Coherent addition of adjacent lasers by forked eigenstate operation

Forked laser eigenstates are shown to provide a powerful tool both to phase lock spatially separated laser oscillators and to add their powers coherently into a TEM(00) output beam. Coherent addition of the powers extracted from two fiber-coupled diode-pumped Nd:YAG channels is theoretically and experimentally demonstrated. Pure TEM(00) oscillation is obtained with a 20% optical-to-optical conversion efficiency. The coherence of the two-propagation-axis laser is proved, and single-frequency operation is demonstrated. The scalability of the scheme is discussed.     

Absolute figure measurements with a liquid-flat reference

We describe a variation of the liquid-flat technique fordetermining the absolute flatness of a 240-mm-diameter optical surfaceto an accuracy better than 1/100lambda in both its horizontal(three-point support) and vertical orientations. Using theappropriate mathematics to calculate the surface deformation of a diskdue to gravity, we achieved verification of the method by comparingmeasurements carried out on a pair of optical flats and a liquidreference surface.     

Ronchi test with a square grid

We use a square grid in the Ronchi test. This grid allows processing of both the X and the Y directions when calculating optical path difference. We use trapezoidal integration to analyze the new patterns, since it does not have the smoothing drawback at the edges of the wave front.     

Fabrication and characterization of optical-fiber nanoprobes for scanning near-field optical microscopy

The current scanning near-field optical microscopy has been developed with optical-fiber probes obtained by use of either laser-heated pulling or chemical etching. For high-resolution near-field imaging, the detected signal is rapidly attenuated as the aperture size of the probe decreases. It is thus important to fabricate probes optimized for both spot size and optical transmission. We present a two-step fabrication that allowed us to achieve an improved performance of the optical-fiber probes. Initially, a CO(2) laser-heated pulling was used to produce a parabolic transitional taper ending with a top thin filament. Then, a rapid chemical etching with 50% buffered hydrofluoric acid was used to remove the thin filament and to result in a final conical tip on the top of the parabolic transitional taper. Systematically, we obtained optical-fiber nanoprobes with the apex size as small as 10 nm and the final cone angle varying from 15 degrees to 80 degrees . It was found that the optical transmission efficiency increases rapidly as the taper angle increases from 15 degrees to 50 degrees , but a further increase in the taper angle gives rise to important broadening of the spot size. Finally, the fabricated nanoprobes were used in photon-scanning tunneling microscopy, which allowed observation of etched double lines and grating structures with periods as small as 200 nm.     

Bayesian fused classification of medical images

In many applications in computer vision and signal processing, it is necessary to assimilate data from multiple sources. This is a particularly important issue in medical imaging, where information on a patient may be available from a number of different modalities. As a result, there has been much recent research interest in this area. The authors suggest an additional Bayesian method which generates a segmented classification concurrently with improving reconstructions of a set of registered images. A synthetic example is used to demonstrate the subjectives and benefits of this proposed approach. Two medical applications, one fusing computed tomography (CT) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) brain scans, and the other magnetic resonance (MR) images at two different resolutions, are considered.     

Diffraction efficiency of echelles working in extremely high orders

Aproposal to use a high-angle echelle in the vacuum UV in the 350th order triggered a theoretical study to determine if there were unusual obstacles to success. No serious obstacles were found except for efficiency limitations.     

Emission polarization of roughened glass and aluminum surfaces

Ellipsometer measurements of the effective complex refractive index at a wavelength of 10.6 μm are made on a series of glass and aluminum surfaces of increasing surface roughness. The measured values are then used to calculate the degree of emission polarization and are shown to be in agreement with the experimentally determined values when depolarization is small. Comparisons are also made with calculations based on the Kirchhoff scattering theory. Both the theory and the experimental results indicate that it is the local surface slope and not the roughness magnitude that is the prime factor in determining the degree of emission polarization from the samples studied.     

Tight analysis of the (1+1)-EA for the single source shortest path problem

We conduct a rigorous analysis of the (1+1) evolutionary algorithm for the single source shortest path problem proposed by Scharnow, Tinnefeld, and Wegener (The analyses of evolutionary algorithms on sorting and shortest paths problems, 2004, Journal of Mathematical Modelling and Algorithms, 3(4):349-366). We prove that with high probability, the optimization time is O(n2 max{?, log(n)}), where ? is the smallest integer such that any vertex can be reached from the source via a shortest path having at most ? edges. This bound is tight. For all values of n and ? we provide a graph with edge weights such that, with high probability, the optimization time is of order Ω(n2 max{?, log(n)}). To obtain such sharp bounds, we develop a new technique that overcomes the coupon collector behavior of previously used arguments. Also, we exhibit a simple Chernoff type inequality for sums of independent geometrically distributed random variables, and one for sequences of random variables that are not independent, but show a desired behavior independent of the outcomes of the previous random variables. We are optimistic that these tools find further applications in the analysis of evolutionary algorithms.