ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences

About: ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences is a facility organization based out in Barcelona, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Quantum & Quantum entanglement. The organization has 872 authors who have published 1965 publications receiving 56273 citations.

Peripheral microcirculatory alterations are associated with the severity of acute respiratory distress syndrome in COVID-19 patients admitted to intermediate respiratory and intensive care units.

Abstract: COVID-19 is primarily a respiratory disease; however, there is also evidence that it causes endothelial damage in the microvasculature of several organs. The aim of the present study is to characterize in vivo the microvascular reactivity in peripheral skeletal muscle of severe COVID-19 patients. This is a prospective observational study carried out in Spain, Mexico and Brazil. Healthy subjects and severe COVID-19 patients admitted to the intermediate respiratory (IRCU) and intensive care units (ICU) due to hypoxemia were studied. Local tissue/blood oxygen saturation (StO2) and local hemoglobin concentration (THC) were non-invasively measured on the forearm by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). A vascular occlusion test (VOT), a three-minute induced ischemia, was performed in order to obtain dynamic StO2 parameters: deoxygenation rate (DeO2), reoxygenation rate (ReO2), and hyperemic response (HAUC). In COVID-19 patients, the severity of ARDS was evaluated by the ratio between peripheral arterial oxygen saturation (SpO2) and the fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2) (SF ratio). Healthy controls (32) and COVID-19 patients (73) were studied. Baseline StO2 and THC did not differ between the two groups. Dynamic VOT-derived parameters were significantly impaired in COVID-19 patients showing lower metabolic rate (DeO2) and diminished endothelial reactivity. At enrollment, most COVID-19 patients were receiving invasive mechanical ventilation (MV) (53%) or high-flow nasal cannula support (32%). Patients on MV were also receiving sedative agents (100%) and vasopressors (29%). Baseline StO2 and DeO2 negatively correlated with SF ratio, while ReO2 showed a positive correlation with SF ratio. There were significant differences in baseline StO2 and ReO2 among the different ARDS groups according to SF ratio, but not among different respiratory support therapies. Patients with severe COVID-19 show systemic microcirculatory alterations suggestive of endothelial dysfunction, and these alterations are associated with the severity of ARDS. Further evaluation is needed to determine whether these observations have prognostic implications. These results represent interim findings of the ongoing HEMOCOVID-19 trial. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04689477 . Retrospectively registered 30 December 2020.

Tunable multiple layered Dirac cones in optical lattices.

Abstract: We show that multiple layered Dirac cones can emerge in the band structure of properly addressed multicomponent cold fermionic gases in optical lattices. The layered Dirac cones contain multiple copies of massless spin-$1/2$ Dirac fermions at the same location in momentum space, whose different Fermi velocity can be tuned at will. On-site microwave Raman transitions can further be used to mix the different Dirac species, resulting in either splitting of or preserving the Dirac point (depending on the symmetry of the on-site term). The tunability of the multiple layered Dirac cones allows us to simulate a number of fundamental phenomena in modern physics, such as neutrino oscillations and exotic particle dispersions with $E\ensuremath{\sim}{p}^{N}$ for arbitrary integer $N$.

Fiber-laser-based, green-pumped, picosecond optical parametric oscillator using fan-out grating PPKTP.

Abstract: We report a stable, Yb-fiber-laser-based, green-pumped, picosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO) for the near-infrared based on periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate (PPKTP) nonlinear crystal, using fan-out grating design and operating near room temperature. The OPO is continuously tunable across 726–955 nm in the signal and 1201–1998 nm in the idler, resulting in a total signal plus idler wavelength coverage of 1026 nm by grating tuning at a fixed temperature. The device generates up to 580 mW of average power in the signal at 765 nm and 300 mW in the idler at 1338 nm, with an overall extraction efficiency of up to 52% and a pump depletion >76%>76%. The extracted signal at 765 nm and idler at 1746 nm exhibit excellent passive power stability better than 0.5% and 0.8% rms, respectively, over 1 h with good beam quality in TEM00TEM00 mode profile. The output signal pulses have a Gaussian temporal duration of 13.2 ps, with a FWHM spectral bandwidth of 3.4 nm at 79.5 MHz repetition rate. Power scaling limitations of the OPO due to the material properties of PPKTP are studied.

Dispersion relations for stationary light in one-dimensional atomic ensembles

Abstract: A unified theoretical treatment is presented that allows one to obtain the dispersion relations for stationary light in one-dimensional ensembles of atoms with various internal level schemes. The results open the possibility of tailoring, by controlling the spatial arrangement of the atoms, the light propagation to meet specific desired functionalities.