Fast and automated collection of forest data, such as species composition information, is required to support climate mitigation actions. Recently, there have been significant advances in the use of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) instruments, which facilitate the capture of detailed forest structure. However, for tree species recognition the structural information from TLS has mainly been used to complement spectral information. TLS-only classification studies have been limited in size and diversity of plot forest types. In this paper, we investigate the potential of TLS for tree species classification. We used quantitative structure models to determine 17 structural tree features. These features were computed for 758 trees of five tree species, including two understory species, of a 1.4 hectare mixed deciduous forest plot. Three classification methods were compared: k-nearest neighbours, multinomial logistic regression and support vector machine. We assessed the potential underlying causes for structural differences with principal component analysis. We obtained classification success rates of approximately 80%, however, with producer accuracies for three of the five species ranging from 0 to 60%. Low producer accuracies were the result of a high intra- and low inter-species variability. These effects were, respectively, caused by a high size-dependency of the structural features and a convergence of structural traits across species as a result of the individual tree position in the forest canopy and shade tolerance. Nevertheless, the producer accuracies could be improved through sensitivity vs. specificity trade-offs, with over 50% for all species being obtainable. The high intra -and low inter-species variability complicate the classification. Furthermore, the classification performance and best classification method greatly depend on its targeted application. In conclusion, this study proves the added value of TLS for tree species classification but also shows that TLS opens up potential for testing and further development of ecological theory.

A high-power InAlGaAs/InP tapered distributed Bragg reflector laser diode with narrow linewidth emission at 1.5μm is reported. The laser has a monolithic waveguide architecture comprising a third-order grating section for longitudinal mode selection, an index-guided gain section for lateral mode filtering, and a gain-guided tapered section for power scaling. An output power of 770 mW is reported for continuous wave operation at room temperature. In pulsed mode, the laser delivered a peak power of 4.6 W with a full width at half-maximum spectral linewidth of only 250 pm. In addition to the narrow linewidth and high-power features, the emission wavelength exhibits a temperature dependent shift of only 0.1 nm/°C. The parameters achieved suggest that these laser diodes would enable the realization of compact LIDAR systems with improved signal-to-noise ratio, owing to the high output power and the possibility to use narrow passband filters at receiver side, which is enabled by the narrow and temperature-stable emission spectrum. The wavelength range around 1.5μm also enables LIDAR systems with high output powers while maintaining eye safety, ultimately leading to improved system performance.

Using multimodal signals to solve the problem of emotion recognition is one of the emerging trends in affective computing. Several studies have utilized state of the art deep learning methods and combined physiological signals, such as the electrocardiogram (EEG), electroencephalogram (ECG), skin temperature, along with facial expressions, voice, posture to name a few, in order to classify emotions. Spiking neural networks (SNNs) represent the third generation of neural networks and employ biologically plausible models of neurons. SNNs have been shown to handle Spatio-temporal data, which is essentially the nature of the data encountered in emotion recognition problem, in an efficient manner. In this work, for the first time, we propose the application of SNNs in order to solve the emotion recognition problem with the multimodal dataset. Specifically, we use the NeuCube framework, which employs an evolving SNN architecture to classify emotional valence and evaluate the performance of our approach on the MAHNOB-HCI dataset. The multimodal data used in our work consists of facial expressions along with physiological signals such as ECG, skin temperature, skin conductance, respiration signal, mouth length, and pupil size. We perform classification under the Leave-One-Subject-Out (LOSO) cross-validation mode. Our results show that the proposed approach achieves an accuracy of 73.15% for classifying binary valence when applying feature-level fusion, which is comparable to other deep learning methods. We achieve this accuracy even without using EEG, which other deep learning methods have relied on to achieve this level of accuracy. In conclusion, we have demonstrated that the SNN can be successfully used for solving the emotion recognition problem with multimodal data and also provide directions for future research utilizing SNN for Affective computing. In addition to the good accuracy, the SNN recognition system is requires incrementally trainable on new data in an adaptive way. It only one pass training, which makes it suitable for practical and on-line applications. These features are not manifested in other methods for this problem.

We demonstrate optically induced crossover from a weak to a strong coupling regime in a single photonic system consisting of propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) on a planar silver film and ultraviolet (UV)-switchable photochromic molecules. A gradual increase is observed in the vacuum Rabi splitting upon increasing UV exposure, along with intriguing behavior, where the reflectivity initially decreases due to increased losses at the weak coupling regime, and then increases due to the emergence of strongly coupled modes and the associated band gap formation at the resonance frequency of the uncoupled states. This work explicitly demonstrates the optical tunability of the degree of hybridization of the SPP and exciton modes, spanning the range from weak to intermediate and finally to the strong coupling regime.

This paper introduces a prototype of ClothFace technology, a battery-free textile-based handwriting recognition platform that includes an e-textile antenna and a 10 × 10 array of radio frequency identification (RFID) integrated circuits (ICs), each with a unique ID. Touching the textile platform surface creates an electrical connection from specific ICs to the antenna, which enables the connected ICs to be read with an external UHF (ultra-haigh frequency) RFID reader. In this paper, the platform is demonstrated to recognize handwritten numbers 0-9. The raw data collected by the platform are a sequence of IDs from the touched ICs. The system converts the data into bitmaps and their details are increased by interpolating between neighboring samples using the sequential information of IDs. These images of digits written on the platform can be classified, with enough accuracy for practical use, by deep learning. The recognition system was trained and tested with samples from six volunteers using the platform. The real-time number recognition ability of the ClothFace technology is demonstrated to work successfully with a very low error rate. The overall recognition accuracy of the platform is 94.6% and the accuracy for each digit is between 91.1% and 98.3%. As the solution is fully passive and gets all the needed energy from the external RFID reader, it enables a maintenance-free and cost-effective user interface that can be integrated into clothing and into textiles around us.

We report high-power second-harmonic generation of 760 nm laser light from optically-pumped vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser based on quantum dot active medium. The laser generates 1.2 W in fundamental transverse mode with fixed linear polarization. The emission wavelength can be continuously tuned from 738 to 778 nm by using an intra cavity birefringent filter for fundamental radiation without readjustment of phase-matching angle of the nonlinear crystal. The result constitutes a viable alternative for applications requiring broadly tunable high brightness lasers in the 700-800 nm range.

We demonstrate enhanced optical parametric gains occurring at the edge of periodically poled LiNbO₃ (PPLN) regions. Experiments performed in MgO-doped PPLN samples, pumped at 532 nm with parametric signal outputs around 800 nm and 1550 nm, exhibit good agreement with numerical simulations of the nonlinear wave dynamics in the system, based on the assumption of an average refractive index increase ∆n = 5.3×10⁻⁵ in the PPLN region. Excitation in proximity to the PPLN edge with a pump power of 8.1 mW results in a 3.6-fold output power increase with respect to parametric generation inside the PPLN area.

This rapid communication gives the salient points and results of the theoretical investigation of a chemical reaction for efficient selective hydrogen production. The clean fuel produced is a sustainable energy source. Accurate methods based on quantum theory are used because the changing electronic structure is a probe that monitors reactions. The reaction between water and carbon monoxide is used industrially with metal catalysts, usually platinum. There is a considerable economic and environmental challenge underpinning this fundamental investigation where bond dissociation plays an essential role. A bond dissociation process is often the limiting step of reaction rates for industrial catalysis. Most mainstream quantum approaches fail to a greater or lesser degree in the description of this process. The present work advocates a promising alternative: the initial analysis of statistical data generated by the Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) method demonstrated very stringent statistical accuracy for essential information on hydrogen production via the water-gas shift reaction with platinum catalyst. The transition state structure is obtained from QMC force constants and illustrated here. It corresponds to water OH-stretch concerted with Pt-H bond formation, whilst the OH oxygen atom begins to interact with the CO carbon. The present QMC evaluation of the corresponding activation barrier is low: 17.0 ± 0.2 kcal/mol. It is close to the experimental apparent activation energy of 17.05 kcal/mol. This method is applicable to a wide range of similar systems.

We present the design and characterization of a zinc-indiffused periodically poled lithium-niobate ridge waveguide for second-harmonic generation of ∼390 nm light from 780 nm. We use a newly developed, broadband near-infrared vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) to investigate the potential for lower-footprint nonlinear optical pump sources as an alternative to larger commercial laser systems. We demonstrate a VECSEL with an output power of 500 mW, containing an intracavity birefringent filter for spectral narrowing and wavelength selection. In this first demonstration of using a VECSEL to pump a nonlinear waveguide, we present the ability to generate 1 mW of ∼390 nm light with further potential for increased efficiency and size reduction.

We demonstrate the generation of a low-noise, octave-spanning mid-infrared supercontinuum from 1700 to 4800 nm by injecting femtosecond pulses into the normal dispersion regime of a multimode step-index chalcogenide fiber with 100 µm core diameter. We conduct a systematic study of the intensity noise across the supercontinuum spectrum and show that the initial fluctuations of the pump laser are at most amplified by a factor of three. We also perform a comparison with the noise characteristics of an octave-spanning supercontinuum generated in the anomalous dispersion regime of a multimode fluoride fiber with similar core size and show that the normal dispersion supercontinuum in the multimode chalcogenide fiber has superior noise characteristics. Our results open up novel perspectives for many practical applications such as long-distance remote sensing where high power and low noise are paramount.

A novel phase retrieval algorithm for broadband hyperspectral phase imaging from noisy intensity observations is proposed. It utilizes advantages of the Fourier transform spectroscopy in the self-referencing optical setup and provides additional, beyond spectral intensity distribution, reconstruction of the investigated object's phase. The noise amplification Fellgett's disadvantage is relaxed by the application of a sparse wavefront noise filtering embedded in the proposed algorithm. The algorithm reliability is proved by simulation tests and by results of physical experiments for transparent objects. These tests demonstrate precise phase imaging and object depth (profile) reconstruction.

A novel algorithm for reconstruction of hyperspectral 3D complex domain images (phase/amplitude) from noisy complex domain observations has been developed and studied. This algorithm starts from the SVD (singular value decomposition) analysis of the observed complex-valued data and looks for the optimal low dimension eigenspace. These eigenspace images are processed based on special non-local block-matching complex domain filters. The accuracy and quantitative advantage of the new algorithm for phase and amplitude imaging are demonstrated in simulation tests and in processing of the experimental data. It is shown that the algorithm is effective and provides reliable results even for highly noisy data.

Ghost imaging in the time domain has opened up new possibilities to retrieve ultrafast waveforms. A pre-requisite to ghost imaging in the time domain is a light source with random temporal intensity fluctuations that are fully uncorrelated over the duration of the temporal waveform being imaged. Here, we show that random fiber lasers are excellent candidates for ghost imaging in the time domain. We study the temporal correlations of the intensity fluctuations of a random fiber laser in different operating regimes and compare its performance in temporal ghost imaging configurations with that of a conventional multi-mode cavity-based fiber laser. Our results demonstrate that random fiber lasers can achieve superior performance for ghost imaging as compared to cavity-based fiber lasers where strong correlations at the cavity round-trip time can yield artefacts for waveforms of long duration.

Numerical simulations of a dissipative soliton-similariton laser are shown to reproduce a range of instabilities seen in recent experiments. The model uses a scalar nonlinear Schrödinger equation map, and regions of stability and instability are readily identified as a function of gain and saturable absorber parameters. Studying evolution over multiple round trips reveals spectral instabilities linked with soliton molecule internal motion, soliton explosions, chaos, and intermittence. For the case of soliton molecules, the relative phase variation in the spectrum is shown to be due to differences in nonlinear phase evolution between the molecule components over multiple round trips.

Unitary transformations are the fundamental building blocks of gates and operations in quantum information processing, allowing the complete manipulation of quantum systems in a coherent manner. In the case of photons, optical elements that can perform unitary transformations are readily available only for some degrees of freedom, e.g., wave plates for polarization. However, for high-dimensional states encoded in the transverse spatial modes of light, performing arbitrary unitary transformations remains a challenging task for both theoretical proposals and actual implementations. Following the idea of multi-plane light conversion, we show that it is possible to perform a broad variety of unitary operations at high quality by using only a few phase modulation planes. More importantly, we experimentally implement several high-dimensional quantum gates for up to five-dimensional states encoded in the full-field mode structure of photons. In particular, we realize cyclic and quantum Fourier transformations, known as Pauli X -gates and Hadamard Ĥ-gates, respectively, with an average visibility of more than 90%. In addition, we demonstrate near-perfect “unitarity” by means of quantum process tomography, unveiling a process purity of 99%. Last, we demonstrate the benefit of the two independent spatial degrees of freedom, i.e., azimuthal and radial, and implement a two-qubit controlled-NOT quantum operation on a single photon. Thus, our demonstrations open up new paths to implement high-dimensional quantum operations, which can be applied to various tasks in quantum communication, computation, and sensing schemes.

Design and optimization of lensless phase-retrieval optical system with phase modulation of free-space propagation wavefront is proposed for subpixel imaging to achieve super-resolution reconstruction. Contrary to the traditional super-resolution phase-retrieval, the method in this paper requires a single observation only and uses the advanced Super-Resolution Sparse Phase Amplitude Retrieval (SR-SPAR) iterative technique which contains optimized sparsity based filters and multi-scale filters. The successful object imaging relies on modulation of the object wavefront with a random phase-mask, which generates coded diffracted intensity pattern, allowing us to extract subpixel information. The system’s noise-robustness was investigated and verified. The super-resolution phase-imaging is demonstrated by simulations and physical experiments. The simulations included high quality reconstructions with super-resolution factor of 5, and acceptable at factor up to 9. By physical experiments 3 µm details were resolved, which are 2.3 times smaller than the resolution following from the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.

The length variation associated with standard cleaving of III–V optoelectronic chips is a major source of loss in the integration with the micron-scale silicon-on-insulator waveguides. To this end, a new, to the best of our knowledge, approach for precise definition of the III–V chip length is reported. The method employs lithography and wet etching of cleave marks outside the active III–V waveguides. The marks follow a specific crystallographic orientation and are used to initiate and guide the cleaving process. Besides minimizing the air gap between the butt-coupled III–V and Si waveguides and hence minimizing the coupling losses, the use of precisely defined length significantly improves the integration yield owing to the increased length uniformity. We apply this technique to defining the lengths of GaAs-based semiconductor optical amplifiers and demonstrate length control with an accuracy better than 250 nm per facet. This variation is more than 1 order of magnitude smaller than with the traditional cleaving methods, resulting in improvement of coupling by several dBs.

Abstract: The results of comparative analysis of the spectral and threshold characteristics of room-temperature injection microdisk lasers of the spectral range 1.2×× μm with different active regions, notably, InGaAsN/GaAs quantum wells or InAs/InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots are presented. It is found that microlasers of a comparable size with quantum wells possess a larger laser generation threshold when compared with microlasers with quantum dots. At the same time, the latter are characterized by a noticeably smaller fraction of emitted power corresponding to laser modes. The jump to lasing via an excited-state optical transition is also characteristic for them. Microdisk lasers based on InGaAsN alloy do not have these disadvantages.

We investigate the reflection of a Gaussian beam impinging upon the surface of an epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) medium. In particular, we discuss the occurrence of Goos-Hänchen and Imbert-Fedorov shifts. Our calculations reveal that spatial shifts are significantly enhanced owing to the ENZ nature of the medium, and that their value and angular position can be tuned by tuning the plasma frequency of the medium.

Industrial chemical processes are struggling with adverse effects, such as corrosion and deposition, caused by gaseous alkali and heavy metal species. Mitigation of these problems requires novel monitoring concepts that provide information on gas-phase chemistry. However, selective optical online monitoring of the most problematic diatomic and triatomic species is challenging due to overlapping spectral features. In this work, a selective, all-optical, in situ gas-phase monitoring technique for triatomic molecules containing metallic atoms was developed and demonstrated with detection of PbCl2. Sequential collinear photofragmentation and atomic absorption spectroscopy (CPFAAS) enables determination of the triatomic PbCl2 concentration through detection of released Pb atoms after two consecutive photofragmentation processes. Absorption cross-sections of PbCl2, PbCl, and Pb were determined experimentally in a laboratory-scale reactor to enable calibration-free quantitative determination of the precursor molecule concentration in an arbitrary environment. Limit of detection for PbCl2 in the laboratory reactor was determined to be 0.25 ppm. Furthermore, the method was introduced for in situ monitoring of PbCl2 concentration in a 120 MWth power plant using demolition wood as its main fuel. In addition to industrial applications, the method can provide information on chemical reaction kinetics of the intermediate species that can be utilized in reaction simulations.

Histopathological image analysis performed by a trained expert is currently regarded as the gold-standard for the diagnostics of many pathologies, including cancers. However, such approaches are laborious, time consuming and contain a risk for bias or human error. There is thus a clear need for faster, less intrusive and more accurate diagnostic solutions, requiring also minimal human intervention. Multiphoton microscopy (MPM) can alleviate some of the drawbacks specific to traditional histopathology by exploiting various endogenous optical signals to provide virtual biopsies that reflect the architecture and composition of tissues, both in-vivo or ex-vivo. Here we show that MPM imaging of the dermoepidermal junction (DEJ) in unstained fixed tissues provides useful cues for a histopathologist to identify the onset of non-melanoma skin cancers. Furthermore, we show that MPM images collected on the DEJ, besides being easy to interpret by a trained specialist, can be automatically classified into healthy and dysplastic classes with high precision using a Deep Learning method and existing pre-trained convolutional neural networks. Our results suggest that deep learning enhanced MPM for in-vivo skin cancer screening could facilitate timely diagnosis and intervention, enabling thus more optimal therapeutic approaches.

Neuromorphic photonics aims to transfer the high-bandwidth and low-energy credentials of optics into neuromorphic computing architectures. In this effort, photonic neurons are trying to combine the optical interconnect segments with optics that can realize all critical constituent neuromorphic functions, including the linear neuron stage and the activation function. However, aligning this new platform with well-established neural network training models in order to allow for the synergy of the photonic hardware with the best-in-class training algorithms, the following requirements should apply: i) the linear photonic neuron has to be able to handle both positive and negative weight values, ii) the activation function has to closely follow the widely used mathematical activation functions that have already shown an enormous performance in demonstrated neural networks so far. Herein, we demonstrate a coherent linear neuron architecture that relies on a dual-IQ modulation cell as its basic neuron element, introducing distinct optical elements for weight amplitude and weight sign representation and exploiting binary optical carrier phase-encoding for positive/negative number representation. We present experimental results of a typical IQ modulator performing as an elementary two-input linear neuron cell and successfully implementing all-optical linear algebraic operations with 104-ps long optical pulses. We also provide the theoretical proof and formulation of how to extend a dual-IQ modulation cell into a complete N-input coherent linear neuron stage that requires only a single-wavelength optical input and avoids the resource-consuming Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) weighting schemes. An 8-input coherent linear neuron is then combined with an experimentally validated optical sigmoid activation function into a physical layer simulation environment, with respective training and physical layer simulation results for the MNIST dataset revealing an average accuracy of 97.24% and 94.37%, respectively.

High-dimensional encoding schemes have emerged as a novel way to perform quantum information tasks. For high dimensionality, temporal and transverse spatial modes of photons are the two paradigmatic degrees of freedom commonly used in such experiments. Nevertheless, general devices for multi-outcome measurements are still needed to take full advantage of the high-dimensional nature of encoding schemes. We propose a general full-field mode sorting scheme consisting of only up to two optimized phase elements based on evolutionary algorithms that allows for joint sorting of azimuthal and radial modes. We further study the performance of our scheme through simulations in the context of high-dimensional quantum cryptography, where sorting in different mutually unbiased bases and high-fidelity measurement schemes are crucial.

We develop a scaling law for a class of statistically nonstationary scalar optical fields, which ensures spectral invariance on their propagation into the far zone of a planar source. The invariance involves the constraint that the normalized far-zone spectrum must be the same in every direction of observation, as well as equal to the normalized area-averaged source spectrum. Thus, it additionally represents an extension of the earlier work by Wolf on stationary fields [Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 1370 (1986)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.56.1370] that assumed the normalized source spectrum as independent of position. We present examples of both nonstationary and stationary fields that satisfy the scaling law and extended spectral invariance.

We experimentally demonstrate a harmonically mode-locked Er-doped fiber laser. The distinctive feature of the laser is highly stable pulse trains generated via self-starting hybrid mode-locking triggered by frequency-shifting and nonlinear polarization evolution. A intra-cavity tunable bandpass filter allows getting a pulse repetition rate up to 12 GHz with local adjustment of the wavelength.

Localized plasmon resonance of a metal nanoantenna is determined by its size, shape and environment. Here, we diminish the size dependence by using multilayer metamaterials as epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) substrates. By means of the vanishing index of the substrate, we show that the spectral position of the plasmonic resonance becomes less sensitive to the characteristics of the plasmonic nanostructure and is controlled mostly by the substrate, and hence, it is pinned at a fixed narrow spectral range near the ENZ wavelength. Moreover, this plasmon wavelength can be adjusted by tuning the ENZ region of the substrate, for the same size nanodisk (ND) array. We also show that the difference in the phase of the scattered field by different size NDs at a certain distance is reduced when the substrate is changed to ENZ metamaterial. This provides effective control of the phase contribution of each nanostructure. Our results could be utilized to manipulate the resonance for advanced metasurfaces and plasmonic applications, especially when precise control of the plasmon resonance is required in flat optics designs. In addition, the pinning wavelength can be tuned optically, electrically and thermally by introducing active layers inside the hyperbolic metamaterial.

Differences in correlation measurements of the parameters of pulsed hyperspectral optical fields using symmetric and asymmetric interferometers are considered. It is shown analytically that the resulting cross-correlation function is sensitive to phase perturbations in the original wave field. The considered setup, which contains a telescopic reflective 4f system of parabolic mirrors in one arm, demonstrates that in the case of an asymmetric interferometer, the presence of aberrations leads to degradation of the reconstructed image, whereas in the case of symmetric interferometers these aberrations do not affect the result.

We propose the model of a harmonically mode-locked soliton fiber ring laser based on the nonlinear polarization rotation taking into account the gain depletion and recovery effects. It is shown that a specific timing jitter could arise in such lasers, since the pulses in the cavity are not strongly identical. To suppress the jitter and stabilize the harmonic mode-locking operation, a method using a small frequency shift followed by the laser radiation filtering is described. The performed numerical simulation shows that the proposed method is able to provide extremely stable harmonic mode locking in a soliton fiber ring laser.

Almost inevitable climate change and increasing pollution levels around the world are the most significant drivers for the environmental monitoring evolution. Recent activities in the field of wireless sensor networks have made tremendous progress concerning conventional centralized sensor networks known for decades. However, most systems developed today still face challenges while estimating the trade-off between their flexibility and security. In this work, we provide an overview of the environmental monitoring strategies and applications. We conclude that wireless sensor networks of tomorrow would mostly have a distributed nature. Furthermore, we present the results of the developed secure distributed monitoring framework from both hardware and software perspectives. The developed mechanisms provide an ability for sensors to communicate in both infrastructure and mesh modes. The system allows each sensor node to act as a relay, which increases the system failure resistance and improves the scalability. Moreover, we employ an authentication mechanism to ensure the transparent migration of the nodes between different network segments while maintaining a high level of system security. Finally, we report on the real-life deployment results.

We investigated the peculiarities of the terahertz pulse time-domain holography principle in the case of raster scanning with the balance detection system. The noise in this system represents a Skellam distribution model, which differentiates it from systems based on a photoconductive antenna. We analyzed this Skellam model and provided both numerical and experimental investigations. We found that the variance of the noise in the balance detection system does not depend on the true signal. Complex-domain images obtained in this model are filtered by block-matching algorithms adapted for spatio-temporal and spatiospectral volumetric data. We presented a new cube complex-domain filter algorithm that uses block matching in all 3D data sets simultaneously in spatial and frequency coordinates. A combination of temporal and complex-domain filters allows us to expand the dynamic range of terahertz frequencies for which we can obtain amplitude/phase information. Experimental data demonstrate an improvement in the quality of the resultant images both in the time domain and complex-spectral domain. The simulation and experimental results are in good agreement.

Here, we present a comprehensive study of the reconstruction quality in terahertz (THz) pulse time-domain holography. We look into single wavelength reconstructions, as well as broadband recovery enabled by the ultrabroadband nature of radiation and coherent detection enabled by electro-optic or photoconductive sensing. We demonstrate the transverse resolution dependence for amplitude and phase objects on the solid angle of the inline recorded time-domain THz hologram, and then turn to the contrast of reconstructed binary amplitude objects, and further to longitudinal resolution of phase objects. We show that transverse resolution can reach values comparable to the wavelength of the radiation used, and longitudinally, phase objects can be resolved with even greater precision. We compare the obtained resolution with theoretical estimates and show that THz pulse time-domain holography is a powerful non-contact imaging tool.

In this paper, we have applied a recently developed complex-domain hyperspectral denoiser for the object recognition task, which is performed by the correlation analysis of investigated objects’ spectra with the fingerprint spectra from the same object. Extensive experiments carried out on noisy data from digital hyperspectral holography demonstrate a significant enhancement of the recognition accuracy of signals masked by noise, when the advanced noise suppression is applied.

We present a method, based on Feynman path integrals, to describe the propagation and properties of the quantized electromagnetic field in an arbitrary, nonlinear medium. We provide a general theory, valid for any order of optical nonlinearity, and we then specialize the case of second-order nonlinear processes. In particular, we show that second-order nonlinear processes in arbitrary media, under the undepleted pump approximation, can be described by an effective free electromagnetic field, propagating in a vacuum, dressed by the medium itself. Moreover, we show that the probability of such processes to occur is related to the biphoton propagator, which contains information about the structure of the medium, its nonlinear properties, and the structure of the pump beam.

Barkhausen noise testing (BNT) is a nondestructive method for investigating many properties of ferromagnetic materials. The most common application is the monitoring of grinding burns caused by introducing locally high temperatures while grinding. Other features, such as microstructure, residual stress changes, hardening depth, and so forth, can be monitored as well. Nevertheless, because BNT is a method based on a complex magnetoelectric phenomenon, it is not yet standardized. Therefore, there is a need to study the traceability and stability of the measurement method. This study aimed to carry out a statistical analysis of ferromagnetic samples after grinding processes by the use of BNT. The first part of the experiment was to grind samples in different facilities (Sweden and Finland) with similar grinding parameters, different grinding wheels, and different hardness values. The second part was to evaluate measured BNT parameters to determine significant factors affecting BNT signal value. The measurement data from the samples were divided into two different batches according to where they were manufactured. Both grinding batches contained measurement data from three different participants. The main feature for calculation was the root-mean-square (RMS) value. The first processing step was to normalize the RMS values for all the measurements. A standard analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied for the normalized dataset. The ANOVA showed that the grinding parameters had a significant impact on the BNT signal value, while the other investigated factors (e.g., participant) were negligible. The reasons for this are discussed at the end of the paper.

Along with the growing interest in using the transverse-spatial modes of light in quantum and classical optics applications, developing an accurate and efficient measurement method has gained importance. Here, we present a technique relying on a unitary mode conversion for measuring any full-field transverse-spatial mode. Our method only requires three consecutive phase modulations followed by a single mode fiber and is, in principle, error-free and lossless. We experimentally test the technique using a single spatial light modulator and achieve an average error of 4.2 % for a set of 9 different full-field Laguerre-Gauss and Hermite-Gauss modes with an efficiency of up to 70%. Moreover, as the method can also be used to measure any complex superposition state, we demonstrate its potential for quantum cryptography applications and in high-dimensional quantum state tomography.

A new approach for generating long-distance self-healing Bessel beams, which is based on a ring-shaped (annular) lens and a spherical lens in 4f-configuration, is reported. With this, diffraction-free light evolution of a zeroth order Bessel beam over several meters is shown and available scaling opportunities that surpass current technologies by far are discussed. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how this setup can be adapted to create Bessel beam superpositions, realizing the longest ever reported optical conveyor beam and helicon beam, respectively. Last, the self-healing capabilities of the beams are tested against strong opaque and non-opaque scatterers, which again emphasizes the great potential of this new method.

A common wisdom in quantum mechanics is that the Hamiltonian has to be Hermitian in order to ensure a real eigenvalue spectrum. Yet, parity–time (PT)-symmetric Hamiltonians are sufficient for real eigenvalues and therefore constitute a complex extension of quantum mechanics beyond the constraints of Hermiticity. However, as only single-particle or classical wave physics has been exploited so far, an experimental demonstration of the true quantum nature of PT symmetry has been elusive. In our work, we demonstrate two-particle quantum interference in a PT-symmetric system. We employ integrated photonic waveguides to reveal that the quantum dynamics of indistinguishable photons shows strongly counterintuitive features. To substantiate our experimental data, we analytically solve the quantum master equation using Lie algebra methods. The ideas and results presented here pave the way for non-local PT-symmetric quantum mechanics as a novel building block for future quantum devices.

We developed a short-range light detection and ranging system using a supercontinuum (SC) source spectrally tailored to cover the ro-vibrational transition energies of desired components of a flue gas. The system enables remote measurements of the gas parameters, including temperature and concentration which play a key role in the performance of combustion power plants. The technique requires only one inspection window and, thus, can be used in combustion units with limited access. It exploits differential absorption between specific wavelength bands of the gas absorption spectrum. The transmittance of an individual wavelength band is derived from the detected backscattered temporal intensity of the SC pulses. We demonstrate water vapor temperature measurement in the range of 400°C–900°C in a laboratory furnace with the use of only two wavelength bands. Using more than two wavelength bands, the technique can be further extended to simultaneously measure temperature and concentration. By varying the direction of the incident beam in a non-parallel plane, a full 3D profile is also obtainable.

The inversion of reflectance models is a generalizable tool to obtain estimates on forest biophysical parameters, such as leaf area index, with theoretically little information need from a study area, instead relying on the knowledge about physical processes in the forest radiation regime. The use of prior information can greatly improve the reflectance model inversion, however, the literature does not yet provide much information on the selection of priors and their influence on the inversion results. In this study, we used a Bayesian approach to invert the PARAS forest reflectance model and retrieve leaf area index from Sentinel-2 MSI and Landsat 8 OLI multispectral satellite images. The PARAS model is based on the theory of spectral invariants, which describes the influence of wavelength-independent parameters on forest radiative transfer. The Bayesian inversion approach is highly flexible, provides uncertainty quantification, and enables the explicit incorporation of prior knowledge into the inversion process. We found that the choice of prior information is crucial in inverting a forest reflectance model to predict leaf area index. Regularizing and informative priors for leaf area index strongly improved the predictions, relative to an uninformative prior, in that they counteracted the saturation effect of the optical signal occuring at high values for leaf area index. The predictions of leaf area index were more accurate for Landsat 8 than for Sentinel-2, due to potential inconsistencies in the visible bands of Sentinel-2 in our data, and the higher spectral resolution.

An optically-pumped vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser (OP-VECSEL) with 3.25-W output power emitting around 750 nm is demonstrated. The gain structure incorporates AlGaAs quantum wells (QWs) and barriers, and AlGaInP claddings. The emission wavelength could be tuned from 740 to 770 nm. The development addresses the need for high brightness lasers at a wavelength range that has proven difficult to reach. The demonstrated structure exhibits polarization-related peculiarities, which cause polarization switching under increased pump power due to mode competition. The presence of birefringence inside the active region is attributed to known long-range ordering within the AlGaInP claddings which causes distorted beam profiles. This influence on laser features has not been reported in VECSELs so far.

We examine experimentally how the degree of position-momentum entanglement of photon pairs depends on the transverse coherence of the pump beam that excites them in a process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Using spatially incoherent light from a light-emitting diode, we obtain strong position correlation of the photons, but we find that transverse momentum correlation, and thus entanglement, is entirely absent. When we continuously vary the degree of spatial coherence on the pump beam, we observe the emergence of stronger momentum correlations and entanglement. We present theoretical arguments that explain our experimental results. Our results shed light on entanglement generation and can be applied to control entanglement for quantum information applications.

Ghost imaging constructs an image by correlating two signals: one that interacts with an object but possesses no spatial information, and the other that contains spatial information but does not interact with the object. Ghost imaging can be extended into the time domain by using laser intensity fluctuations to reconstruct an unknown time-varying pattern, but this requires the measurement of laser fluctuations on ultrafast timescales, a significant limitation at wavelengths where ultrafast detectors are not available.We overcome this by using wavelength conversion to shift the probe laser into a spectral region where ultrafast detectors are available, and we apply this technique to image a temporal object at 2 μm. Our results demonstrate that temporal correlation information can be transferred to an arbitrary spectral region, opening possibilities for ultrafast ghost imaging at new wavelengths.

In this paper, we propose two novel methods for robot-world-hand-eye calibration and provide a comparative analysis against six state-of-the-art methods. We examine the calibration problem from two alternative geometrical interpretations, called 'hand-eye' and 'robot-world-hand-eye', respectively. The study analyses the effects of specifying the objective function as pose error or reprojection error minimization problem. We provide three real and three simulated datasets with rendered images as part of the study. In addition, we propose a robotic arm error modeling approach to be used along with the simulated datasets for generating a realistic response. The tests on simulated data are performed in both ideal cases and with pseudo-realistic robotic arm pose and visual noise. Our methods show significant improvement and robustness on many metrics in various scenarios compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Chronic wounds impose a significant financial burden for the healthcare system. Currently, assessment and monitoring of hard-to-heal wounds are often based on visual means and measuring the size of the wound. The primary wound dressings must be removed before assessment can be done. We have developed a quasi-monopolar bioimpedance-measurement-based method and a measurement system to determine the status of wound healing. The objective of this study was to demonstrate that with an appropriate setup, long-term monitoring of wound healing from beneath the primary dressings is feasible. The developed multielectrode sensor array was applied on the wound area and left under the primary dressings for 142 h. The impedance of the wounds and the surrounding intact skin area was measured regularly during the study at 150 Hz, 300 Hz, 1 kHz, and 5 kHz frequencies. At the end of the follow-up period, the wound impedance had reached the impedance of the intact skin at the higher frequencies and increased significantly at the lowest frequencies. The measurement frequency affected the measurement sensitivity in wound monitoring. The skin impedance remained stable over the measurement period. The sensor array also enabled the administration of periodical low-intensity direct current (LIDC) stimulation in order to create an antimicrobial environment across the wound area via the controlled formation of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2).

In this paper, we present results of Fourier-transformed photoluminescence measurements of quaternary GaInAsSb quantum wells with quinary AlGaInAsSb barriers grown on GaSb substrate, designed for spectral range of mid-infrared. Here, we show an emission shift towards longer wavelength as a result of incorporation of indium into the quantum wells reaching up to 3 μm at room temperature (RT). Additionally, we have observed an additional low-energy photoluminescence signal with maximum wavelength of 3.5 μm at RT, which we have attributed as states localised on the layer interfaces. The activation energy of carriers trapped in those states is estimated to be 35 meV.

Today, the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are already in deep integration phase all over the world. One of the most significant enablers for ITS are vehicle positioning and tracking techniques. Worldwide integration of ITS employing Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) and European standard for vehicular communication, known as ETSI ITS-G5, brings a variety of options to improve the positioning in areas where GPS connectivity is lacking precision. Utilization of the ready infrastructure, next-generation cellular 5G networks, and surrounding electronic devices together with conventional positioning techniques could become the solution to improve the overall ITS operation in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication scenario. Nonetheless, effective and secure communication protocols between the vehicle and roadside units should be both analyzed and improved in terms of potential attacks on the transmitted positioning-related data. In particular, said information might be misused or stolen at the infrastructure side conventionally assumed to be trusted. In this paper, we first survey different methods of vehicle positioning, which is followed by an overview of potential attacks on ITS systems. Next, we propose potential improvements allowing mutual authentication between the vehicle and infrastructure aiming at improving positioning data privacy. Finally, we propose a vision on the development and standardization aspects of such systems.

When exposed to air, alpha particles cause the production of light by exciting the molecules surrounding them. This light, the radioluminescence, is indicative of the presence of alpha radiation, thus allowing for the optical sensing of alpha radiation from distances larger than the few centimeters an alpha particle can travel in air. While the mechanics of radioluminescence in air and other gas compositions is relatively well understood, the same cannot be said about the radioluminescence properties of liquids. Better understanding of the radioluminescence properties of liquids is essential to design methods for the detection of radioactively contaminated liquids by optical means. In this article, we provide radioluminescence images of Am-241 dissolved in aqueous nitric acid (HNO ₃ ) solution and present the recorded radioluminescence spectrum with a maximum between and, and a steep decrease at the short wavelength side of the maximum. The shape of the spectrum resembles a luminescence process rather than Cerenkov light, bremsstrahlung, or other mechanisms with broadband emission. We show that the amount of light produced is about 150 times smaller compared to that of the same amount of Am-241 in air. The light production in the liquid is evenly distributed throughout the sample volume with a slight increase on the surface of the liquid. The radioluminescence intensity is shown to scale linearly with the Am-241 concentration and not be affected by the HNO ₃ concentration.

In free-viewpoint rendering systems, one of the most challenging goals is the creation of virtual views based on available color texture (RGB) and depth data. Conventional depth-image-based rendering (DIBR) approaches have assumed that the virtual camera can only be displaced horizontally, thus leading to fairly simple disocclusion artifacts. However, in free-viewpoint DIBR, the virtual camera can be positioned in an arbitrary way and the respective disocclusion artifacts can exhibit complicated anisotropic appearances. Consequently, conventional approaches for compensating disocclusion holes usually fail in such arbitrary camera motion. We present a disocclusion compensation technique based on texture inpainting. We propose a layered representation of both the color and depth images in local foreground, background, and undefined segments (a trimap). This representation allows for employing an efficient alpha-matting approach for reconstructing the underlying opacity layer followed by a background compensation and layered rendering. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated with respect to the state-of-the-art through objective and subjective tests. The achieved results, especially for large camera displacements, outperform the state-of-the-art. Those results assess the effectiveness of the proposed method and highlight the need for new quality metrics able to address the impairments of this type of content.

Quantum walks present novel tools for redesigning quantum algorithms, universal quantum computations, and quantum simulators. Hitherto, one- and two-dimensional quantum systems (lattices) have been simulated and studied with photonic systems. Here, we report the photonic simulation of cyclic quantum systems, such as hexagonal structures. We experimentally explore the wavefunction dynamics and probability distribution of a quantum particle located on a six-site system, along with three- and four-site systems while under different initial conditions. Various quantum walk systems employing Hadamard, C-NOT, and Pauli-Z gates are experimentally simulated, where we find configurations capable of simulating particle transport and probability density localization. Our technique can potentially be integrated into small-scale structures using microfabrication, and thus would open a venue towards simulating more complicated quantum systems comprised of cyclic structures.

Phosphate glasses with the composition (90NaPO₃-(10-x)Na₂O-xNaF) (mol%) with x = 0 and 10 were prepared with blue persistent luminescence (PeL) using direct particles doping method. Commercial CaAl₂O₄:Eu²⁺,Nd³⁺ microparticles (MPs) with blue PeL were added in the glass melt at a lower temperature than the melting temperature. The PeL properties of the glasses were related to the diffusion of Al from the MPs to the glass occurring during the glass preparation, which was found to depend on the temperature at which the MPs are added in the melt and also on the time before casting the melt after adding the MPs. The glass with x = 0 can be prepared with homogeneous PeL if the MPs are added at 575 °C. This T_doping temperature can be reduced to 550 °C by replacing Na₂O by NaF in the glass.

Point clouds generated by terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) have enabled new ways to measure stem diameters. A common method for diameter calculation is to fit cylindrical or circular shapes into the TLS point cloud, which can be based either on a single scan or a co-registered combination of several scans. However, as various defects in the point cloud may affect the final diameter results, we propose an automatized processing chain which takes advantage of complementing steps. Processing consists of two fitting phases and an additional taper curve calculation to define the final diameter measurements. First, stems are detected from co-registered data of several scans using surface normals and cylinder fitting. This provides a robust framework for localizing the stems and estimating diameters at various heights. Then, guided by the cylinders and their indicative diameters, another fitting round is performed by cutting the stems into thin horizontal slices and reassessing their diameters by circular shape. For each slice, the quality of the cylinder-modelled diameter is evaluated first with co-registered data and if it is found to be deficient, potentially due to modelling defects or co-registration errors, diameter is detected through single scans. Finally, slice diameters are applied to construct a spline-based taper curve model for each tree, which is used to calculate the final stem dimensions. This methodology was tested in southern Finland using a set of 505 trees. At the breast height level (1.3 m), the results indicate 5.2 mm mean difference (3.2%), −0.4 mm bias (-0.3%) and 7.3 mm root mean squared error (4.4%) to reference measurements, and at the height of 6.0 m, respective values are 6.5 mm (3.6%), +1.6 mm (0.9%) and 8.4 mm (4.8%). These values are smaller compared to most of the corresponding contemporary studies, and outperform the initial cylinder models. This indicates that the applied processing chain is capable of producing relatively accurate diameter measurements, which can, at the cost of computational heaviness, remove various defects and improve the modelling results.

In the present contribution, we introduce a wireless optical communication-based system architecture which is shown to significantly improve the reliability and the spectral and power efficiency of the transcutaneous link in cochlear implants (CIs). We refer to the proposed system as optical wireless cochlear implant (OWCI). In order to provide a quantified understanding of its design parameters, we establish a theoretical framework that takes into account the channel particularities, the integration area of the internal unit, the transceivers misalignment, and the characteristics of the optical units. To this end, we derive explicit expressions for the corresponding average signal-to-noise-ratio, outage probability, ergodic spectral efficiency and capacity of the transcutaneous optical link (TOL). These expressions are subsequently used to assess the dependence of the TOL’s communication quality on the transceivers design parameters and the corresponding channels characteristics. The offered analytic results are corroborated with respective results from Monte Carlo simulations. Our findings reveal that OWCI is a particularly promising architecture that drastically increases the reliability and effectiveness of the CI TOL, whilst it requires considerably lower transmit power compared to the corresponding widely-used radio frequency (RF) solution.

We studied and compared single-side pumping (SSP) and double-side pumping (DSP) of a semiconductor membrane external-cavity surface-emitting laser (MECSEL). The MECSEL-active region was based on an AlGaAs quantum well structure embedded between two silicon carbide (SiC) wafer pieces that were used as transparent intra-cavity (IC) heat spreaders creating a symmetrical cooling environment. The gain structure targeted emission at 780 nm, a wavelength region that is important for many applications, and where the development of high-brightness high-power laser sources is gaining more momentum. By DSP at 20°C heat sink temperature, we could reduce the laser threshold from 0.79 to 0.69 W of absorbed pump power, while the maximum output power was increased from 3.13 to 3.22 W. The differential efficiency was improved from 31.9% to 34.4%, which represents a record value for SiC-cooled vertically emitting semiconductor lasers. The improvements are enabled by a reduced thermal resistance of the gain element by 9% compared to SSP. The beam quality was measured to be M ² < 1.09. Finally, we demonstrate a maximum tuning range from 767 to 811 nm. This wavelength range was not addressed by any MECSEL or vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser device before and extends the available wavelengths for semiconductor based high-quality beam and high-power laser sources to a wavelength window relevant for quantum technology, spectroscopy, or medicine.

We investigated data denoising in hyperspectral terahertz pulse time-domain holography. Using the block-matching algorithms adapted for spatio-temporal and spatio-spectral volumetric data we studied and optimized parameters of these algorithms to improve phase image reconstruction quality. We propose a sequential application of the two algorithms oriented on work in temporal and spectral domains. Experimental data demonstrate the improvement in the quality of the resultant time-domain images as well as phase images and object’s relief. The simulation results are proved by comparison with the experimental ones.

Optically-pumped vertical external cavity surface emitting lasers (VECSELs) based on flip-chip gain mirrors emitting at the 1.55-&#x03BC;m wavelength range are reported. The gain mirrors employ wafer-fused InAlGaAs/InP quantum well heterostructures and GaAs/AlAs distributed Bragg reflectors fixed on a diamond heat-sink substrate in a flip-chip geometry, incorporated in a V-cavity configuration. A maximum output power of 3.65 W was achieved for a heat sink temperature of 11&#x00B0;C and employing a 2.2% output coupler. The laser exhibited circular beam profiles for the full emission power range. This demonstration represents more than 5-fold increase of the output power compared to state-of-the-art flip-chip VECSELs previously reported at the 1.55 &#x03BC;m wavelength range. It opens new perspectives for developing practical VECSEL-based laser systems operating at a wavelength range widely used in many applications.

We report on novel features of random lasers assisted by near-infrared spatial solitons in nematic liquid crystals. Specifically, we study the role of light-induced reorientational waveguides (nematicons) on the spatial and spectral distributions of the laser modes. We show that the spatially spiky character of the laser emission propagating backwards with respect to the pump tends to disappear in the forward direction, due to the soliton confinement of the generated light. Moreover, the spectral features associated with various random laser resonances appear to merge upon guided-wave propagation along the nematicon, making the nematicon-aided random laser a bidirectional device with distinct emission properties at the two opposite outputs.

We report on interferometric autocorrelation measurements of broadband supercontinuum light in the anomalous dispersion regime using two-photon absorption in a GaP photodetector. The method is simple and low-cost and provides a direct measure of second-order coherence properties, including quantitative information on coherence time and average duration of the supercontinuum pulses as well as on the presence of temporally coherent sub-structures. We report measurements in regimes where the supercontinuum is coherent and incoherent. In the former case, the interferometric measurements are similar to what is observed for mode-locked laser pulses, while in the latter case, the interferometric measurements and coherence properties are shown to have characteristics similar to those of a stationary chaotic light source.

We numerically investigate second-harmonic generation from multiresonant plasmonic metasurfaces by designing an array consisting of L-shaped aluminum nanoparticles that simultaneously supports two surface lattice resonances with relatively high quality factors (>100). Using an approach based on the nonlinear discrete-dipole approximation, we predict an over million-fold enhancement of the emitted second-harmonic intensity from a particle at the center of the metasurface compared to an individual particle and estimate that conversion efficiencies of around 10^-5 could be achievable from the surface. Our results are an important step towards making nonlinear metasurfaces practical for nonlinear applications, such as for frequency conversion.

As the Earth's atmosphere contains an abundant amount of water as vapors, a device which can capture a fraction of this water could be a cost-effective and practical way of solving the water crisis. There are many biological surfaces found in nature which display unique wettability due to the presence of hierarchical micro-nanostructures and play a major role in water deposition. Inspired by these biological microstructures, we present a large scale, facile and cost-effective method to fabricate water-harvesting functional surfaces consisting of high-density copper oxide nanoneedles. A controlled chemical oxidation approach on copper surfaces was employed to fabricate nanoneedles with controlled morphology, assisted by bisulfate ion adsorption on the surface. The fabricated surfaces with nanoneedles displayed high wettability and excellent fog harvesting capability. Furthermore, when the fabricated nanoneedles were subjected to hydrophobic coating, these were able to rapidly generate and shed coalesced droplets leading to further increase in fog harvesting efficiency. Overall, ∼99% and ∼150% increase in fog harvesting efficiency was achieved with non-coated and hydrophobic layer coated copper oxide nanoneedle surfaces respectively when compared to the control surfaces. As the transport of the harvested water is very important in any fog collection system, hydrophilic channels inspired by leaf veins were made on the surfaces via a milling technique which allowed an effective and sustainable way to transport the captured water and further enhanced the water collection efficiency by ∼9%. The system presented in this study can provide valuable insights towards the design and fabrication of fog harvesting systems, adaptable to arid or semi-arid environmental conditions.

Electrically tunable metasurfaces with graphene offer design flexibility to efficiently manipulate and control light. These metasurfaces can be used to generate plasmon-induced reflectance (PIR), which can be tuned by electrostatic doping of the graphene layer. We numerically investigated two designs for tunable PIR devices using the finite difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The first design is based on two rectangular antennas of the same size and a disk; in the second design, two parallel rectangular antennas with different dimensions are used. The PIR-effect was achieved by weak hybridization of two bright modes in both devices and tuned by changing the Fermi level of graphene. A total shift of 362 nm was observed in the design with the modulation depth of 53% and a spectral contrast ratio of 76%. These tunable PIR devices can be used for tunable enhanced biosensing and switchable systems.

Luminescence in air induced by alpha particle emitters can be used to optically detect radioactive contamination from distances that surpass the range of the alpha radiation itself. Alpha particles excite nitrogen molecules in air and the relaxation creates a faint light emission. When the composition of the gases surrounding the alpha particle emitter is altered then the luminescence spectrum changes. In this work, we report the creation of an intense light emission in the wavelength regime below 300 nm originating from alpha particle excited nitric oxide (NO). The light yield has been investigated as a function of the NO concentration in an N₂ atmosphere. Unlike the emission from molecular nitrogen, NO emits at wavelengths shorter than 300 nm, where solar background and artificial lighting are negligible, thus enabling optical detection of alpha radiation even under bright lighting conditions. We show that the radioactively induced NO emission reaches its maximum intensity at a concentration of 50 ppm of NO diluted in N₂. At this concentration, the strongest emission line of NO is about 25 times more intense than the most intense line of N₂ radioluminescence. Lastly, we discuss potential applications and limitations of the technique.

Much progress, both experimentally and theoretically, has recently been made towards optical-frequency-comb generation from continuously pumped second-order nonlinear systems. Here, we present observations towards finding an integrated solution for such a system, using a titanium-indiffused lithium-niobate waveguide resonator. These results are compared to the recently developed theory for equivalent systems. The system is seen to exhibit strong instabilities, which require further investigation in order to fully determine the suitability of this platform for stable optical-frequency-comb generation.

The development of high-power laser sources with narrow emission, tunable within the water transmission window around 1.7 μm, is of interest for applications as diverse as medical imaging and atmospheric sensing. Where suitable laser gain media are not available, operation in this spectral region is often achieved via nonlinear frequency conversion, and optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) are a common solution. A practical alternative to OPOs, to avoid birefringent-or quasi-phase-matching requirements, is the use of stimulated Raman scattering within a suitable material to convert a pump source to longer wavelengths via one or more Stokes shifts; however, as this is a χ³ nonlinear process, such frequency conversion is usually the preserve of high-energy pulsed lasers. Semiconductor disk lasers (SDLs), on the other hand, have very high-finesse external resonators, suitable for efficient intracavity nonlinear conversion even in continuous-wave (CW) operation. Here we report, to the best of our knowledge, the first continuous-wave third-Stokes crystalline Raman laser and the longest emission wavelength from an SDL-pumped Raman laser, achieving high power, CW output, and broad wavelength tuning around 1.73 μm. The KGd WO_{4 2} (KGW) Raman laser, which was intracavity-pumped by a 1.18 μm InGaAs-based SDL, demonstrated cascaded CW Stokes oscillation at 1.32 μm, 1.50 μm, and 1.73 μm with watt-level output achievable at each wavelength. The 1.73 μm Stokes emission was diffraction limited (M² < 1.01) and narrow linewidth (<46 pm FWHM; measurement limited). By rotation of a birefringent filter placed within the fundamental resonator, we attained three tunable emission wavelength bands, one centred at each Stokes component, and achieved up to 65 nm tuning for the third-Stokes Raman laser from 1696 nm to 1761 nm. We have thus demonstrated a platform laser technology that takes well-developed InGaAs-based SDLs and provides spectral coverage and high performance in the near-infrared water transmission windows using commercially available components.

Techniques for wireless energy harvesting (WEH) are emerging as a fascinating set of solutions to extend the lifetime of energy-constrained wireless networks, and are commonly regarded as a key functional technique for almost perpetual communications. For example, with WEH technology, wireless devices are able to harvest energy from different light sources or Radio Frequency (RF) signals broadcast by ambient or dedicated wireless transmitters to support their operation and communications capabilities. WEH technology will have increasingly wider range of use in upcoming applications such as wireless sensor networks, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, and the Internet of Things. In this paper, the usability and fundamental limits of joint RF and solar cell or photovoltaic harvesting based M2M communication systems are studied and presented. The derived theoretical bounds are in essence based on the Shannon capacity theorem, combined with selected propagation loss models, assumed additional link nonidealities, diversity processing, as well as the given energy harvesting and storage capabilities. Fundamental performance limits and available capacity of the communicating link are derived and analyzed, together with extensive numerical results evaluated in different practical scenarios, including realistic implementation losses and state-of-the-art printed supercapacitor performance figures with voltage doubler-based voltage regulator. In particular, low power sensor type communication applications using passive and semi-passive wake-up radio (WuR) are addressed in the study. The presented analysis principles and results establish clear feasibility regions and performance bounds for wireless energy harvesting based low rate M2M communications in the future IoT networks.

We investigate computationally a method for ultrafast preparation of alkali-metal atoms in their Rydberg states using a three-dimensional model potential in the single active electron approximation. By optimizing laser pulse shapes that can be generated with modern waveform synthesizers, we propose pulses for controlling the population transfer from the ground state to a preselected set of Rydberg states. Dynamical processes under the optimized pulses are shown to be much more complicated than in the traditional optical two-photon preparation of Rydberg states.

The paper is devoted to a computational super-resolution microscopy. A complex-valued wavefront of a transparent biological cellular specimen is restored from multiple intensity diffraction patterns registered with noise. For this problem, the recently developed lensless super-resolution phase retrieval algorithm [Optica, 4(7), 786 (2017)] is modified and tuned. This algorithm is based on a random phase coding of the wavefront and on a sparse complex-domain approximation of the specimen. It is demonstrated in experiments, that the reliable phase and amplitude imaging of the specimen is achieved for the low signal-to-noise ratio provided a low dynamic range of observations. The filterings in the observation domain and specimen variables are specific features of the applied algorithm. If these filterings are omitted the algorithm becomes a super-resolution version of the standard iterative phase retrieval algorithms. In comparison with this simplified algorithm with no filterings, our algorithm shows a valuable improvement in imaging with much smaller number of observations and shorter exposure time. In this way, presented algorithm demonstrates ability to work in a low radiation photon-limited mode.

A method of measuring double resonant two-photon signal and background from a single cavity ring-down decay is introduced. This is achieved by modulating the double resonance loss via one of the light sources exciting the transition. The noise performance of the method is characterized theoretically and experimentally. The addition of a new parameter to the fitting function introduces a minor noise increase due to parameter correlation. However, the concurrent recording of the background can extend the stable measurement time. Alternatively, the method allows a faster measurement speed, while still recording the background, which is often advantageous in double resonance measurements. Finally, the method is insensitive to changes in the cavity decay rate at short timescales and can lead to improved performance if they have significant contribution to the final noise level compared to the detector noise.

In recent years, a lot of efforts have been devoted to the problem of depth estimation from lightfield images captured by standard plenoptic cameras. However, most of the metric depth estimation methods in the state-of-the-art leverage pixel disparity only. In this paper, we tackle the problem of focus-based metric depth estimation in standard plenoptic cameras. For this purpose we propose a closed-form model that relates the refocusing parameter with the focus distance of a plenoptic camera in order to allow for metric depth estimation. Based on the proposed model, we develop a calibration procedure that allows finding the parameters of the model. Using measurements of a time-of-flight sensor as ground-truth, experimental validation in a distance range of 0.2–1.6 m shows that focus-based depth estimation is feasible with a root-mean-squared error of less than 5 cm.

We report on the study of the third-order nonlinear optical interactions in In_xGa_1-xAs_yP_1-y/InP strip-loaded waveguides. The material composition and waveguide structures were optimized for enhanced nonlinear optical interactions. We performed self-phase modulation, four-wave mixing and nonlinear absorption measurements at the pump wavelength 1568 nm in our waveguides. The nonlinear phase shift of up to 2.5π has been observed in self-phase modulation experiments. The measured value of the two-photon absorption coefficient α₂ was 19 cm/GW. The four-wave mixing conversion range, representing the wavelength difference between maximally separated signal and idler spectral components, was observed to be 45 nm. Our results indicate that InGaAsP has a high potential as a material platform for nonlinear photonic devices, provided that the operation wavelength range outside the two-photon absorption window is selected.

We demonstrate that reorientational spatial solitons can curve when propagating in a medium with engineered walk-off along the direction of propagation. In this regard, we employ nematic liquid crystals with molecular anchoring defined by electron-beam lithography and optic axis distribution modulated in the longitudinal direction only, keeping the transverse orientation constant. The experimental results are in remarkably good agreement with a simple modulation theory based on momentum conservation.

We propose an algorithm for absolute phase retrieval from multiwavelength noisy phase coded diffraction patterns. A lensless optical system is considered with a set of successive single wavelength experiments (wavelength-division setup). The phase masks are applied for modulation of the multiwavelength object wavefronts. The algorithm uses the forward/backward propagation for coherent light beams and sparsely encoding wavefronts, which leads to the complex-domain block-matching three-dimensional filtering. The key-element of the algorithm is an original aggregation of the multiwavelength object wavefronts for high-dynamic-range absolute phase reconstruction. Simulation tests demonstrate that the developed approach leads to the effective solutions explicitly using the sparsity for noise suppression and high-accuracy object absolute phase reconstruction from noisy data.

The control of light by light is one of the main aims in modern photonics. In this context, a fundamental cornerstone is the realization of light-written waveguides in real time, resulting in all-optical reconfigurability of communication networks. Light-written waveguides are often associated with spatial solitons, that is, non-diffracting waves due to a nonlinear self-focusing effect in the harmonic regime. From an applicative point of view, it is important to establish the temporal dynamics for the formation of such light-written guides. Here, we investigate theoretically the temporal dynamics in nematic liquid crystals, a material where spatial solitons can be induced using continuous wave lasers with a few milliwatts of power. We fully address the role of the spatial walk-off and the longitudinal nonlocality in the waveguide formation. We show that for powers large enough to induce light self-steering the beam undergoes several fluctuations before reaching the stationary regime, in turn leading to a much longer formation time for the light-written waveguide.