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At least 253 records · Page 14
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2000

Implementation of Nonlinear Control Laws for an Optical Delay Line

This paper discusses the implementation of a globally stable nonlinear controller algorithm for the Real-Time Interferometer Control System Testbed (RICST) brassboard optical delay line (ODL) developed for the Interferometry Technology Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The control methodology essentially employs loop shaping to implement linear control laws. while utilizing nonlinear elements as means of ameliorating the effects of actuator saturation in its coarse, main, and vernier stages. The linear controllers were implemented as high-order digital filters and were designed using Bode integral techniques to determine the loop shape. The nonlinear techniques encompass the areas of exact linearization, anti-windup control, nonlinear rate limiting and modal control. Details of the design procedure are given as well as data from the actual mechanism.

Hench, John J.↗
NASA NTRS1997

Enhanced Pulse Compression in Nonlinear Fiber by a WDM Optical Pulse

A new way to compress an optical pulse in a single-mode fiber is presented in this paper. By the use of the cross phase modulation (CPM) effect caused by the nonlinearity of the optical fiber, a shepherd pulse propagating on a different wavelength beam in a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) single-mode fiber system can be used to enhance the pulse compression of a co-propagating primary pulse.

pulse compression↗
NASA NTRS1988

Real-time optical image processing techniques

Nonlinear real-time optical processing on spatial pulse frequency modulation has been pursued through the analysis, design, and fabrication of pulse frequency modulated halftone screens and the modification of micro-channel spatial light modulators (MSLMs). Micro-channel spatial light modulators are modified via the Fabry-Perot method to achieve the high gamma operation required for non-linear operation. Real-time nonlinear processing was performed using the halftone screen and MSLM. The experiments showed the effectiveness of the thresholding and also showed the needs of higher SBP for image processing. The Hughes LCLV has been characterized and found to yield high gamma (about 1.7) when operated in low frequency and low bias mode. Cascading of two LCLVs should also provide enough gamma for nonlinear processing. In this case, the SBP of the LCLV is sufficient but the uniformity of the LCLV needs improvement. These include image correlation, computer generation of holograms, pseudo-color image encoding for image enhancement, and associative-retrieval in neural processing. The discovery of the only known optical method for dynamic range compression of an input image in real-time by using GaAs photorefractive crystals is reported. Finally, a new architecture for non-linear multiple sensory, neural processing has been suggested.

Liu, Hua-Kuang↗
NASA NTRS2006

Microwave Oscillators Based on Nonlinear WGM Resonators

Optical oscillators that exploit resonantly enhanced four-wave mixing in nonlinear whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) resonators are under investigation for potential utility as low-power, ultra-miniature sources of stable, spectrally pure microwave signals. There are numerous potential uses for such oscillators in radar systems, communication systems, and scientific instrumentation. The resonator in an oscillator of this type is made of a crystalline material that exhibits cubic Kerr nonlinearity, which supports the four-photon parametric process also known as four-wave mixing. The oscillator can be characterized as all-optical in the sense that the entire process of generation of the microwave signal takes place within the WGM resonator. The resonantly enhanced four-wave mixing yields coherent, phase-modulated optical signals at frequencies governed by the resonator structure. The frequency of the phase-modulation signal, which is in the microwave range, equals the difference between the frequencies of the optical signals; hence, this frequency is also governed by the resonator structure. Hence, further, the microwave signal is stable and can be used as a reference signal. The figure schematically depicts the apparatus used in a proof-of-principle experiment. Linearly polarized pump light was generated by an yttrium aluminum garnet laser at a wavelength of 1.32 microns. By use of a 90:10 fiber-optic splitter and optical fibers, some of the laser light was sent into a delay line and some was transmitted to one face of glass coupling prism, that, in turn, coupled the laser light into a crystalline CaF2 WGM disk resonator that had a resonance quality factor (Q) of 6x10(exp 9). The output light of the resonator was collected via another face of the coupling prism and a single-mode optical fiber, which transmitted the light to a 50:50 fiber-optic splitter. One output of this splitter was sent to a slow photodiode to obtain a DC signal for locking the laser to a particular resonator mode. The other output of this splitter was combined with the delayed laser signal in another 50:50 fiber-optic splitter used as a combiner. The output.of the combiner was fed to a fast photodiode that demodulated light and generated microwave signal. In this optical configuration, the resonator was incorporated into one arm of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which was necessary for the following reasons: It was found that when the output of the resonator was sent directly to a fast photodiode, the output of the photodiode did not include a measurable microwave signal. However, when the resonator was placed in an arm of the interferometer and the delay in the other arm was set at the correct value, the microwave signal appeared. Such behavior is distinctly characteristic of phase-modulated light. The phase-modulation signal had a frequency of about 8 GHz, corresponding to the free spectral range of the resonator. The spectral width of this microwave signal was less than 200 Hz. The threshold pump power for generating the microwave signal was about 1 mW. It would be possible to reduce the threshold power by several orders of magnitude if resonators could be made from crystalline materials in dimensions comparable to those of micro-resonators heretofore made from fused silica.

Maleki, Lute↗
NASA NTRS1993

FD-TD modeling of 2-D dielectric waveguides for propagation and scattering of femtosecond optical solitons

Experimentalists have produced all-optical switches capable of 100-fs responses. To adequately model such switches, nonlinear effects in optical materials (both instantaneous and dispersive) must be included. In principle, the behavior of electromagnetic fields in nonlinear dielectrics can be determined by solving Maxwell's equations subject to the assumption that the electric polarization has a nonlinear relation to the electric field. However, until our previous work, the resulting nonlinear Maxwell's equations have not been solved directly. Rather, approximations have been made that result in a class of generalized nonlinear Schrodinger equations (GNLSE) that solve only for the envelope of the optical pulses. In this paper, we present first-time calculations from the vector nonlinear Maxwell's equations of femtosecond soliton propagation and scattering, including carrier waves, in two-dimensional systems of dielectric waveguides exhibiting the Kerr and Raman quantum effects. We use the finite-difference time-domain (FD-TD) method in an extension of our 1-D work. There, in a fundamental innovation, we treated the linear and nonlinear convolutions for the electric polarization as new dependent variables. By differentiating these convolutions in the time domain, we derived an equivalent system of coupled, nonlinear second-order ODE's. These equations together with Maxwell's equations form the system that is solved to determine the electromagnetic fields in inhomogeneous nonlinear dispersive media. Backstorage in time is limited to only that needed by the time-integration algorithm for the ODE's, rather than that needed to store the time-history of the kernel functions of the convolutions (1000-10,000 time steps). Thus, a 2-D nonlinear optics model from Maxwell's equations is now feasible.

Joseph, Rose↗
NASA NTRS2005

High-Order Tunable Filters Based on a Chain of Coupled Crystalline Whispering Gallery-Mode Resonators

We demonstrate experimentally a tunable third-order optical filter fabricated from the three voltage-controlled lithium niobate whispering gallery-mode resonators. The filter operates at 1550 nm with 30-MHz bandwidth and can be electrooptically tuned by 12 GHz in the linear regime with approximately 80-MHz/V tuning rate. With this filter, we have demonstrated 6-dB fiber-to-fiber insertion loss and 30-ns tuning speed, limited by the resonator buildup time.

optical resonators↗
NASA NTRS2004

Tunable Optical True-Time Delay Devices Would Exploit EIT

Tunable optical true-time delay devices that would exploit electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) have been proposed. Relative to prior true-time delay devices (for example, devices based on ferroelectric and ferromagnetic materials) and electronically controlled phase shifters, the proposed devices would offer much greater bandwidths. In a typical envisioned application, an optical pulse would be modulated with an ultra-wideband radio-frequency (RF) signal that would convey the information that one seeks to communicate, and it would be required to couple differently delayed replicas of the RF signal to the radiating elements of a phased-array antenna. One or more of the proposed devices would be used to impose the delays and/or generate the delayed replicas of the RF-modulated optical pulse. The beam radiated or received by the antenna would be steered by use of a microprocessor-based control system that would adjust operational parameters of the devices to tune the delays to the required values. EIT is a nonlinear quantum optical interference effect that enables the propagation of light through an initially opaque medium. A suitable medium must have, among other properties, three quantum states (see Figure 1): an excited state (state 3), an upper ground state (state 2), and a lower ground state (state 1). These three states must form a closed system that exhibits no decays to other states in the presence of either or both of two laser beams: (1) a probe beam having the wavelength corresponding to the photon energy equal to the energy difference between states 3 and 1; and (2) a coupling beam having the wavelength corresponding to the photon energy equal to the energy difference between states 3 and 2. The probe beam is the one that is pulsed and modulated with an RF signal.

Kulikov, Igor↗
NASA NTRS1984

Nonlinear self-contraction of electron waves

Laboratory evidence is presented of modulationally unstable electron wave packets which can be described by a nonlinear geometrical optics theory. Growth times for self-contraction are found to be much faster than ion response times and the bursts do not appear to be related to Zakharov Langmuir-wave collapse.

Intrator, T.↗
NASA NTRS1990

A software system for laser design and analysis

A laser-material database and laser-modeling software system for designing lasers for laser-based Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) systems are presented. The software system consists of three basic sections: the database, laser models, and interface software. The database contains the physical parameters of laser, optical, and nonlinear materials required by laser models. The models include efficiency calculations, electrooptical component models, resonator, amplifier, and oscillator models, and miscellaneous models. The interface software provides a user-friendly interface between the user and his personal data files, the database, and models. The structure of the software system is essentially in place, while future plans call for upgrading the computer hardware and software in order to support a multiuser multitask environment.

Cross, P. L.↗
NASA NTRS1994

On the theory of quantum measurement

Many so called paradoxes of quantum mechanics are clarified when the measurement equipment is treated as a quantized system. Every measurement involves nonlinear processes. Self consistent formulations of nonlinear quantum optics are relatively simple. Hence optical measurements, such as the quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement of photon number, are particularly well suited for such a treatment. It shows that the so called 'collapse of the wave function' is not needed for the interpretation of the measurement process. Coherence of the density matrix of the signal is progressively reduced with increasing accuracy of the photon number determination. If the QND measurement is incorporated into the double slit experiment, the contrast ratio of the fringes is found to decrease with increasing information on the photon number in one of the two paths.

Haus, Hermann A.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Second Annual Research Center for Optical Physics (RCOP) Forum

The Research Center for Optical Physics (RCOP) held its Second Annual Forum on September 23-24, 1994. The forum consisted of two days of technical sessions with invited talks, submitted talks, and a student poster session. Participants in the technical sessions included students and researchers from CCNY/CUNY, Fisk University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Hampton University, University of Maryland, the Univeristy of Michigan, NASA Langley Research Center, North Caroline A and T University, Steven's Institute of Technology, and NAWC-Warminster. Topics included chaotic lasers, pumped optical filters, nonlinear responses in polythiophene and thiophene based thin films, crystal growth and spectroscopy, laser-induced photochromic centers, raman scattering in phorphyrin, superradiance, doped fluoride crystals, luminescence of terbium in silicate glass, and radiative and nonradiative transitions in rare-earth ions.

Allario, Frank↗
NASA NTRS1993

An Investigation of the Interrelationships Between Linear and NonLinear Polarizabilities and Bond Length Alternation on Connugated Organic Molecules

A computational method was devised to explore the relationship between charge separation, geometry, molecular dipole moment, polarizability, and hyperpolarizabilities in comjugated organic molecules. It is shown that bond length alternation (the average difference in length between single and double bonds in the molecule) is a key structurally observable parameter that can be correlated with hyperpolarizabilities and is thus relevant to the optimizaton of molecules and materials.

nonlinear optics computation electric field cyanin↗
NASA NTRS2010

Optical Sidebands Multiplier

Optical sidebands have been generated with relative frequency tens to hundreds of GHz by using optical sidebands that are generated in a cascade process in high-quality optical resonators with Kerr nonlinearity, such as whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonators. For this purpose, the WGM resonator needs to be optically pumped at two frequencies matching its resonances. These two optical components can be one or several free spectral ranges (FSRs), equal to approximately 12 GHz, in this example, apart from each other, and can be easily derived from a monochromatic pump with an ordinary EOM (electro-optic modulation) operating at half the FSR frequency. With sufficient nonlinearity, an optical cascade process will convert the two pump frequencies into a comb-like structure extending many FSRs around the carrier frequency. This has a demonstratively efficient frequency conversion of this type with only a few milliwatt optical pump power. The concept of using Kerr nonlinearity in a resonator for non-degenerate wave mixing has been discussed before, but it was a common belief that this was a weak process requiring very high peak powers to be observable. It was not thought possible for this approach to compete with electro-optical modulators in CW applications, especially those at lower optical powers. By using the high-Q WGM resonators, the effective Kerr nonlinearity can be made so high that, using even weak seeding bands available from a conventional EOM, one can effectively multiply the optical sidebands, extending them into an otherwise inaccessible frequency range.

Strekalov, Dmitry V.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Nonlinear effects of a modal domain optical fiber sensor in a vibration suppression control loop for a flexible structure

Recently, a modal domain optical fiber sensor has been demonstrated as a sensor in a control system for vibration suppression of a flexible cantilevered beam. This sensor responds to strain through a mechanical attachment to the structure. Because this sensor is of the interferometric type, the output of the sensor has a sinusoidal nonlinearity. For small levels of strain, the sensor can be operated in its linear region. For large levels of strain, the detection electronics can be configured to count fringes. In both of these configurations, the sensor nonlinearity imposes some restrictions on the performance of the control system. In this paper we investigate the effects of these sensor nonlinearities on the control system, and identify the region of linear operation in terms of the optical fiber sensor parameters.

Lindner, D. K.↗
NASA NTRS1985

KNbO3 single crystal growth by the radio frequency heating Czochralski method

A radio frequency heating Czochralski technique to obtain single crystal KNbO3 is first presented. The technological parameters of KNbO3 crystal growth by the Czochralski technique and its pulling conditions were studied in detail. The experiments on second harmonic generation using 1.06 micrometer Nd:YAG laser in KNbO3 have been conducted. The second harmonic efficiency for upconversion of KNbO3 is found to be as high as that of NaBa2Nb5O15. An automatic scanning measurement for the optical homogeneity of KNbO crystal is also described. KNbO3 is revealed to be a potentially useful nonlinear material for optical device applications.

Wang, W.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Method for Implementing Optical Phase Adjustment

A method has been developed to mechanically implement the optical phase shift by adjusting the polarization of the pump and probe beams in an NMOR (nonlinear magneto-optical rotation) magnetometer as the proper phase shift is necessary to induce self-oscillation. This innovation consists of mounting the pump beam on a ring that surrounds the atomic vapor sample. The propagation of the probe beam is perpendicular to that of the pump beam. The probe beam can be considered as defining the axis of a cylinder, while the pump beam is directed radially. The magnetic field to be measured defines a third vector, but it is also taken to lie along the cylinder axis. Both the pump and probe beams are polarized such that their electric field vectors are substantially perpendicular to the magnet field. By rotation of the ring supporting the pump beam, its direction can be varied relative to the plane defined by the probe electric field and the magnetic field to be measured.

Hovde, David C.↗