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At least 1,513 records · Page 84

High Bandwidth Optical Links for Micro-Satellite Support

A method, systems, apparatus and device enable high bandwidth satellite communications. An onboard tracking detector, installed in a low-earth orbit satellite, detects a position of an incoming optical beam received/transmitted from a first ground station of one or more ground stations. Tracker electronics determine orientation information of the incoming optical beam based on the position. Control electronics receive the orientation information from the tracker electronics, and control a waveguide drive electronics. The waveguide drive electronics control a voltage that is provided to an electro-optic waveguide beam steering device. The electro-optic waveguide beam steering device steers an outgoing optical beam to one of the one or more ground stations based on the voltage.

Chao, Tien-Hsin↗

Plasmon resonant cavities in vertical nanowire arrays

Tunable plasmon resonant cavity arrays in paired parallel nanowire waveguides are presented. Resonances can be observed when the waveguide length is an odd multiple of quarter plasmon wavelengths, consistent with boundary conditions of node and antinode at the ends. Two nanowire waveguides can satisfy the dispersion relation of a planar metal-dielectric-metal waveguide of equivalent width equal to the square field average weighted gap. Confinement factors of over 10.sup.3 are possible due to plasmon focusing in the inter-wire space.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗

Device-packaging method and apparatus for optoelectronic circuits

An optoelectronic device package and a method for its fabrication are provided. The device package includes a lid die and an active die that is sealed or sealable to the lid die and in which one or more optical waveguides are integrally defined. The active die includes one or more active device regions, i.e. integral optoelectronic devices or etched cavities for placement of discrete optoelectronic devices. Optical waveguides terminate at active device regions so that they can be coupled to them. Slots are defined in peripheral parts of the active dies. At least some of the slots are aligned with the ends of integral optical waveguides so that optical fibers or optoelectronic devices inserted in the slots can optically couple to the waveguides.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Integrated optical transceiver with electronically controlled optical beamsteering

A beam-steering optical transceiver is provided. The transceiver includes one or more modules, each comprising an antenna chip and a control chip bonded to the antenna chip. Each antenna chip has a feeder waveguide, a plurality of row waveguides that tap off from the feeder waveguide, and a plurality of metallic nanoantenna elements arranged in a two-dimensional array of rows and columns such that each row overlies one of the row waveguides. Each antenna chip also includes a plurality of independently addressable thermo-optical phase shifters, each configured to produce a thermo-optical phase shift in a respective row. Each antenna chip also has, for each row, a row-wise heating circuit configured to produce a respective thermo-optic phase shift at each nanoantenna element along its row. The control chip includes controllable current sources for the independently addressable thermo-optical phase shifters and the row-wise heating circuits.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Chip-scale phonon-based quantum device

A quantum device includes a phononic crystal defined on a semiconductor substrate. Phononic cavities are defined in the phononic crystal, wherein each phononic cavity contains an implanted acceptor atom. Phononic waveguides are defined in the phononic crystal, wherein each waveguide is coupled to at least one phononic cavity. At least some phononic waveguides are arranged to provide coupling between phononic cavities and ultrasonic transducers. At least some phononic waveguides are arranged to provide coupling between different phononic cavities.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Evanescently coupled piezoelectric acoustic devices

An electro-acoustic device includes a plurality of suspended, piezoelectric, acoustically waveguiding membranes supported in a common plane. An input transducer coupled to one of the waveguiding membranes converts input electrical signals to traveling-wave acoustic signals. An output transducer coupled to one of the waveguiding membranes converts acoustic signals to electrical signals. At least two of the waveguiding membrane have parallel straight sections that are longer than a guided acoustic wavelength and that are mutually separated by an air gap having a width less than the guided acoustic wavelength.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

CWDM transmit module for wavelength tuning and tracking

A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) includes a semiconductor substrate with a main bus waveguide disposed within the substrate. Two or more ring lasers are disposed within the substrate and are optically coupled to the main bus waveguide. The ring lasers have a wavelength control mechanism allowing change of a lasers emitted wavelength. A wavelength selective filter is optically coupled to the bus waveguide. A control circuit is electronically coupled to each wavelength control mechanism, and the wavelength selective filter. The control circuit in conjunction with the selective filter allows monitoring of a ring laser's wavelength on the main bus waveguide. Based on a determined wavelength, the control circuit may change a ring laser wavelength to a desired wavelength to achieve a desired wavelength spacing for each of the ring lasers. The PIC may be integrated as a coarse wave-length division multiplexing (CWDM) transmit module.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Circular Corrugated Miter Bend and Gap Losses for Broadband Frequency Applications

Circular corrugated waveguides are often used in fusion applications at single, multiple, or broadband millimeter frequencies due to their low ohmic loss, expected large frequency bandwidth, and direct coupling to free-space Gaussian modes. For single-frequency corrugated waveguide systems, transmission line components can be optimized to the desired frequency. For broadband or multiple-frequency applications, this is not possible. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that the frequency bandwidth of circular corrugated waveguides can be compromised by diffraction losses to miter bends and gaps. It is shown that if the corrugation depth differs significantly from λ /4, a theory can substantially underpredict the gap and miter bend losses. The simulations are also shown to compare favorably to experimental measurements. To improve the transmission line performance in large frequency bandwidth systems, such as 33–165 GHz reflectometry, reducing the number of miter bends may, therefore, be necessary. For the improvement of performance in narrower frequency bandwidth or multiple-frequency systems, especially high-powered systems, wavelength-dependent techniques may be applicable. Furthermore, one such application is shown for a Bragg reflection technique to reduce the thermal load to insulating ceramic rings in a dc break component for multiple-frequency ITER electron cyclotron heating transmission lines.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Investigation of resonant mode sensitivity in PhC based ring resonators

Quality factor and refractive index sensitivity are significant parameters in designing optical devices based on ring resonators such as filters, demultiplexers, switches in which the ring resonator is considered as an elementary componant. In this paper, we propose a photonic crystal ring resonator with super-ellipse shaped core. The proposed ring resonator placed between two parallels waveguides (bus waveguide and drop waveguide). The transmission efficiency of the proposed ring resonator at λ = 1547.3 nm is about 95% with bandwidth and quality factor values equal to 0.7 nm and 2210, respectively. Simulation results show that the resonance sensitivity upon refractive index variation of coupling, outer layer, adjacent and scattering rods are Δλ/Δn = 0.2 nm/0.01, Δλ/Δn = 0.225 nm/0.01, Δλ/Δn = 0.125 nm/0.01 and Δλ/Δn = 0.05 nm/0.01, respectively. The finite different time domain and plane wave expansion methods are used to calculate the outputs spectrum and band gap, respectively.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Dual nature of localization in guiding systems with randomly corrugated boundaries: Anderson-type versus entropic

A unified theory for the conductance of an infinitely long multimode quantum wire whose finite segment has randomly rough lateral boundaries is developed. It enables one to rigorously take account of all feasible mechanisms of wave scattering, both related to boundary roughness and to contacts between the wire rough section and the perfect leads within the same technical frameworks. The rough part of the conducting wire is shown to act as a mode-specific randomly modulated effective potential barrier whose height is governed essentially by the asperity slope. The mean height of the barrier, which is proportional to the average slope squared, specifies the number of conducting channels. Under relatively small asperity amplitude this number can take on arbitrary small, up to zero, values if the asperities are sufficiently sharp. The consecutive channel cut-off that arises when the asperity sharpness increases can be regarded as a kind of localization, which is not related to the disorder per se but rather is of entropic or (equivalently) geometric origin. The fluctuating part of the effective barrier results in two fundamentally different types of guided wave scattering, viz., inter- and intramode scattering. The intermode scattering is shown to be for the most part very strong except in the cases of (a) extremely smooth asperities, (b) excessively small length of the corrugated segment, and (c) the asperities sharp enough for only one conducting channel to remain in the wire. Under strong intermode scattering, a new set of conducting channels develops in the corrugated waveguide, which have the form of asymptotically decoupled extended modes subject to individual solely intramode random potentials. In view of this fact, two transport regimes only are realizable in randomly corrugated multimode waveguides, specifically, the ballistic and the localized regime, the latter characteristic of one-dimensional random systems. Two kinds of localization are thus shown to coexist in waveguide-like systems with randomly corrugated boundaries, specifically, the entropic localization and the one-dimensional Anderson (disorder-driven) localization. If the particular mode propagates across the rough segment ballistically, the Fabry–Pérot-type oscillations should be observed in the conductance, which are suppressed for the mode transferred in the Anderson-localized regime.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Spin waves in YIG based magnonic networks: Design and technological aspects

Microwaveguides for spin waves based on yttrium iron garnet films and cross-like structures built on such waveguides are experimentally studied. Additionally, effects of the waveguides geometry, location of the microantennas for excitation and detection of the spin waves, and geometry of the waveguides junctions on the spin wave excitation and propagation efficiency are discussed.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Optical control of the emission direction of a quantum dot

Using the helicity of a non-resonant excitation laser, control over the emission direction of an InAs/GaAs quantum dot is demonstrated. The quantum dot is located off-center in a crossed-waveguide structure, such that photons of opposite circular polarization are emitted into opposite waveguide directions. By preferentially exciting spin-polarized excitons, the direction of emission can therefore be controlled. The directional control is quantified by using the ratio of the intensity of the light coupled into the two waveguides, which reaches a maximum of ±35%.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Surface-plasmons lasing in double-graphene-layer structures

We consider the concept of injection terahertz lasers based on double-graphene-layer (double-GL) structures with metal surface-plasmon waveguide and study the conditions of their operation. The laser under consideration exploits the resonant radiative transitions between GLs. This enables the double-GL laser room temperature operation and the possibility of voltage tuning of the emission spectrum. We compare the characteristics of the double-GL lasers with the metal surface-plasmon waveguides with those of such laser with the metal-metal waveguides.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Generation, transmission, and detection of terahertz photons on an electrically driven single chip

We demonstrate single photon counting of terahertz (THz) waves transmitted from a local THz point source through a coplanar two-wire waveguide on a GaAs/AlGaAs single heterostructure crystal. In the electrically driven all-in-one chip, quantum Hall edge transport is used to achieve a noiseless injection current for a monochromatic point source of THz fields. The local THz fields are coupled to a coplanar two-wire metal waveguide and transmitted over a macroscopic scale greater than the wavelength (38 μm in GaAs). THz waves propagating on the waveguide are counted as individual photons by a quantum-dot single-electron transistor on the same chip. Photon counting on integrated high-frequency circuits will open the possibilities for on-chip quantum optical experiments.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Leaky guided waves in generic bars: Numerical prediction and experimental validation by means of ultrasonic underwater testing

Guided Ultrasonic Waves (GUWs) are used in several industrial and civil applications for the non-destructive tests and inspection of mechanical waveguides immersed in fluids. As well known, the impedance mismatch at the fluid-structure interface causes the bulk waves traveling inside the waveguide to be partially refracted in the surrounding fluid. The leakage of bulk waves involves continuous energy radiation along the propagation direction, resulting in high attenuation rates and, consequently, reduced inspection ranges. In this work, the dispersion behaviour of leaky guided waves that propagate in immersed waveguides of general cross-section is investigated. To this end, a Semi-Analytical Finite Element (SAFE) method coupled with a 2.5D Boundary Element method (BEM) is used to extract the wave dispersion equation. The proposed formulation avoids the well known limitations of analytical methods in treating complex geometries as well as those of Finite Element-based methods in representing propagation processes in unbounded domains. Numerical and experimental results are presented, in which the dispersion curves are extracted for different bars of arbitrary shape immersed in water. The results obtained in this paper can be useful for the design of testing conditions in practical applications and to tune experimental set up.

42 ENGINEERING↗

On-chip generation and guiding of quantum light from a site-controlled quantum dot

We demonstrate the emission and routing of single photons along a semiconductor chip originating from carrier recombination in an actively positioned InAs quantum dot. Device–scale arrays of quantum dots are formed by a two–step regrowth process. We precisely locate the propagating region of a unidirectional photonic crystal waveguide with respect to the quantum dot nucleation site. Under pulsed optical excitation, the multiphoton emission probability from the waveguide's exit is 12% ± 5% before any background correction. Our results are a major step towards the deterministic integration of a quantum emitter with the waveguiding components of photonic quantum circuits.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

The role of group index engineering in series-connected photonic crystal microcavities for high density sensor microarrays

We experimentally demonstrate an efficient and robust method for series connection of photonic crystal microcavities that are coupled to photonic crystal waveguides in the slow light transmission regime. We demonstrate that group index taper engineering provides excellent optical impedance matching between the input and output strip waveguides and the photonic crystal waveguide, a nearly flat transmission over the entire guided mode spectrum and clear multi-resonance peaks corresponding to individual microcavities that are connected in series. Series connected photonic crystal microcavities are further multiplexed in parallel using cascaded multimode interference power splitters to generate a high density silicon nanophotonic microarray comprising 64 photonic crystal microcavity sensors, all of which are interrogated simultaneously at the same instant of time.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Polarization-insensitive optical gain characteristics of highly stacked InAs/GaAs quantum dots

The polarized optical gain characteristics of highly stacked InAs/GaAs quantum dots (QDs) with a thin spacer layer fabricated on an n{sup +}-GaAs (001) substrate were studied in the sub-threshold gain region. Using a 4.0-nm-thick spacer layer, we realized an electronically coupled QD superlattice structure along the stacking direction, which enabled the enhancement of the optical gain of the [001] transverse-magnetic (TM) polarization component. We systematically studied the polarized electroluminescence properties of laser devices containing 30 and 40 stacked InAs/GaAs QDs. The net modal gain was analyzed using the Hakki-Paoli method. Owing to the in-plane shape anisotropy of QDs, the polarization sensitivity of the gain depends on the waveguide direction. The gain showing polarization isotropy between the TM and transverse-electric polarization components is high for the [110] waveguide structure, which occurs for higher amounts of stacked QDs. Conversely, the isotropy of the [−110] waveguide is easily achieved even if the stacking is relatively low, although the gain is small.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗