Design, implementation, and characterization of a hybrid optical interconnect for a four-stage free-space optical backplane demonstrator

A four-stage unidirectional ring free-space optical interconnect system was designed, analyzed, implemented, and characterized. The optical system was used within a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor-self-electro-optic-effect-device-based optical backplane demonstrator that was designed to fit into a standard VME chassis. This optical interconnect was a hybrid microlens-macrolens system, in which the microlens relays were arranged in a maximum lens-to-waist configuration to route the optical beams from the optical power supply to the transceiver arrays, while the macrolens optical relays were arranged in a telecentric configuration to route optical signal beams from stage to stage. The following aspects of the optical system design are discussed: the optical parameters for the hybrid optical system, the image mapping of the two-dimensional array of optical beams from stage to stage, the alignment tolerance of the hybrid relay system, and the power budget of the overall optical interconnect. The implementation of the optical system, including the characterization of optical components, subsystem prealignment, and final system assembly, is presented. The two-dimensional array of beams for the stage-to-stage interconnect was adjusted with a rotational error of <0.05 degrees and a lateral offset error of <3.5 mum. The measured throughput is in good agreement with the lower-bound predictions obtained in the theoretical results, with an optical power throughput of -20.2 dB from the fiber input of the optical power supply to the modulator array and -25.5 dB from the fiber input to the detector plane.     

Step-type optical delay line using silica-based planar light-wavecircuit (PLC) technology

We successfully fabricated a step-type optical delay line using a silica-based planar light-wave circuit (PLC) technology with a total delay of 51.0 mm and an optical coherent crosstalk of -49.1 dB. For the purpose of applying it to a mode-locked Er³⁺-doped fiber ring laser, we aimed for: 1) an optical delay of several tens of mm so that any optical pulse repetition frequency could be set, 2) as-low-as-possible optical crosstalk so that the oscillation of the mode-locked ring laser would be stable, and 3) low optical insertion loss. We integrated an optical circuit consisting of eight optical delay units possessing three thermo-optic switches, which have a Mach-Zehnder interferometer configuration, and two waveguides. The difference in optical path length of the waveguides corresponds to the optical delay. We set the optical delay of each unit to 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.6, 3.2, 6.4, 12.8, and 25.6 mm, respectively, to give a maximum delay of 51.0 mm. Moreover, the total insertion loss was 5.2 dB. Precision measurement of the optical delay of each unit gave good results, with a manufacturing error of <0.47%, Based on the above results, the fabricated PLC step-type optical delay line can be used in a mode locked ring laser     

Self-alignment with optical microconnectors for free-space optical interconnections

A self-alignment technique that uses optical microconnectors forthree-dimensional optics in optical computing systems and opticalinterconnections is proposed. The optical microconnector consistsof an optical plug and a socket. On the output plane of an opticalsystem, optical plugs are made of a photosensitive resin exposed tolight through the optical system. Because the correspondingpositions of the optical plugs are critical to the image formed by theoptical system, a detecting device can be aligned and mounted by theconnection of the optical plugs to sockets formed on the surface of thedevice. Optical microconnectors were experimentally fabricated in areflective block optical system. An alignment accuracy of ~20 mum was attained in the experiment.     

Optical integrator for optical dark-soliton detection and pulse shaping

The design and analysis of an Nth-order optical integrator using the digital filter technique is presented. The optical integrator is synthesized using planar-waveguide technology. It is shown that a first-order optical integrator can be used as an optical dark-soliton detector by converting an optical dark-soliton pulse into an optical bell-shaped pulse for ease of detection. The optical integrators can generate an optical step function, staircase function, and paraboliclike functions from input optical Gaussian pulses. The optical integrators may be potentially used as basic building blocks of all-optical signal processing systems because the time integrals of signals may sometimes be required for further use or analysis. Furthermore, an optical integrator may be used for the shaping of optical pulses or in an optical feedback control system.     

基于有源光纤环路的光缓存单元

设计了一个低噪声的EDFA,结合0.8nm的窄带光滤波器,采用长为10439m的标准单模光纤,构成了一个有源光纤环路.对其输出特性进行了详细的测试,测试结果表明该系统具有良好的信号复制能力.基于此设计了一个光缓存单元,描述了其存储原理,定义了其单位缓存时间和最大缓存时间,实验表明该光缓存单元实现了光脉冲信号的缓存,单位缓存时间约为50 μs,复制光脉冲个数在500个以上,相应的最大缓存时间约为25 ms.     

Study of all-optical logic XNOR gate based on XGM in linear optical amplifier

Future digital optical communication cannot develop without all-optical high-speed optical devices, especially in the field of high speed large capacity optical transmission, all-optical packet switching and optical computing, and thus optical logic devices are becoming a hotter spot of research. Based on the cross-gain modulation (XGM), a novel scheme of all-optical logic XNOR gate using linear optical amplifier (LOA) is presented in this paper. LOA results show a good gain characteristic, which can get better output logic operation than traditional semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). Choosing suitable injection current, wavelength scope of the input signal and CW power can achieve better logic operation effect.     

Completely passive method of speckle reduction utilizing static multimode optical fibre and two-dimensional diffractive optical element

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we present experimental results on speckle noise suppression using a completely passive method. The passivity of the method is achieved owing to the absence of any mechanical, electronic, or other dynamic influences on the optical scheme elements. In the experiment, a multimode semiconductor 520?±?5-nm laser with a spectral bandwidth of 2?nm, static two-dimensional (2D) and 2?×?1D diffractive optical elements (DOEs), as well as multimode single-core optical fibre and multimode optical fibre bundle were used. The dependence of the speckle reduction efficiency as a function of the optical fibre type and optical fibre length was measured for different DOEs. A speckle contrast of 0.148 and speckle reduction coefficient of 2.38 were obtained for a 2.5-m-long multimode optical fibre bundle. The experimental results confirmed that it is possible to construct completely passive optical circuits with reduced speckle noises using static multimode optical fibres and diffraction optical elements.     

Free-space optical module configuration using a guide-frame assembly method

A new assembly method is described for easy construction of optical modules consisting of guide frames, spacer frames, and a housing frame. This method is used to assemble a two-dimensional optical-fiber collimator and a digital discrete correlator, which are fundamental parts of free-space optical computing systems. We show that a multistage optical system can be constructed simply by stacking of several optical functional blocks. Moreover, these compact modules do not need a conventional optical bench, they are compact, and assembly time is reduced. We demonstrated by experiment that the accuracy of optical modules assembled with this method is within the specifications of the optical system.     

Design considerations of stacked multilayers of diffractive optical elements for optical network units in optical subscriber-network applications

The detailed design process and experimental results of stacked multilayer diffractive optical elements are reported for an optical network unit used in optical subscriber-network applications. The optical network unit accepts two incoming light beams of 1.3- and 1.55-mum wavelengths through a single-mode optical fiber. A laser diode is also placed for bidirectional communications. The optical network unit consists of five diffractive optical elements that perform the following functions: collimation of incoming beams, focusing of the outgoing 1.55-mum beam, 3-dB splitting of the 1.3-mum beam, focusing of the 1.3-mum beam onto the photodiode, and collimation of the light emitted from a laser diode. Possible cost reductions as a result of mass production and the ease of alignment of the stacked diffractive optical elements could be ideal for constructing low-cost optical network units.     

Peptide Nanophotonics: From Optical Waveguiding to Precise Medicine and Multifunctional Biochips

Optical waveguiding phenomena found in bioinspired chemically synthesized peptide nanostructures are a new paradigm which can revolutionize emerging fields of precise medicine and health monitoring. A unique combination of their intrinsic biocompatibility with remarkable multifunctional optical properties and developed nanotechnology of large peptide wafers makes them highly promising for new biomedical light therapy tools and implantable optical biochips. This Review highlights a new field of peptide nanophotonics. It covers peptide nanotechnology and the fabrication process of peptide integrated optical circuits, basic studies of linear and nonlinear optical phenomena in biological and bioinspired nanostructures, and their passive and active optical waveguiding. It is shown that the optical properties of this generation of bio‐optical materials are governed by fundamental biological processes. Refolding the peptide secondary structure is followed by wideband optical absorption and visible tunable fluorescence. In peptide optical waveguides, such a bio‐optical effect leads to switching from passive waveguiding mode in native α‐helical phase to an active one in the β‐sheet phase. The found active waveguiding effect in β‐sheet fiber structures below optical diffraction limit opens an avenue for the future development of new bionanophotonics in ultrathin peptide/protein fibrillar structures toward advanced biomedical nanotechnology.     

Programmable optical logic systems using free-space optical interconnections

A free-space optical logic technique is presented that utilizes a two-dimensional array of diffractive optical elements. Each optical element focuses light to multiple, separate positions in the output focal plane. The focal spots from different optical elements are allowed to overlap spatially, resulting in interference. By changing the phase shift between the optical elements, one can create different optical logic operations in the focal plane. The technique is demonstrated by the use of two input beams incident onto a multiplexed optical element written onto a programmable spatial light modulator. The optical element simultaneously creates both AND and XOR logic functions in the output plane.     

Continued analysis of optical frequency-modulated continuous-wave interference

I continue to analyze systematically the theory of optical frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) interference. Two special cases, multiple-beam optical FMCW interference and multiple-wavelength optical FMCW interference, are discussed in detail. Multiple-beam optical FMCW interference generates a signal with multiple frequencies because of mutual interference among the waves. Multiple-wavelength optical FMCW interference produces a signal whose amplitude is modulated by a synthetic wave. The applications of both types of optical FMCW interference are also discussed.     

Fiber loop mirror-based optical transmissivity and optical phase retardation measurement architecture

We introduce and experimentally demonstrate a fiber-connectorized optical system based on the use of a fiber-loop mirror (FLM) to study both the optical transmissivity and the optical phase retardation of a material. Our approach to investigating the optical transmissivity of a test sample is by initially adjusting the optical powers at both FLM output ports to the extremum. A reference and the test sample are then placed one by one at one of the FLM output ports. For the optical phase retardation measurement, we propose placing a test sample inside the FLM and analyzing the ratio of the normalized optical powers from the two FLM output ports in order to eliminate the effect of unwanted optical losses. Our experimental proof of concept using three known zero-order wave plates as our test samples shows promising results that agree very well with our theoretical analysis. Key features include robustness, low optical loss, low polarization dependent loss, and ease of implementation.     

基于光纤导入技术的太阳敏感器设计与研究

设计了一种基于光纤导入的太阳敏感器,其包括三个部分:光学头部、光电传感器和太阳偏移角度的算法.光学头部采用两对对称光纤和一根中心光纤,通过计算每对光纤导入光能的差分值,获得太阳与航天器自身坐标系统的相对角度关系.该光学结构兼顾了大、小视场,提高了太阳敏感器定位精度.采用光纤作为太阳光的导入器,将光能导入置于航天器内部的...     

Optical trapping of a spherically symmetric sphere in the ray-optics regime: a model for optical tweezers upon cells

Since their invention in 1986, optical tweezers have become a popular manipulation and force measurement tool in cellular and molecular biology. However, until recently there has not been a sophisticated model for optical tweezers on trapping cells in the ray-optics regime. We present a model for optical tweezers to calculate the optical force upon a spherically symmetric multilayer sphere representing a common biological cell. A numerical simulation of this model shows that not only is the magnitude of the optical force upon a Chinese hamster ovary cell significantly three times smaller than that upon a polystyrene bead of the same size, but the distribution of the optical force upon a cell is also much different from that upon a uniform particle, and there is a 30% difference in the optical trapping stiffness of these two cases. Furthermore, under a small variant condition for the refractive indices of any adjacent layers of the sphere, this model provides a simple approximation to calculate the optical force and the stiffness of an optical tweezers system.     

Mode-locked ring laser with output pulse width of 0.4 ps

The output pulse width of a mode-locked ring laser composed of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier, Mach-Zehnder optical modulator, and optical band-pass filter depends largely on the repetition frequency and the wavelength characteristics of these optical circuit elements. In previous experiments, the output pulse width was in the order of 5 ps at a repetition frequency of 5 GHz. The principal reason was that the narrow passage band of the optical circuit elements made it extremely difficult to generate an ultra-short optical pulse. Consequently, we examined how to narrow the optical pulse width by flattening the wavelength characteristics of these optical circuit elements. Furthermore, we drove the optical modulator in the cavity using a frequency multiplier to operate at an effectively higher frequency By widening the wavelength passage band of all the devices in the optical circuit, we achieved an output pulse width of 0.4 ps at a repetition frequency of 5 GHz; the pulse peak power was more than +23 dBm, and the time-bandwidth product was 0.34. We successfully tested an ultra-short optical pulse source with an output pulse width of 0.4 ps with no external pulse compression using a mode-locked ring laser     

Evaluation of centricity of optical elements by using a point spread function

Our work describes a technique for testing the centricity of optical systems by using the point spread function. It is shown that a specific position of an axial object point can be found for every optical element, where the spherical aberration is either zero or minimal. If we image such a point with an optical element, then its point spread function will be almost identical to the point spread function of the diffraction-limited optical system. This consequence can be used for testing the centricity of precisely fabricated optical elements, because we can simply detect asymmetry of the point spread function, which is caused by the decentricity of the tested optical element. One can also use this method for testing optical elements in connection with a cementing process. Moreover, a simple formula is also derived for calculation of the coefficient of third-order coma, which is caused by the decentricity of the optical surface due to a tilt of the surface with respect to the optical axis, and a simple method for detecting the asymmetry of the point spread function is proposed.     

光纤通讯中测试信号的引出

和电信号的引出不同,光信号的引出存在着分路器的分光比损耗太大、引出光信号太弱、与引出光信号的位置有关等问题,使得在光通讯工程实际测试过程中,经常不稳定或不能满足测试需求而失败。本文提出了一种全光有源分路方法,充分发挥了光放大器的作用,可用于光通讯测试时光信号的引出。除了满足测试信号对原信号没有影响的基本要求之外,并且具有插入损耗小、引出信号强、成本较低和与测试光信号格式无关等特点。     

巨电流变液的非线性光学响应研究

寻找具有增强的非线性光学响应的材料一直是国际学术界的热点问题之一.本文研究了巨电流变液的非线性光学响应.我们发现,当巨电流变液中的纳米颗粒添加一层具有内秉非线性光学响应的涂层时,体系的有效非线性光学响应可以得到极大增强.所以,巨电流变液有望成为一种新型的非线性光学材料.