10^th International Conference and Exhibition on Lasers, Optics & Photonics November 26-28, 2018 - Los Angeles, California, USA

Biography:

Douglas R McCarter is the Technical Integrator of McCarter Machine and Technology Inc., founded in 1981. McCarter’s patented and proprietary silicon processes achievements were documented by published technical papers and over 50 oral presentations. In turn, he has won many awards, mentioned in Forbes.com, Kiplinger Letter, Entrepenuer.com, Nasa Tech Briefs, New Mexico Optics, Missile Defense Briefs Open and Classifi ed and recognized as the current world expert in precision silicon components. He has served as Member of Editorial Staff of Advanced Optical Technology, in Munich Germany since 2012. In 2016, Dr. Babin, USA Congressman District 37 and Leader of Nasa Funding, endorsed McCarter. In addition to over 3000 hours of Technical Schools, McCarter has been directly mentored for six years by the late Frank Anthony, Bell Labs Silicon Director and past 10 years Roger Paquin, Perk and Elmer retired Materials Expert. He is one of SPIE’s Inaugural 18 Senior Members, Editor Member on AOT, Advanced Optical Technology in Munich and Committee Member of OMICS Laser and Photonics.

Abstract:

Space Debris Mitigation is a unique problem requiring a unique solution. Space debris includes all types of potentially harmful objects, both seen and unseen, such as man-made idle satellites, abandoned tools, gas cylinders and satellite parts from ruptured and/or impacted satellites. Most alarming is the growing number of close calls with Cosmic-made asteroids and comets. Th e current materials used in Space Optics continually misses seeing asteroids and ground optics see most of them-After they have passed the earth. In addition, present day technology cannot deter any space debris that doesn’t burn up during atmospheric reentry, regardless of the source.

Large asteroids, called planetoids, are being seen and tracked, yet there is no proven option to deter from one or more causing global damage. Medium asteroids, called asteroids and small asteroids are called meteoroids, which can be city killers, are mostly never detected until they hit. Th is size asteroid has a signature that is too dim to detect or the surrounding planets are too bright and drown out any sign of the asteroid. Since the year 2000, over 28 Kiloton meteoroids, called meteorites after entering our atmosphere, have hit the earth. Th e near miss of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013 caused millions of dollars of damage and over 1200 physical injuries. Th is debris event caused mankind to begin asking” Why can we not see these objects and if we can see them, what can we do except evacuate?”

Th is class will show why asteroid detection is diffi cult and how to overcome these obstacles. Aft er two decades of prototyping and third- party testing, including MDA SBIR’s, McCarter has created a RL-6 silicon technology solution to build a Silicon Solar System, S3, that will perform both as a detector of space debris and as a direct deterrence of damage caused by this debris. This system will not only see dark cold objects but also ultimately control their fate.

Th e S3, will Seek-Track-Lase most space debris, operating as a squadron of individual satellites. Th e immediate mission will be to laser cut space trash, including dead satellites, to a safe size, then laser pulse it to slow and allow it to fall out of orbit. Lessons learned from clearing satellite orbits of trash will teach many valuable lessons such as proper positioning, power rate adjustments, responses of cut off pieces and guiding of trash to designated locations. To control micrometeorites, dust and/or paint fl ecks, it will be necessary to make a laser scanner screen. While taking out the trash doesn’t seem to be an attractive or rewarding eff ort, we will show that only aft er this proof of concept will we have the confi dence and experience needed to combat
the incoming asteroids referred to in McCarter’s SPIE paper as Space Invaders.

Biography:

Everardo Vargas Rodriguez completed an MSc in instrumentation at the Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico. Afterward, he received a PhD in Optoelectronics at the University of Southampton in 2007. He joined the University of Guanajuato in Mexico since 2007 and later he was appointed as a Director of the Department for Multidisciplinary Studies were he served from 2008-2016. Currently, he is an Academic Editor of the Journal of Sensors and he is interested in optoelectronics sensors and fi ber lasers.

Abstract:

Gas sensors based on Tunable Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TLAS) are widely used due to their high sensitivity and selectivity. Moreover, there currently exists a wide range of laser options to implement this application. Depending on the sensor system design some authors have been capable to enhance diff erent technical characteristics such as the minimum detectable concentration and the sensitivity over the certain dynamic range. In this work, a novel tailored algorithm to enhance the overall sensitivity of gas concentration sensors based on the Direct Absorption Tunable Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (DA-ATLAS) method is presented. By using this algorithm, the sensor sensitivity can be custom-designed to be quasi-constant over a much larger dynamic range compared with that obtained by typical methods based on a single statistics feature of the sensor signal output (peak amplitude, area under the curve, mean or Root-Mean-Square (RMS)). Moreover, based on the proposed algorithm, it is shown that it is possible to establish a quasi-linear relationship between a tailored statistics feature and the concentration within the wider dynamic range. Th is consequently allowed us to get a high and quasi-constant sensitivity within this concentration range. Furthermore, this algorithm can be applied to currently-designed sensors since it is only necessary to change the way in which the sensor signal output is processed. Th is new algorithm is based on the combination of diff erent statistical features of the sensor signal output instead to consider just one statistics feature (area, peak amplitude, RMS). Th is type of statistical analysis is commonly used in digital image processing for texture measurements. Finally, in order to support the general performance of the algorithm, a basic C2H2 sensor based on DA-ATLAS was implemented and its experimental measurements are in agreement with the simulated results provided by our algorithm.

Biography:

Takashi Matsui received BE, ME and PhD degrees in electronic engineering from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, in 2001, 2003 and 2008, respectively. He also attained the status of Professional Engineer (P.E.Jp) in electrical and electronic engineering in 2009. In 2003, he joined NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories, Ibaraki, Japan. He has been engaged in research on the design and measurement techniques of optical fi bers, in particular, has studied on the photonic crystal fi bers, bending-loss insensitive fi bers and the multi-core fi ber technology for telecommunication use and related fi ber design, measurement methods and applications of Brillouin scattering phenomena. He is a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan and an expert of technical committee 86 for international standards for fi ber optics technology in International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

Abstract:

Space division multiplexing (SDM) technology has been received increasing attention to increase transmission capacity extremely, which can overcome the capacity limit of the existing single-mode fi bers (SMFs). The SDM transmission can be realized by using a multi-core fi ber (MCF) or few-mode fi ber (FMF). In particular, the FMF can increase the number of spatial channels greatly by utilizing the mode division multiplexing (MDM) technology with the MIMO processing. Here, the MDM transmission raises some new issues which have not been considered in the SMF based transmission system. In particular, the diff erential modal delay (DMD) and the mode dependent loss (MDL) are unique of the FMF based transmission line. Th e larger DMD increases the complexity of the MIMO receiver. Th e MDL severely restricts the transmission speed and/or distance. Th erefore, it is important to specify these parameters of the FMF to construct the MDM transmission line. The DMD measurement method is well-established based on the time-of-fl ight method since it is also necessary to specify the bandwidth of existing multi-mode fi bers. Th e MDL is induced by some factors in the transmission line such as diff erential modal attenuation of fi bers, splices and devices and the mode conversion in the fi ber and at splices. Th erefore, it is important to specify the modal dependence of the loss factors for the FMF. Th e loss measurement of the FMF can be conducted with the conventional test procedure by utilizing the mode multiplexer which has suffi ciently high mode extinction ratio. However, the increase in the number of modes degrades the mode extinction ratio, which degrades the measurement accuracy. Recently, measurement methods of each mode in the FMF have been proposed by considering the mode power ratio, which is the variable mode power ratio method and the mode fi lter based OTDR method. Th ey can off er suffi ciently high accuracy of less than 0.005dB/km for two-mode fi bers. Th e splice loss is estimated by using the mode-fi eld diameter (MFD) for SMFs in general. We have investigated the applicability of the conventional near-fi eld pattern (NFP), far-fi eld pattern (FFP) and variable aperture (VA) methods to the higher-order modes in the FMFs. We found that the MFD values from the FFP and VA methods provided the splice loss value which well-agreed with the experimental results. Th erefore, it can be considered that the effective MFD value by utilizing these two methods is appropriate to consider the splice loss properties of the FMF. Th e loss and spice characteristics of the FMF directly eff ects on the transmission performance and it is essential to establish the specifi cations and their test procedures of the FMF for the interconnectivity and mass productivity. It can be considered that new approaches to control the characteristics of each mode are required to reduce the DMD and MDL for the FMF based transmission line.

Biography:

Weida Hu received his BS and MS degree in Material of Science from Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2001 and 2004, respectively and PhD degree (with honors) in Microelectronics and Solid-State electronics from the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics (SITP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in 2007. He is currently a full professor on fabrication and characterization of infrared photodetectors in SITP. He has authored or coauthored more than 110 technical journal papers and conference presentations with the total citations of 3100 and h-index of 33. He received the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2017, National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars in 2013 and National Program for Support of Top-notch Young Professionals (TenThousand Talents Program for Young Talents) in 2015. He is selected as the Royal Society-Newton Advanced Fellowship in 2017. He is also serving as the Associate Editor of Infrared Physics & Technology, the Executive Editor of Optical and Quantum Electronics, the Program Committee of SPIE DCS Defense and Security-Infrared Technology and Applications (USA) and the Program Committee of the International Conference on Numerical Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices (NUSOD).

Abstract:

Bonded tightly in the plane and stacked with weak van der Waals force, two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted increasing attention over the past decade owing to their unique structures and physical properties. To date, 2D materials comprise graphene, black phosphorus (BP), transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), boron nitride (BN) and so forth. Among them, graphene was fi rst discovered and studied as early as 2004. Because of the reduced feature dimensions, quantum confi nement eff ects in 2D systems are particularly signifi cant. With weaker dielectric screening in a several-nanometer or even atomic thickness, stronger Coulomb interactions occur. 2D systems provide an open platform for exploring novel physical phenomena and mechanisms. For instance, the breaking of inversion symmetry and strong valley-spin coupling in TMDs cause them to exhibit valley-dependent circular dichroism and scaling the material from multilayer to monolayer can realize an indirect-to-direct bandgap transition. Th erefore much eff ort has been devoted to seeking various applications based on 2D materials and the study of photodetectors based on 2D materials is a hot research fi eld. In this report, we introduce localized field enhanced 2D material photodetectors (2DPDs) from ultraviolet, visible to infrared in the sight of the infl uence of device structure on photodetector performance instead of directly illustrating the detection mechanisms. Six kinds of the localized field are summarized. Th ey are a ferroelectric fi eld, photogating electric fi eld, floating gate induced electrostatic fi eld, interlayer built-in fi eld, localized optical fi eld and photo-induced temperature gradient fi eld, respectively. By suppressing the background noise, enhancing the optical absorption, improving the electron-hole separation effi ciency, amplifying the photogain or extending the detection range, these localized fi elds are demonstrated to eff ectively promote the detection ability of 2DPDs. Particularly, among them, the photogating has been demonstrated to play a very important role especially in photodetectors based on hybrid structures. We consider photogating as a way of conductance modulation through photo-induced gate voltage instead of simply and totally attributing it to trap states. A high gain-bandwidth product as high as 109Hz has been achieved for photodetectors enhanced by the trap- and hybrid-induced photogating, though a trade-off has to be made between gain and bandwidth. We also put forward the general photogating according to another three reported studies very recently. General photogating may enable simultaneous high gain and high bandwidth, paving the way to explore novel high-performance photodetectors.

Biography:

Yanbo Bai has completed his PhD from Northwestern University. His research at Northwestern led to the most effi cient and most powerful quantum cascade lasers. His current role at Coherent is to develop more effi cient optically pumped semiconductor lasers and explore new wavelength capabilities. He has published more than 40 papers in reputed journals, such as Nature Photonics, Applied Physics Letters, Journal of Applied Physics, etc.

Abstract:

The bandwidth of an optically pumped semiconductor laser (OPS) is determined by the bandwidth of the material gain, the bandwidth of the longitudinal confi nement factor (LCF) and the bandwidth of the Distributed Bragg Refl ector (DBR). For a typical OPS-structure at 1064nm, the bandwidth of the DBR is the largest among them. In this work, we demonstrate a tunable OPS-structure with broadened material gain and LCF, so that the bandwidth of the OPS is close to the bandwidth of the DBR. Th e laser outputs more than 2W, tunable in a wavelength range of 1035–1100nm. High power and high bandwidth are difficult to achieve simultaneously in an OPS. For high power, one would prefer a high out-coupling (OC) for a high slope effi ciency. For high bandwidth, a low OC is necessary to extend the usable gain as far away from the center as possible. Nearly all widely tunable OPS result is demonstrated with an HR cavity (low OC), where the output power is only a fraction of the pump power. In this work, the OPS-structure is engineered in such a way that the modal gain (the product of the material gain and longitudinal confi nement factor) is as fl at as possible in the usable band of the DBR so that there is still substantial gain at the edges of the tuning range. Th is is the key feature to achieve simultaneously high power and broad tuning range.

Biography:

Yutaka Fukuchi was born in Tochigi, Japan, on April 29, 1975. He received the BS and MS degrees in electronics engineering from Tokyo University of Science, Chiba, Japan, in 1998 and 2000, respectively and the PhD degree in electronics engineering from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 2003. In 2003, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan as an Assistant Professor. From 2003 to 2005, he was also a Co-operative Research Fellow in Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. Then, he became a Junior Associate Professor of Tokyo University of Science in 2006. Since 2009, he has been an Associate Professor at this university. From 2013 to 2014, he was a Visiting Research Fellow with the High-Speed Optical Communications Group, Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark. He has published over 120 papers in major international journals and conferences. His research interests are optical communications, quantum optics, nonlinear optics and their applications. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE).

Abstract:

All-optical and tunable wavelength converters (WCs) can off er many attractive functions such as optical channel routing, optical add-drop multiplexing, optical label processing and dynamic light-path establishment for constructing transparent and scalable wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) networks or future optical packet switched systems. Th e potential of such WCs has already been revealed in a number of system experiments. To date, a selective and tunable WC (STWC) has been realized by employing the cascaded second-order nonlinear eff ect of sum frequency mixing (SFM) and diff erence frequency mixing (DFM) in a quasi-phase-matched (QPM) lithium niobate (LN) device. In this technique, a signal light and two pump lights 1 and 2, which have angular frequencies ωs, ωp1 and ωp2, respectively are launched on the device with a QPM frequency of ωQPM; to satisfy the QPM condition, ωp1 is set to 2ωQPM–ωs; SFM between the signal light and the pump light 1 then produces a sum-frequency component at 2ωQPM; a wavelength-converted output fi nally appears at 2ωQPM–ωp2 through DFM between the 2ωQPM component and the pump light 2. Generally, the wavelength conversion effi ciency of the QPM-LN devices or the output power of the wavelength-converted signal light increases dramatically as the length of the LN crystal becomes longer. In such a dual-pumped wavelength conversion scheme, however, the available signal bandwidth is strictly limited by the QPM bandwidth of the device. In other words, the crystal length of the QPM-LN device has to be optimally determined so that the QPM bandwidth corresponds to or is slightly broader than the bandwidth of the original signals to be wavelength-converted. In this paper, we review a technique of the QPM-LN-based STWC from an arbitrary wavelength to another arbitrary one. Through wavelength conversion experiments using short optical pulses for the QPM-LN devices having diff erent crystal length, we investigate the bandwidth limitation in the dual pump confi guration. We show that the minimum pulse width to be wavelength-converted without waveform distortion is proportional to the length of the LN crystal, and also reveal that that ratio is 1.6ps/cm. By utilizing this critical value as a performance metric, we demonstrate highly effi cient selective and tunable wavelength conversion of 40-Gbit/s data signals using a QPM-LN waveguide device with an optimum crystal length of 5cm.This device is quite attractive for channel-by-channel wavelength conversion in 40-Gbit/s dense WDM (DWDM) systems thanks to many excellent features such as wide range of wavelength tunability, high conversion effi ciency, modulation format free, adequate signal bandwidth and selectivity of 100-GHz-spaced DWDM channels.