin and the MSRRS sensor from 800 Pa to 18 000 Pa. In addition, blood samples taken from the subjects were analyzed for carotenoid concentrations. The MSRRS sensor was calibrated on the blood carotenoid concentrations resulting in being able to predict with a correlation of R  =  0.79. On the basis of blood carotenoids it could be demonstrated that the MSRRS cutaneous measurements are not influenced by Fitzpatrick skin types I–VI. The MSRRS sensor is commercially available under the brand name biozoom.

The letter discusses the opportunity for cost-effective use of conventional optoacoustic hardware to realize additional imaging modalities such as ultrasonic microscopy and diffuse optical reflectometry within the same laser pulse. Optoacoustic methods for deep biomedical visualization are based on pulsed laser illumination of the internal tissue layers with scattered photons, however some of the back-scattered photons can be absorbed by the optoacoustic detector. Thermoelastic extension of the detector's surface provides a probing pulse for an ultrasonic modality while the measurement of the amplitude of the probing ultrasonic pulse allows estimation of the diffuse reflectance from the object under investigation.

Using a micro-hole grating in a supported silver film as a laser-fabricated novel optical platform for surface-enhanced IR absoprtion/reflection spectroscopy, characteristic absorption bands of Staphylococcus aureus, in particular, its buried carotenoid fragments, were detected in FT-IR spectra with 10-fold analytical enhancement, paving the way for the spectral express-identification of pathogenic microorganisms.

In the letter the optimization of the experimental setup for photothermal beam deflection spectroscopy is performed by analyzing the influence of its geometrical parameters (detector and sample position, probe beam radius and its waist position etc) on the detected signal. Furthermore, the effects of the fluid's thermo-optical properties, for optimized geometrical configuration, on the measurement sensitivity and uncertainty determination of sample thermal properties is also studied. The examined sample is a recently developed CuFeInTe₃ material. It is seen from the obtained results, that it is a complex problem to choose the proper geometrical configuration as well as sensing fluid to enhance the sensitivity of the method. A signal enhancement is observed at low modulation frequencies by placing the sample in acetonitrile (ACN), while at high modulation frequencies the sensitivity is higher for measurements made in air. For both, detection in air and acetonitrile the determination of CuFeInTe₃ thermal properties is performed. The determined values of thermal diffusivity and thermal conductivity are (0.048  ±  0.002)  ×  10⁻⁴ m² s⁻¹ and 4.6  ±  0.2 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹ and (0.056  ±  0.005)  ×  10⁻⁴ m² s⁻¹ and 4.8  ±  0.4 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹ for ACN and air, respectively. It is seen, that the determined values agree well within the range of their measurement uncertainties for both cases, although the measurement uncertainty is two times lower for the measurements in ACN providing more accurate results. The analysis is performed by the use of recently developed theoretical description based on the complex geometrical optics. It is also shown, how the presented work fits into the current status of photothermal beam deflection spectroscopy.

We report a theoretical study into the two- and three-mode entanglement inside an atom-like optical cavity. A five-level system is considered and the influence of the multi-dressed parametric amplification four-wave mixing (PA-FWM) process on the quantum correlation of fluctuation spectra is researched. Three-mode entanglement is determined by the coupling of two nonlinear gains; one of enhanced gains via the dressing state plays a dominant role in controlling and optimizing the profile of three-mode entanglement via vacuum Rabi splitting, enhancement/suppression of entanglement as well as two-mode. Specifically, increasing the quantity of dressing fields may result in the single-channel entanglement turning into nonlocal multichannel (multiple anti-crossing behaviors). Moreover, these entanglement channels can be squashed via the lateral squeezing effect of the cavity. Such multichannel entanglement has potential applications in nonlocal quantum imaging and quantum key distribution.

Gas sensors are characterized by their sensitivity and selectivity. This is preferably combined with versatility, where the selectivity can be altered, without complex modifications and whiteout losing sensitivity. If aimed at lab-on-a-chip applications, the sensor also must be able to analyze small samples. Today, sensors combining selectivity and versatility for chip-level gas analysis are scarce; however, this paper investigates how miniaturized optogalvanic spectroscopy can fill this gap. By studying the spatial distribution of the optogalvanic signal inside a microplasma, it is shown that the signal is generated in the minuscule gas volume of the sheath surrounding the plasma probe that collects it. Nevertheless, a strong and stable spectroscopic signal can be extracted from the sheath, and the sample concentrations can be calculated using straightforward plasma theory. The minimum detectable absorption and the noise equivalent absorption sensitivity of the system are estimated to be less than 1.4  ×  10⁻⁹ Hz^−0.5 and 2.8  ×  10⁻⁹ cm⁻¹ Hz^−0.5, respectively, without cavity enhancement. Combined with inherited versatility from absorption spectroscopy and the capability of handling sub-nanogram samples, this makes optogalvanic spectrometry an excellent candidate for future lab-on-a-chip gas analyzers.

We report on a SESAM-modelocked Yb:CaF₂ thin-disk oscillator designed to generate more than 1 μJ of pulse energy at a moderate pulse repetition rate. The goal of our experiment was to explore the potential of Yb:CaF₂ in a thin-disk laser (TDL) architecture for high power at pulse durations shorter than 300 fs as compared to other Yb-doped crystals exhibiting broad gain bandwidth. At a repetition rate of 10 MHz the laser produced an average output power of up to 17.8 W (1.78 μJ of pulse energy) with a beam quality factor M² below 1.2. The pulse duration was measured to be 285 fs, which results in a peak power of 5.5 MW. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest pulse energy and peak power demonstrated to date with sub-300 fs pulses generated by SESAM-modelocked oscillators, leading to the conclusion that Yb:CaF₂ is a very promising crystal for TDL technology.

In this letter we present a passively mode-locked Yb:KGW oscillator pumped by a low power single-mode laser diode. Contrary to high power operation, single-mode pumping enabled us to suppress parasitic thermal effects, while keeping the setup compact and its alignment straightforward. Undisturbed mode-locking (ML) stability was achieved without active cooling of the gain medium and the laser was entirely self-starting. Pulses 59 fs in duration were obtained in a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM)-assisted Kerr-lens mode-locked regime. The corresponding spectrum was 20.2 nm broad at a central wavelength of 1036 nm approaching the performance limit of the crystal. To the best of our knowledge, these are the shortest pulses generated from a Yb:KGW laser.

Universal saturable absorbers covering wavelengths from near-infrared to mid-infrared bands have attracted widespread interest. In this contribution, we experimentally demonstrated the broadband saturable absorption of multilayer black phosphorus from 1 μm to 2.7 μm wavelengths. With liquid-phase-exfoliated black phosphorus nanoflakes as the saturable absorber, the Q-switching operation of bulk lasers at 1.03 μm, 1.93 μm, and 2.72 μm was realized, respectively. This work will open up promising optoelectronic applications of black phosphorus for the mid-infrared spectral region.

Unusually high densification  ⩽26% was obtained without lateral residual stresses within the laser beam waist inside porous glass during its multi-shot femtosecond laser irradiation, which may induce in the glass the related high refractive index change ~0.1. Corresponding laser irradiation regimes, resulting in such ultra-densification, decompaction and voids inside the glass, were revealed as a function of laser pulse energy and scanning rate, and were discussed in terms of thermal and hydrodynamic processes in the silica network.

Poly(methyl metacrylate) samples with uniformly dispersed single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) were mechanicaly stretched up to 4 times at 150 °C. As a result, SWCNTs were oriented preferentially along the stretch direction. The width of the angular distribution of the SWCNT orientation determined by polarized Raman scattering and THz absorption spectroscopy was 15 and 12°, respectively. Both methods revealed a high anisotropy of optical response of the composite film. Its application as an efficient polarizer in a wide spectral range from visible to THz is promising.

To extend the use of erbium- (Er-)/aluminum- (Al-) codoped optical fibers in hostile environments, the reduction of the Al amount has been identified as a serious way to harden them against harsh radiation. In this work, sol–gel monolithic Er³⁺-doped and Er³⁺/Al³⁺-codoped silica glasses were prepared from nanoporous silica xerogels soaked in a solution containing an Er salt together or not with an Al salt. After sintering, these glasses were used as the core material of microstructured optical fibers made by the stack-and-draw method. The influence of Al incorporation on the optical properties of Er³⁺-doped silica glasses and fibers is investigated. This approach enabled the preparation of silica glasses containing dispersed Er³⁺ ions with low Al content. The obtained fibers have been tested in an all-fibered cavity laser architecture. The Er³⁺/Al³⁺-codoped fiber laser presents a maximum efficiency of 27% at 1530 nm. We show that without Al doping, the laser exhibits lower performances that depend on Er content inside the doped fiber core. The effect of Er pair-induced quenching also has been investigated through nonsaturable absorption experiments, which clearly indicate that the fraction of Er ion pairs is significantly reduced in the Al-codoped fiber.

The thermo-plasmonic effect (heat deposition via absorption of laser light by metal nanoparticles) is applied to substantially enhance the effectiveness and controllability of the microstructure formation by laser-induced backside wet etching (LIBWE). Experiments were carried out with silicate glass plates using a pulsed 527 nm wavelength laser and an aqueous solution of AgNO₃ as a precursor of the Ag nanoparticles. Mechanisms of such thermo-plasmonic LIBWE (TP-LIBWE) versions are considered. They involve: laser-induced photo-thermal reducing of silver (Ag) and self-assembling of Ag nanoparticles in water and the water/glass interface; fast laser-induced overheating of a water and glass surface through the thermo-plasmonic effect; formation of highly reactive supercritical water that causes glass etching and crater formation; generation of steam-gas bubbles in a liquid. It is significant that the emergence of the Marangoni convection results in bubble retention in the focal point at the interface and the accumulation of nanoparticles on the surface of the laser-induced crater, as this facilitates the movement of the bubbles with captured Ag particles from the fluid volume in the crater region, and accelerates the formation of the area of strong 'surface absorption' of laser energy. All these mechanisms provide a highly efficient and reproducible process for laser microstructure formation on the surface of glass using a novel TP-LIBWE technique.

The fusion of several coherent 800 nm femtosecond filaments is induced experimentally and numerically by transmitting a beam through a mask with circular apertures followed by the focusing lens. The far-field image of the four-filament fusion region reveals bright on-axis maximum and differs drastically from the diffraction pattern of a low energy beam propagating through the mask in the linear regime. In 3D+time numerical simulations with the carrier wave resolved we show a factor-of-5 saturable growth in the peak plasma density with successive increase in the number of mask openings. An overall spectral blueshift of the fundamental and the third harmonics follows the plasma density increase. The simulated far-field on-axis emission agrees with the experiment and serves as the indication of nonlinear interaction in the fusion region.

We scrutinize the behaviour of the eigenvalues of a hydrogen atom in a quantum plasma as it interacts with an electric field directed along θ  =  π and is exposed to linearly polarized intense laser field radiation. We refer to the interaction of the plasma with the laser light as laser-plasma. Using the Kramers–Henneberger (KH) unitary transformation, which is the semiclassical counterpart of the Block–Nordsieck transformation in the quantized field formalism, the squared vector potential that appears in the equation of motion is eliminated and the resultant equation is expressed in the KH frame. Within this frame, the resulting potential and the corresponding wavefunction have been expanded in Fourier series, and using Ehlotzky's approximation we obtain a laser-dressed potential to simulate an intense laser field. By fitting the exponential-cosine-screened Coulomb potential into the laser-dressed potential, and then expanding it in Taylor series up to $\mathcal{O}\left({{r}^{4}},\alpha _{0}^{9}\right)$, we obtain the eigensolution (eigenvalues and wavefunction) of the hydrogen atom in laser-plasma encircled by an electric field, within the framework of perturbation theory formalism. Our numerical results show that for a weak external electric field and a very large Debye screening parameter length, the system is strongly repulsive, in contrast with the case for a strong external electric field and a small Debye screening parameter length, when the system is very attractive. This work has potential applications in the areas of atomic and molecular processes in external fields, including interactions with strong fields and short pulses.

The influence of inter-pulse delay times (0–20 ns) between two collinear sequential nanosecond pulses on the production and size properties (mean size and size distribution) of colloidal nanoparticles prepared by pulsed laser ablation of a silver target in a distilled water medium has been studied. Various laser fluences at different inter-pulse delay times between two collinear pulses were used. Furthermore, for a better understanding of the effect of the double-pulse and single-pulse mode, experiments were performed. The characterization of the synthesized colloidal nanoparticles was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and UV–vis absorption spectroscopy. Our results showed that 5 ns time-delayed double-pulse laser ablation results in the production of nanoparticles with the highest concentration among the other time-delayed ablation experiments and even more than single-pulse-mode experiments. It also found that using a double-pulse approach with inter-pulse delay times in the range of 0–20 ns leads to the production of nanoparticles with smaller mean sizes and narrower size distributions in comparison to single-pulse-mode laser ablation. The effect of time overlapping between two pulses in the case of double-pulse ablation was analyzed.

The single-shot spallation thresholds for copper and silver surfaces demonstrate a considerable IR-laser (1030 nm) pulse-width dependent increase over a range of 0.2–12 ps for the former material and a very weak increase for the latter one, while the corresponding thresholds for visible (515 nm) laser pulses remain almost constant. The IR-laser increase of the ablation thresholds is related to two-photon interband (d–s) absorption in copper, contrasting with the linear absorption of visible laser pulses in this material. In silver, common weakly sublinear dependences on the laser pulsewidth were observed, ruling out possible multi-photon—either three(four)-photon in IR, or two-photon in the visible range—interband transitions in this material. Moreover, electron-lattice thermalization times of 1–2 ps were evaluated for these materials in the spallative ablation regime, contrasting strongly with the previously theoretically predicted multi-picosecond thermalization times.

A hybrid lightwave transmission system based on light injection/optoelectronic feedback techniques and fiber-visible laser light communication (VLLC) integration is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. To be the first one of its kind in employing light injection and optoelectronic feedback techniques in a fiber-VLLC integration lightwave transmission system, the light is successfully directly modulated with Community Access Television (CATV), 16-QAM, and 16-QAM-OFDM signals. Over a 40 km SMF and a 10 m free-space VLLC transport, good performances of carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR)/composite second-order (CSO)/composite triple-beat (CTB)/bit error rate (BER) are achieved for CATV/16-QAM/16-QAM-OFDM signals transmission. Such a hybrid lightwave transmission system would be very useful since it can provide broadband integrated services including CATV, Internet, and telecommunication services over both distribute fiber and in-building networks.

In this work, a compact thulium-doped fiber laser with a Q-switched output is proposed and demonstrated. A thulium-doped fiber is used for the laser, with a peak absorption of 200 dB m⁻¹ at 790 nm and a cutoff wavelength of 1350 nm as the primary gain medium, and a silver-based saturable absorber as the pulse generation mechanism. The pulses obtained from the proposed laser have repetition rates from 38.3 kHz up to 56.2 kHz, with a pulse width as low as 4.2 µs and pulse energy as high as 67.3 nJ at a maximum pump power of 228.8 mW. The generated pulses are highly stable, showing no changes or fluctuations over operation for a period of 60 min, and further validated with signal-to-noise ratios of 57.0 dB and 59.5 dB in the optical and frequency domains respectively. The proposed laser has high potential for eye-safe applications in manufacturing and medicine.

Based on the chaos and phase retrieval algorithm, a hierarchical multiple binary image encryption is proposed. In the encryption process, each plaintext is encrypted into a diffraction intensity pattern by two chaos-generated random phase masks (RPMs). Thereafter, the captured diffraction intensity patterns are partially selected by different binary masks and then combined together to form a single intensity pattern. The combined intensity pattern is saved as ciphertext. For decryption, an iterative phase retrieval algorithm is performed, in which a support constraint in the output plane and a median filtering operation are utilized to achieve a rapid convergence rate without a stagnation problem. The proposed scheme has a simple optical setup and large encryption capacity. In particular, it is well suited for constructing a hierarchical security system. The security and robustness of the proposal are also investigated.