Yanhong Zou

Wavelength-tunable picosecond soliton fiber laser with Topological Insulator: Bi 2 Se 3 as a mode locker

Based on the open-aperture Z-scan measurement, we firstly uncovered the saturable absorption property of the topological insulator (TI): Bi2Se3. A high absolute modulation depth up to 98% and a saturation intensity of 0.49 GWcm(-2) were identified. By incorporating this novel saturable absorber material into an erbium-doped fiber laser, wavelength tunable soliton operation was experimentally demonstrated. Our result indicates that like the atomic layer graphene, the topological insulator Bi2Se3 could also operate as an effective saturable absorber for the passive mode locking of lasers at the telecommunication band.

Third order nonlinear optical property of Bi 2 Se 3

The third order nonlinear optical property of Bi₂Se₃, a kind of topological insulator (TI), has been investigated under femto-second laser excitation. The open and closed aperture Z-scan measurements were used to unambiguously distinguish the real and imaginary part of the third order optical nonlinearity of the TI. When excited at 800 nm, the TI exhibits saturable absorption with a saturation intensity of 10.12 GW/cm² and a modulation depth of 61.2%, and a giant nonlinear refractive index of 10⁻¹⁴ m²/W, almost six orders of magnitude larger than that of bulk dielectrics. This finding suggests that the TI:Bi₂Se₃ is indeed a promising nonlinear optical material and thus can find potential applications from passive laser mode locker to optical Kerr effect based photonic devices.

Third order nonlinear optical property of Bi2Se3

The third order nonlinear optical property of Bi₂Se₃, a kind of topological insulator (TI), has been investigated under femto-second laser excitation. The open and closed aperture Z-scan measurements were used to unambiguously distinguish the real and imaginary part of the third order optical nonlinearity of the TI. When excited at 800 nm, the TI exhibits saturable absorption with a saturation intensity of 10.12 GW/cm² and a modulation depth of 61.2%, and a giant nonlinear refractive index of 10⁻¹⁴ m²/W, almost six orders of magnitude larger than that of bulk dielectrics. This finding suggests that the TI:Bi₂Se₃ is indeed a promising nonlinear optical material and thus can find potential applications from passive laser mode locker to optical Kerr effect based photonic devices.

A passivated codoping approach to tailor the band edges of TiO2 for efficient photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants

We propose an effective passivated codoping approach to tailor the band edges of TiO2 by doping the host with group IVA and group VIB impurities to passive donor-acceptor complexes. A way of achieving p-type TiO2 is found, which can outspread the application range of TiO2 semiconductor. It is demonstrated that the carbon (C)/tungsten (W) codoped TiO2 has a substantial increase in the valence band edge, while leaving the conduction band edge almost unchanged, thus improving the efficiency of photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants. In principle, the suggested approach for overcoming the p-type doping bottleneck can be applied to other wide-band-gap semiconductors.

Spin Hall effect of a light beam in left-handed materials

We establish a general propagation model to describe the spin Hall effect of light beam in left-handed materials (LHMs). A spin-dependent shift of the beam centroid perpendicular to the refractive index gradient for the light beam through an air-LHM interface is demonstrated. For a certain circularly polarized component, whether the transverse shift is positive or negative depends on the magnitude of the refractive index gradient. Very surprisingly, the spin Hall effect in the LHM is unreversed, although the sign of refractive index gradient is reversed. The physics underlying this counterintuitive effect is that the spin angular momentum of photons is unreversed. Further, we reveal that the angular shift in the LHM is reversed due to the negative diffraction. These findings provide alternative evidence for that the linear momentum of photons is reversed, while the spin angular momentum is unreversed in the LHM.

Enhancing and tuning absorption properties of microwave absorbing materials using metamaterials

We proposed and demonstrated a scheme to enhance and tune absorption properties of conventional microwave absorbing materials (MAMs) by metamaterials (MMs). By covering a MAM, say, carbonyl iron powder coating, with MMs composed of split ring resonators (SRRs) and wires, we show both by experiments and by simulations that the maximum reflection loss (RL) is increased significantly and the frequency region for absorption is shifted to lower frequency. The frequency region in which the maximum RL is less than −10 dB shifts from 5–7 to 4.2–6.2 GHz for perpendicular polarization electromagnetic waves and to 4–9 GHz for parallel polarization waves. Simulation results reveal that the magnetic resonance obtained by SRRs and the electric resonance obtained by copper wires are the main factors in enhancing and tuning microwave absorption properties.

Graphene Q-Switched Vectorial Fiber Laser With Switchable Polarized Output

We report a graphene Q-switched ytterbium-doped fiber laser with switchable cylindrical vector beam output. The 6-8 layers CVD-grown graphene films were transferred to the target substrate by an ultrasonic processing method, and its saturation intensity and modulation depth are measured to be about 0.61 MW/cm2 and 13.2% at 1072 nm by the Z-scan technique. We used a nanograting spatially variant waveplate as an intracavity polarization controlling element to convert pulsed Gaussian beam to radially or azimuthally polarized beam in the fiber laser cavity. Stable Q-switching operation can be achieved with the output power up to 253 mW and pulse energy 7.73 μJ at the maximum incident pump power. The polarization extinction ratio of radially and azimuthally polarized beam is 97.4% and 96.9%, respectively. The experimental results suggest that the graphene can act as a potential nonlinear optical material to modulate pulsed fiber lasers with spatially inhomogeneous polarizations.

Rotational Doppler effect in left-handed materials

We explain the rotational Doppler effect associated with light beams carrying with orbital angular momentum in left-handed materials (LHMs). We demonstrate that the rotational Doppler effect in LHMs is unreversed, which is significantly different from the linear Doppler effect. The physics underlying this intriguing effect is the combined contributions of negative phase velocity and inverse screw of wave-front. In the normal dispersion region, the rotational Doppler effect induces a upstream energy flow but a downstream momentum flow. In the anomalous dispersion region, however, the rotational Doppler effect produces a downstream energy flow but a upstream momentum flow. We theoretically predict that the rotational Doppler effect can induce a transfer of angular momentum of the LHM to orbital angular momentum of the beam.

Physical mechanisms for tuning the nonlinear effects in photonic crystals.

By simultaneously taking field localization and slow light effects into account, in this paper we make use of a field averaging method to calculate the effective nonlinear refractive index coefficient (n2) of Kerr photonic crystals (PhCs) in the first band. Although the nonlinear PhC is beyond the traditional long-wavelength limit, interestingly, the theoretically calculated effective n2 agrees well with one numerically measured via the self-phase-modulation induced spectral broadening. Moreover, due to the cooperative influence of field localization and slow light effects, the effective n2 of the PhC decreases slowly at first and then goes up quickly with increasing frequency. This kind of dispersive nonlinearity is purely induced by the periodic nanostructures because the optical parameters of both components of the PhC we took are frequency-independent. Our results may pave the way for enhancing or limiting nonlinear effects and provide a method for producing the dispersive nonlinearity.

Improved Microwave Absorption of Carbonyl Iron Powder by the Array of Subwavelength Metallic Cut Wires

We present a scheme to improve the absorption performance of microwave absorbing materials by using the electric resonance resulting from an array of subwavelength metallic cut wires. To demonstrate this scheme, we have prepared a combined absorber (CA) by sandwiching the array of subwavelength copper cut wires between two layers of carbonyl iron powder (CIP) coating. Experimental results show that the prepared absorber has an evidently enhanced reflection loss (RL) and a significantly wider absorption bandwidth (4.5-9.5 GHz) for RL less than -10 dB compared to the CIP coating that has an absorption frequency range of 5-7 GHz. Numerical simulations confirm the experimental results, and further demonstrate that the absorption performance of the CA can be enhanced and tuned simply by adjusting the dimension of the cut wires, and the arrangement and layer number of the cut wire array (CWA), providing that the electric loss of the CWA is properly matched to the magnetic loss of CIP.