International Journal of Optics

Ceramic is promising for use as a solid-laser material pumped with solar or lamp light. We developed a Cr³⁺ ion doped Nd : YAG ceramic laser that converts white light into near-infrared laser light more efficiently. Investigation of its optical properties has revealed that large gain can be realized with excitation power that is one order of magnitude less than that in the case of Nd : YAG. Ce³⁺ ion doping also makes it possible to utilize the excitation light components with wavelengths of 350 nm or less, preventing generation of color centers. A rod-type Ce³⁺/Cr³⁺/Nd : YAG ceramic pumped by white light such as solar light or flash lamp light was developed. Fluorescence lifetime of ceramic was measured. Laser oscillations at free running mode were observed. Also, numerical calculation for output laser power and gain at lasing threshold was performed. Fluorescence lifetime increased as temperature rose, which was observed in Cr/Nd : YAG ceramic. This increase suggests the existence of a cross-relaxation effect. Maximum output laser energy of 73 mJ with the peak power of 330 W was obtained. Obtained output laser energy was around twice more than that in case of Cr³⁺/Nd : YAG ceramic with the same Nd and Cr ion concentration.

Efforts have been made to enhance the surface sensitivity of the conventional surface plasmon resonance biosensor. To improve the sensitivity, a unique two-dimensional heterostructure layer of titanium disilicide and black phosphorus layer has been deposited over the metal surface. The titanium disilicide (TiSi₂) nanosheet is placed in between silver (Ag) and black phosphorus (BP) films in the Kretschmann arrangement. This biosensor executes better over a wide range of refractive index variations, including biological cell distribution in individual blood. It may become a fast method of detecting cancerous cells and the several variants of corona and other viruses that become pandemic. Using the finite element method-based simulation technique, the sensitivity obtained as 195.4 degree/RIU, 167.6 degree/RIU, 212.4 degree/RIU, 168.4 degree/RIU, 212.4 degree/RIU, 186.6 degree/RIU, 218.6 degree/RIU, 195.4 degree/RIU, 203.6 degree/RIU, 202.6 degree/RIU 203.6 degree/RIU, and 202.6 for basal (skin cancer), basal (normal cell), HeLa (cervical cancer), MCF-7 (breast cancer), HeLa (normal cell), Jurkat (blood cancer), Jurkat (normal cell), PCI-2 (adrenal gland cancer), PCI-2 (normal cell), MDA-MB-231 (breast cancer), MDA-MB-231 (normal cell), MCF-7 (breast cancer), and MCF-7 (normal cell), respectively, and other performance parameters such as detection accuracy, figure of merit, and full width and half maximum (FWHM) are also evaluated.

The propagation properties of partially coherent circular flat-topped (FT) vortex hollow/nonvortex beams are studied in anisotropic turbulent plasma. The analytical expression of the optical intensity of these beams is obtained by employing the extended Huygens–Fresnel integral. The effects of the source and turbulent plasma parameters on the intensity distribution of partially coherent circular FT vortex hollow/nonvortex beams are analyzed numerically. The results show that partially coherent circular FT vortex hollow/nonvortex beams will finally converge into a Gaussian intensity profile at increasing propagation distances. The results also showed that the partially coherent FT vortex hollow/nonvortex beams with higher coherence are less affected by anisotropic turbulent plasma than the less coherent beams.

This paper investigates a novel compensation technique of dispersion effect mitigation using a combination of three- and four-stage-apodized fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) and dispersion compensating fiber (DCF) designs. Two designs using three-stage and four-stage FBG and DCF in combination have been proposed and compared for their performance in mitigating chromatic dispersion effects at 100 km SMF. The performance of each design has been evaluated using Q-factor results using linear Gaussian- and tanh-apodized fiber Bragg gratings. Each profile manifested different Q-factor results over a range of 5 dBm, 7.5 dBm, and 10 dBm of CW laser power over FBG grating lengths from 4 mm to 8 mm. The results obtained using the three-stage and four-stage FBG and DCF designs showed that an apodization profile using a tanh function can be used successfully with FBG lengths from 4 mm to 8 mm, regardless of the CW launched power. In contrast, the results using a Gaussian apodization profile for three- and four-stage FBG and DCF designs are applicable to FBG lengths from 5 mm to 8 mm. Designs using three-stage FBG and DCF generated higher Q-factor results than designs using only four-stage FBG and DCF, regardless of the launched power. The highest Q-factor of 18.58 was obtained for three-stage tanh-apodized FBG and DCF used in combination for an FBG length of 6 mm. The highest result obtained for a three-stage Gaussian-apodized FBG and DCF design was a Q factor of 17.13 using an FBG length of 8 mm. The proposed method was also compared to current similar works and can be successfully implemented in long-haul optical communication.

Based on the simplified model of the tunable fiber laser system, the tuning performance of the laser was analyzed. Two kinds of tunable setups were established, which are the configurations with an external cavity and the configuration of the Littrow cavity. The tuning output characteristics experimentally were analyzed by means of setups. The simulation gives the output efficiency of two tunable lasers as 40% and 30%. In the experiment, the measured slope efficiency of the two lasers was 24% and 18.3%, and the tunable range of the two lasers was 32 nm and 40 nm, respectively. Both lasers could achieve laser output with good beam quality.

An encryption system that combines compressive sensing (CS) and two-step parallel phase shifting digital holography (PPSDH) using double random phase encoding (DRPE) is presented in this paper. The two-step PPSDH is a linear inline holographic scheme and is much suitable for encrypting the 2D/3D information in a single exposure. The distribution of random phase mask (RPM) in the DRPE is implemented using circular harmonic key which increases the security of the encryption process. In this system, the keys used to encrypt are spatial positions of the planes, wavelength, and rotation of the circular harmonics in RPMs, and CS acts as an additional key that makes the system more secure than the conventional optical encryption methods. At the transmission end, two-step PPSDH is applied to encrypt the object information in single hologram. The digital mirror device (DMD) is placed between the object and a single-pixel detector for acquiring fewer hologram measurements. At the receiver end, the single digital hologram is numerically recovered by using a CS optimization problem. The original complex object field is decrypted from the CS recovered holograms by the inversion of two-step PPSDH process with the help of the correct keys. The numerical simulations are presented for complex 2D and 3D objects to test the feasibility of the proposed encryption and decryption system. The proposed method carried out intensity and phase reconstruction of the original object field using single-pixel compressive imaging. The computer simulation results demonstrated that the encrypted information is highly secured with the rotation of the circular harmonic key. The sensitivity of the decrypted intensity and phase images is also studied with variations of the encrypted keys. The obtained results show that the proposed encryption scheme is feasible and has better security performance and robustness.