Bangshan Sun

High conductivity micro-wires in diamond following arbitrary paths

High quality graphitic wires embedded beneath the surface of single crystal diamond are fabricated using a combination of adaptive ultrashort pulsed laser fabrication, high numerical aperture focusing, and an axial multi-fabrication scheme. Wires are created with micrometer and sub-micrometer dimensions that can follow any three dimensional path within the diamond. The measured conductivities are over an order of magnitude greater than previously reported wires fabricated by ultra-short pulsed lasers. The increased level of graphitization control in this scheme appears particularly important for fabrication of wires parallel to the diamond surface.

Effects of aberrations in spatiotemporal focusing of ultrashort laser pulses

Spatiotemporal focusing, or simultaneous spatial and temporal focusing (SSTF), has already been adopted for various applications in microscopy, photoactivation for biological studies, and laser fabrication. We investigate the effects of aberrations on focus formation in SSTF, in particular, the effects of phase aberrations related to low-order Zernike modes and a refractive index mismatch between the immersion medium and sample. By considering a line focus, we are able to draw direct comparison between the performance of SSTF and conventional spatial focusing (SF). Wide-field SSTF is also investigated and is found to be much more robust to aberrations than either line SSTF or SF. These results show the sensitivity of certain focusing methods to specific aberrations, and can inform on the necessity and benefit of aberration correction.

Pulse front adaptive optics: a new method for control of ultrashort laser pulses.

Ultrafast lasers enable a wide range of physics research and the manipulation of short pulses is a critical part of the ultrafast tool kit. Current methods of laser pulse shaping are usually considered separately in either the spatial or the temporal domain, but laser pulses are complex entities existing in four dimensions, so full freedom of manipulation requires advanced forms of spatiotemporal control. We demonstrate through a combination of adaptable diffractive and reflective optical elements - a liquid crystal spatial light modulator (SLM) and a deformable mirror (DM) - decoupled spatial control over the pulse front (temporal group delay) and phase front of an ultra-short pulse was enabled. Pulse front modulation was confirmed through autocorrelation measurements. This new adaptive optics technique, for the first time enabling in principle arbitrary shaping of the pulse front, promises to offer a further level of control for ultrafast lasers.

Elliptical Hollow Fiber With Inner Silver Coating for Linearly Polarized Terahertz Transmission

Silver-coated elliptical hollow polycarbonate fibers for transmission of linearly polarized terahertz (THz) radiation are fabricated and characterized. A polarization ratio of 90% and a transmission loss of 0.79 dB/m at 0.65 THz are obtained for a 290-mm long fiber with major and minor inner radii of 2.42 and 1.18 mm. Modal birefringence in the order of 10-3-10-2 is predicted in the frequency region of 0.3-1.5 THz. We also investigate the transmission characteristics of deformed fibers and found that the fiber with a semicircle cross section could rotate the direction of a linear polarization.

Design and optimization of low-loss high-birefringence hollow fiber at terahertz frequency

Transmission characteristics at terahertz (THz) frequencies are numerically analyzed for elliptical dielectric-coated metallic hollow fiber (DMHF). Attenuation constants, group velocity, modal birefringence, and modal power fraction in the air core are presented. Optimization of the fiber geometry is investigated to reduce the attenuation and to increase the birefringence simultaneously. Modal birefringence of 3.3 × 10 -2 and attenuation of 2.4 dB/m are expected. It is found that a desirable ellipticity of the air core is around 3. And both the modal birefringence and the attenuation constant are inversely proportional to the cube of the core size. Multiple dielectric layers significantly reduce the attenuation and meanwhile have little influence on the modal birefringence.

Four-dimensional light shaping: manipulating ultrafast spatiotemporal foci in space and time

The spectral dispersion of ultrashort pulses allows the simultaneous focusing of light in both space and time, which creates so-called spatiotemporal foci. Such space–time coupling may be combined with the existing holographic techniques to give a further dimension of control when generating focal light fields. In the present study, it is shown that a phase-only hologram placed in the pupil plane of an objective and illuminated by a spatially chirped ultrashort pulse can be used to generate three-dimensional arrays of spatio-temporally focused spots. By exploiting the pulse front tilt generated at focus when applying simultaneous spatial and temporal focusing (SSTF), it is possible to overlap neighboring foci in time to create a smooth intensity distribution. The resulting light field displays a high level of axial confinement, with experimental demonstrations given through two-photon microscopy and the non-linear laser fabrication of glass.

Pulse front adaptive optics in two-photon microscopy.

Adaptive optics has been extensively studied for the correction of phase front aberrations in optical systems. In systems using ultrafast lasers, distortions can also exist in the pulse front (contour of constant intensity in space and time), but until now their correction has been mostly unexplored due to technological limitations. In this Letter, we apply newly developed pulse front adaptive optics, for the first time to our knowledge, to practical compensation of a two-photon fluorescence microscope. With adaptive correction of the system-induced pulse front distortion, improvements beyond conventional phase correction are demonstrated.

Effects of sample dispersion on ultrafast laser focusing

We theoretically investigate the effects of sample dispersion on the focusing of ultrashort laser pulses. Both the conventional point focusing and temporal focusing are studied. The influence of laser parameters, objective lenses, and sample materials is discussed in detail. The sample dispersion introduces spatial and temporal distortions to the laser focus, and reduces the focal intensity. These effects are more significant when a laser with a shorter pulse duration is focused into the sample at a larger depth. The presented results show the significance of sample dispersion effects in different scenarios, and look to inform on a proper choice of specific focusing method in practical cases.

Characterization of cylindrical terahertz metallic hollow waveguide with multiple dielectric layers

Dielectric-coated metallic hollow waveguides (DMHW) are drawing considerable attention for their application in terahertz (THz) waveguiding. This paper theoretically analyzes the multilayer structure to reduce the transmission and bending loss of DMHW. The efficiency of THz multilayer DMHW depends on a proper selection of dielectric materials and geometrical parameters. The low-loss properties are demonstrated by studying the multilayer gold waveguides with a stack of polypropylene (PP) and Si-doped polypropylene (PP(Si)). Comparisons are made with single-layer Au/PP and Au-only waveguides. The effect of dielectric absorption is discussed in detail. It is found that low index dielectric causes more additional loss than that of high index dielectric layers. Several design considerations for the THz multilayer DMHW are pointed out by studying the effects of multilayer structure parameters with a stack of polyethylene (PE) and TiO(2)-doped polyethylene (PE(TiO2)). We conclude that the inner radius of the waveguide and the refractive indices of the dielectrics tend to be larger in order to reduce the influence of material absorption. An optimal value exists for the total number of layers when the dielectrics are absorptive. The absorption tolerances are pointed out to guarantee a smaller loss for multilayer DMHW than that of metal-only waveguide. Finally, a fabrication method for THz multilayer DMHW Ag/PE/PE(TiO2) is proposed based on co-rolling technique.

Directionality in laser fabrication of 3D graphitic microwires in diamond

Graphitic wires embedded beneath the surface of single crystal diamond are promising for a variety of applications. Through a combination of ultra short (femtosecond) pulsed fabrication, high numerical aperture focusing and adaptive optics, graphitic wires can be written along any 3D path. Here, we demonstrate a non-reciprocal directional dependence to the graphitization process: the features are distinct when the fabrication direction is reversed. The non-reciprocal effects are significantly determined by the laser power, the fabrication speed, the light polarization and pulse front tilt. The influences of these factors are studied.