There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Artificial lights raise night sky luminance, creating the most visible effect of light pollution—artificial skyglow. Despite the increasing interest among scientists in fields such as ecology, astronomy, health care, and land-use planning, light pollution lacks a current quantification of its magnitude on a global scale. To overcome this, we present the world atlas of artificial sky luminance, computed with our light pollution propagation software using new high-resolution satellite data and new precision sky brightness measurements. This atlas shows that more than 80% of the world and more than 99% of the U.S. and European populations live under light-polluted skies. The Milky Way is hidden from more than one-third of humanity, including 60% of Europeans and nearly 80% of North Americans. Moreover, 23% of the world’s land surfaces between 75°N and 60°S, 88% of Europe, and almost half of the United States experience light-polluted nights.

The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness.

Optical Waveguide Theory

New experimental approaches in the search for axion-like particles

A topical review of numerical and experimental studies of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber is presented over the full range of experimentally reported parameters, from the femtosecond to the continuous-wave regime. Results from numerical simulations are used to discuss the temporal and spectral characteristics of the supercontinuum, and to interpret the physics of the underlying spectral broadening processes. Particular attention is given to the case of supercontinuum generation seeded by femtosecond pulses in the anomalous group velocity dispersion regime of photonic crystal fiber, where the processes of soliton fission, stimulated Raman scattering, and dispersive wave generation are reviewed in detail. The corresponding intensity and phase stability properties of the supercontinuum spectra generated under different conditions are also discussed.

Supercontinuum generation, photonic crystal fiber

We demonstrate a temperature sensor based on surface plasmon resonances supported by photonic crystal fibers (PCFs). Within the PCF, to enhance the sensitivity of the sensor, the air holes of the second layer are filled with a large thermo-optic coefficient liquid and some of those air holes are selectively coated with metal. Temperature variations will induce changes of coupling efficiencies between the fundamental core mode and the plasmonic mode, thus leading to different loss spectra that will be recorded. In this paper, variations of the dielectric constants of all components, including the metal, the filled liquid, and the fused silica, are considered. We conduct numerical calculations to analyze the mode profile and evaluate the power loss, demonstrating a temperature sensitivity as high as 720  pm/°C.

Temperature sensor based on surface plasmon resonance within selectively coated photonic crystal fiber

We reported diverse soliton operations in a thulium/holmium-doped fiber laser by taking advantage of a tapered fiber-based topological insulator (TI) Bi2Te3 saturable absorber (SA). The SA had a nonsaturable loss of ∼53.5% and a modulation depth of 9.8%. Stable fundamentally mode-locked solitons at 1909.5 nm with distinct Kelly sidebands on the output spectrum, a pulse repetition rate of 21.5 MHz, and a measured pulse width of 1.26 ps were observed in the work. By increasing the pump power, both bunched solitons with soliton number up to 15 and harmonically mode-locked solitons with harmonic order up to 10 were obtained. To our knowledge, this is the first report of both bunched solitons and harmonically mode-locked solitons in a fiber laser at 2 μm region incorporated with TIs.

Soliton mode-locked fiber laser based on topological insulator Bi 2 Te 3 nanosheets at 2 μm

A compact temperature sensor based on a selectively liquid-filled photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed using controlled hole collapse in PCF post-processing. The first ring around the core is filled with liquid of higher refractive index than the matrix, while the outer rings of holes are filled with air. The bandgap (BG)-like effect of the high refractive index ring is analyzed. Absorption loss spectra of the fiber are found to be quite sensitive to the refractive index of liquid when the liquid is lossy. Using the BG-like effect, a fiber temperature sensor is fabricated by selectively injecting a mixture of dimethyl sulfoxide and aqueous gold colloids with a high thermo-optic coefficient to the PCF. Temperature sensitivity up to −5.5  nm/°C is experimentally confirmed.

Temperature sensing using the bandgap-like effect in a selectively liquid-filled photonic crystal fiber.

All-fiber-integrated mid-infrared (mid-IR) supercontinuum (SC) generation in a single mode ZBLAN (ZrF4-BaF2-LaF3-AlF3-NaF) fiber with 13 W average output power and a spectrum extending from ∼1.9 to 4.3 μm is reported, which we believe is the highest output power for mid-IR SC generation in ZBLAN fibers. The overall optical conversion efficiency from the 790 nm pump light of the last stage Tm-doped fiber (TDF) amplifier to the total SC output was 20%, and the SC power for wavelengths longer than 2.5 μm was 6.85 W with a power ratio of 52.69% with respect to the total SC power. The mid-IR SC generation in ZBLAN fiber was pumped by a 2 μm master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system, which is also very appropriate for high power 2-2.5 μm region SC generation. We also demonstrate high efficiency SC generation in the TDF amplifier with 62.1 W average power, 39.8% optical efficiency, and a spectrum extending from 1.9 to 2.7 μm.

Thirteen watt all-fiber mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in a single mode ZBLAN fiber pumped by a 2 μm MOPA system

High power supercontinuum generation with 70 W average output power in a nonlinear ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier is demonstrated using all-normal dispersion, all-fiber master oscillator power amplifier configuration The supercontinuum covers from 1064 nm to beyond 1700 nm with spectral flatness better than 12 dB and 673% optical to optical conversion efficiency The almost uniform spectral power density across the whole continuum is more than 70 mW/nm and the nanosecond bursts output have an effective peak power of 827 kW

Jing Hou

Papers

Temperature sensor based on surface plasmon resonance within selectively coated photonic crystal fiber

Soliton mode-locked fiber laser based on topological insulator Bi 2 Te 3 nanosheets at 2 μm

Temperature sensing using the bandgap-like effect in a selectively liquid-filled photonic crystal fiber.

Thirteen watt all-fiber mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in a single mode ZBLAN fiber pumped by a 2 μm MOPA system

High power supercontinuum generation in a nonlinear ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier