A tiled flat panel lighting system (65) includes flat panel light emitting units (5), each unit comprising a light emitting region and at least two pairs of first and second electrical contacts which are accessible external to the unit, wherein the first electrical contacts of the pairs are electrically connected within the unit, the second electrical contacts of the pairs are electrically connected within the unit, and the light emitting region is electrically connected to the connected first contacts and to the connected second contacts. A plurality of units may be electrically interconnected through pairs of the externally accessible first and second electrical contacts positioned at one or more adjacent edges of each of the units.

Tiled flat panel lighting system

A polarization dependent device (10 in Fig. 1) suitable for effecting at least one polarization of a broadband portion of electromagnetic radiation incident upon the device is disclosed. This device includes a substrate (100), and a plurality of regions (200, 210) of differing refractive indices positioned in an alternating manner and substantially adjacent to the substrate to effect the at least one polarization impinging on the regions. The plurality of regions are oriented with respect to the at least one polarization of the broadband portion of the electromagnetic radiation so as to effect the at least one polarization of the broadband portion of the electromagnetic radiation impinging on the regions.

Universal broadband polarizer, devices incorporating same, and method of making same

An optical device for combining two orthogonally polarized beams or splitting a beam into two orthogonally polarized beams is provided that utilizes two collimating/focusing lenses and a thin film wire-grid polarizer. Because the thin film wire-grid polarizer can be fabricated in very thin profile, the provision of a thin film wire-grid polarizer allows the optical polarization beam combiner/splitter device to be highly integrated and simultaneously realize a number of performance advantages of a thin film wire-grid polarizer over other types of polarizers utilized in various prior art polarization beam combiner/splitters.

Optical polarization beam combiner/splitter

A tunable optoelectronic device comprising: a resonant grating filter exhibiting at least one filtering characteristic as electromagnetic radiation impinges thereupon; at least one dielectric material coupling said radiation onto said resonant grating filter and movably positioned with respect to said filter so as to adjust the at least one filtering characteristic of said filter; and, at least one driving circuit for selectively positioning said at least one dielectric material so as to tune said at least one filtering characteristic.

Freespace tunable optoelectronic device and method

A birefringent device of substantially uniform thickness less than about 10 microns, and being suitable for operating in a wavelength range about a central wavelength is disclosed. The device includes a base substrate, a layer of periodic index regions of alternating refractive indices applied to a first surface of the base substrate, and a cap substrate located substantially adjacent to the layer distal to the base substrate. The layer of periodic index regions has a periodicity of less than the central wavelength. The device being suitable to produce an arbitrary phase retardation between 0 and 2 π phase.

Precision phase retardation devices and method of making same

The invention relates to a method for generating a random number on a quantum-mechanics basis and a random generator used notably for carrying out said method. The invention is based on the fundamentally random choice of path of a quantum particle on a beam splitter (8, 18), detectors (D1, D1', D2, D2') for capturing the particles being assigned to the outputs (11, 12, 16, 17) of the beam splitter (8, 18). The detectors or their counting events represent different number values of the random sequence. According to the invention, the generation of a multi-particle state in the output channel (11, 12, 16, 17) of the beam splitter (8, 18), and thus of several particles which impact on the detector (D1, D1', D2, D2'), significantly and advantageously increases the response probability of the detector and thus the probability of obtaining a useable counting event for every multi-particle state generated by the source (3, 3'). In this way a random sequence can be obtained more rapidly and more reliably than with single-particle detection.

Method for generating a random number on a quantum-mechanical basis and random number generator

A telecommunication system having frequency-dividing optical components where light pulses having different frequencies are coupled out of a optical fiber by fiber grating and/or photonic crystals and imaged by focusing elements outside of the optical fiber. The fiber grating for different frequencies can be used in a single period or in different periods disposed one after the other. The photonic crystals can be used at the optical fiber extremity or etched in a channel or trench in a glass fiber. Delay elements are added to ensure that different frequency light pulses are imaged simultaneously in a given and desired time relation as required for further parallel processing.

Telecommunication system having frequency-dividing optical components for the parallel processing of optical pulses

The invention relates to a device and method for electrically controlling the intensity of unpolarized light, wherein a polarising beam divider receives the light to be controlled via an entrance surface, so that said light is divided into two orthogonal polarised beams. A first device is provided to reflect at least one polarized luminous beam so that two luminous polarized beams can extend parallel to each other. At least one electro-optic element is arranged on the path of the luminous polarized beams. Said element modifies polarization according to the control voltage supplied. A second element reflecting the light beams in the opposite direction is also arranged so that the light beams pass though the electro-element(s) at least twice and are directed by the first reflecting device towards the polarised beam divider. The controlled light can be extracted from at least one entrance surface of the polarizing beam divider.

Arrangement and method for electrically controlling the intensity of unpolarised light

A device for the local attenuation of the light intensity in the field of vision of a light-sensitive monitoring and/or recording device (CCD) is described, which is suitable in particular as a glare protection device for video cameras in videophones or correspondingly equipped PCs. The device includes a first objective (L1) and a high resolution ferroelectric liquid crystal modulator (PC, LC) arranged between two polarizers (P1, P2), the liquid crystal modulator having a photo-conductive layer (PC) and a downstream liquid crystal film (LC) made up of helical smectic liquid crystals which is in contact with this layer. The photo-conductive layer (PC) is essentially arranged in the image plane of the first objective (L1), the image plane being imaged onto the monitoring and/or recording device by a second objective (L2). As this occurs, bright light sources or backgrounds are locally suppressed without resulting in a glare or bloom of the image. As an alternative, if the intermediate imaging is omitted, the monitoring and/or recording device (CCD) may be arranged in the image plane of the first objective (L1), the second objective (L2) being eliminated. In this connection, the liquid crystal modulator (PC, LC) is arranged at close proximity to the monitoring and/or recording device (CCD) so that bright interference light sources are not only displayed as darkened but also blurred.

Device for the local attenuation of the light intensity in the field of vision of a light-sensitive monitoring device

An optical interference filter with a periodic passage region has a birefringent element comprising a mercury (I) halide single crystal. An optical interference filter with a periodic passage region comprises a polarizer (2) at the outlet of a birefringent element (1), the latter being a mercury (I) halide (Hg2Cl2, Hg2Br2 or Hg2I2) single crystal. Independent claims are also included for (i) a method of active tuning of the spectral passage region of the above interference filter, in which pass characteristic alteration is effected by rotating the pass direction of the polarizer (2, 3) at the inlet and/or outlet of the filter relative to the axes of the birefringent element (1) and/or by altering the birefringence properties of an electro-optical retarding element; and (ii) the use of mercury (I) halides (Hg2Cl2, Hg2Br2, Hg2I2) as crystal-optical interference filters with a periodic passage region, especially for wavelength multiplex operation of optical telecommunication networks.

Dultz Wolfgang

Papers

Method for generating a random number on a quantum-mechanical basis and random number generator

Telecommunication system having frequency-dividing optical components for the parallel processing of optical pulses

Arrangement and method for electrically controlling the intensity of unpolarised light

Device for the local attenuation of the light intensity in the field of vision of a light-sensitive monitoring device

Crystal optical interference filter with periodic passband and method of actively adapting the spectral passband