Contents
2018
Volume: 16 Issue 12
15 Article(s)

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Research Articles
Atmospheric and oceanic optics
Atomic and Molecular Physics
Intensity-independent molecular rotational decoherence lifetimes measured with mean wavelength shifts of femtosecond pulses
Hongqiang Xie, Guihua Li, Jinping Yao, Wei Chu, Zhiming Chen, and Ya Cheng
We report on an experimental investigation on the dynamic decoherence process of molecular rotational wavepackets during femtosecond laser filamentation based on time-dependent mean wavelength shifts of a weak probe pulse. Details of periodic revival structures of transient alignment can be readily obtained from the measured shifted spectra due to the periodic modulation of the molecular refractive index. Using the method, we measured decoherence lifetimes of molecular rotational wavepackets in N2 and O2 under different experimental conditions. Our results indicate that decoherence lifetimes of molecular rotational wavepackets are primarily determined by the relative population of rotational states in the wave packet and intermolecular collisions, rather than the focusing intensity.
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 120201 (2018)
Fiber Optics and Optical Communications
Switching response of dual-output Mach–Zehnder modulator in channel-interleaved photonic analog-to-digital converter
Lei Yu, Weiwen Zou, Guang Yang, Xinwan Li, and Jianping Chen
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 120602 (2018)
Advanced modulation formats for underwater visible light communications [Invited]
Nan Chi, and Meng Shi
In this paper, we present a detailed comparison of applying three advanced modulation formats including carrierless amplitude and phase modulation (CAP), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), and discrete Fourier transform spread orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DFT-S OFDM) in underwater visible light communication (UVLC) systems. Cascaded post-equalization schemes are suggested to compensate the system impairments. For the first time, a two-level post-equalizer is presented to mitigate the nonlinear effect and improve the system performance of UVLC. The first post-equalization is based on a novel recursive least square Volterra. These modulation formats are all experimentally demonstrated with corresponding digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms. The experimental results show that single carrier modulations including CAP and DFT-S OFDM can outperform OFDM. Our experiment results show that up to 3 Gb/s over a 1.2 m underwater visible light transmission can be achieved by using DFT-S OFDM 64QAM and CAP-64. The measured bit error rate is well under the hard decision-forward error correction (HD-FEC) threshold of 3.8×10 3.
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 120603 (2018)
Instrumentation, measurement, and metrology
System validation of CO2-laser-based phase contrast imaging on HL-2A tokamak
Yi Yu, Shaobo Gong, Min Xu, Boda Yuan, Yifan Wu, Lin Nie, Rui Ke, Minyou Ye, and Xuru Duan
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 121201 (2018)
Lasers and Laser Optics
Experimental research on impulse coupling effect of a multi-pulse laser on an aluminum target
Qianqian Shi, Yan Zhang, Kunpeng Wang, Chenglin Wang, and Peng Zhao
Impact and torsion pendulums are applied in impulse coupling experiments of high-energy laser irradiation of space debris. It is difficult to achieve a multi-pulse experiment and thus hard to analyze the multi-pulse impulse coupling effect. Here, we designed a new recoil impulse experimental measurement system of non-contact, multi-degrees of freedom, and multi-pulse irradiation. The system used a low-pressure and low-temperature vacuum chamber to simulate the space environment, the pinning effect of magnetic levitation to achieve aluminum target suspension, and high-speed cameras to record the displacement over time to calculate the impulse of the target. Then the impulse coupling experiment of multi-pulse laser irradiation on the aluminum target was performed. The result shows that the multi-pulse impulse coupling effect is not the linear accumulation of coupling results by every single-pulse and multi-pulse coefficient that decreases with the increase of the number of pulses, and eventually stabilizes as the decrease gets smaller.
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 121401 (2018)
Multi-cavity-stabilized ultrastable laser | Editors' Pick
Lulu Yan, Yanyan Zhang, Zhaoyang Tai, Pan Zhang, Xiaofei Zhang, Wenge Guo, Shougang Zhang, and Haifeng Jiang
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 121403 (2018)
All-polarization-maintaining figure-eight Er-fiber ultrafast laser with a bidirectional output coupler in the loss-imbalanced nonlinear optical loop mirror
Junkai Shi, Yao Li, Shuyuan Gao, Yingling Pan, Guoming Wang, Rongyi Ji, and Weihu Zhou
In this Letter, we report on a novel architecture for a self-starting mode-locked figure-eight erbium-doped fiber laser using a loss-imbalanced nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) with a bidirectional output coupler. An all-polarization-maintaining structure is adopted. A 2 × 2 optical coupler with a splitting ratio of 50:50 is used at the junction to form an NOLM. Another coupler with a splitting ratio of 10:90 is introduced at one end of the fiber loop. The 10:90 coupler plays two roles: power attenuator and bidirectional output coupler. This architecture can achieve both large modulation depth and good self-starting ability simultaneously. With this architecture, the self-starting mode-locking operation is achieved easily with pump power above the threshold. The clockwise and counter-clockwise mode-locked output powers are 10.1 and 10.3 mW, respectively, with the repetition rate of 3.63 MHz. The spectral bandwidths of the clockwise and counter-clockwise mode-locked output pulses are 7.4 and 2.9 nm, and the corresponding pulse widths of the direct outputs are 530.6 fs and 1.55 ps, respectively.
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 121404 (2018)
Medical optics and biotechnology
Dual-modal photoacoustic/CT imaging system
Kaiye Xia, Xiaohui Zhai, Zhaoheng Xie, Kun Zhou, Yutao Feng, Guangjie Zhang, and Changhui Li
Photoacoustic (PA) tomography (PAT) breaks the barrier for high-resolution optical imaging in a strong light-scattering medium, having a great potential for both clinical implementation and small animal studies. However, many organs and tissues lack enough PA contrast or even hinder the propagation of PA waves. Therefore, it is challenging to interpret pure PAT images, especially three-dimensional (3D) PA images for deep tissues, without enough structural information. To overcome this limitation, in this study, we integrated PAT with X-ray computed tomography (CT) in a standalone system. PAT provides optical contrast and CT gives anatomical information. We performed agar, tissue phantom, and animal studies, and the results demonstrated that PAT/CT imaging systems can provide accurate spatial registration of important complementary contrasts.
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 121701 (2018)
Nonlinear Optics
Analysis and evaluation of idler absorption for quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification
Dongxia Hu, Yudong Tao, Jingui Ma, Jing Wang, Heyuan Zhu, and Liejia Qian
Quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification (QPCPA) can improve the signal amplification efficiency and stability by inhibiting the back-conversion, in which the idler absorption plays a critical role. This Letter theoretically studies the impacts of idler absorption on the QPCPA performance in both the small-signal and saturation regimes. We demonstrate that there exists an optimal idler absorption that enables the achievement of maximum pump depletion within a minimum crystal length. To overcome the reduction in small-signal gain induced by idler absorption, the configuration of gradient idler absorption is proposed and demonstrated as a superior alternative to constant idler absorption. The results provide guidelines to the design of state-of-the-art QPCPA lasers.
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 121901 (2018)
Optical Design and Fabrication
Physical Optics
Asymmetric Mathieu beams | On the Cover
Arturo Barcelo-Chong, Brian Estrada-Portillo, Arturo Canales-Benavides, and Servando Lopez-Aguayo
Chinese Optics Letters
  • Publication Date: Dec. 10, 2018
  • Vol. 16, Issue 12, 122601 (2018)

About the Cover

Examples of asymmetric Mathieu-Gauss beams. Different rows correspond to different degrees of asymmetry (low asymmetry to high asymmetry, from up to down, respectively). Different columns correspond to different ellipticities (low ellipticity to high ellipticity, from left to right, respectively).