Polarization dependent loss (PDL) has been recognized as a critical issue because various inline optical components may have nonnegligible PDL effect that interacts with polarization mode dispersion (PMD). We investigated the impact of PMD-PDL interaction on degree of polarization (DOP), which is the most commonly used feedback signal in PMD compensation. The simulation results of a 40-Gb/s NRZ code optical transmission system show that the maximum PMD increases from approximately 40 ps to more than 45 ps, while minimum DOP declines from approximately 0.6 to approximately 0.2. The interaction of PMD and PDL also induces residual PMD underestimation of 5-8 ps, which causes degradation of PMD compensation performance.

A non-return-to-zero (NRZ) to pseudo-return-to-zero (PRZ) converter consisting of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) is proposed, by which the enhancement of clock frequency component and clock-to-data suppression ratio of the NRZ data are evidently achieved. All-optical clock recovery from NRZ data at 10 Gb/s is successfully demonstrated with the proposed NRZ-to-PRZ converter and a mode-locked SOA fiber laser. Furthermore, NRZ-to-RZ format conversion of 10 Gb/s is realized by using the recovered clock as the control light of terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexer (TOAD), which further proves that the proposed clock recovery scheme is applicable.

The shape and microstructure of the fiber-optic liquid-level sensor head, which was made of two fusion-spliced multimode optical fibers, were experimentally studied by using scanning electron microscope (SEM) technology in order to optimize the performance characteristic of the fiber sensor head. The parabolic profile of the sensor head was found to be better and having length-width ratio from 1.2:1 to 1.3:1. Some other useful possibilities were proposed.

A novel dual-slab laser with an off-axis one-sided stable-unstable resonator which can compensate for thermal distortion to some extent by flipping the optical beam is described in this paper. The output power, efficiency, and near-field and far-field intensity distributions of the dual-slab laser have been studied. The results indicate that the novel dual-slab laser has better performance than the normal dual-slab laser with the same off-axis one-sided stable-unstable resonator.

A new kind of resonator for doubly resonant continuous-wave (CW) intracavity sum-frequency mixing (SFM) is presented. A coherent radiation of 327 mW at 555 nm is generated by mixing 1342-nm Nd:YVO4 laser and 946-nm Nd:YAG laser. The M2 beam quality factor of the sum-frequency mixed yellow-green laser is less than 1.7. The low-noise characteristic of the yellow laser is demonitrated.

The layer structure of GaInP/AlGaInP quantum well laser diodes (LDs) was grown on GaAs substrate using low-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (LP-MOCVD) technique. In order to improve the catastrophic optical damage (COD) level of devices, a nonabsorbing window (NAW), which was based on Zn diffusion-induced quantum well intermixing, was fabricated near the both ends of the cavities. Zn diffusions were respectively carried out at 480, 500, 520, 540, and 580 Celsius degree for 20 minutes. The largest energy blue shift of 189.1 meV was observed in the window regions at 580 Celsius degree. When the blue shift was 24.7 meV at 480 Celsius degree, the COD power for the window LD was 86.7% higher than the conventional LD.

By adopting the gain-noise model of the single-mode laser in which with bias and periodical signals serve as inputs, combining with the effect of coloured pump noise, we use the linear approximation method to calculate the power spectrum and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the laser intensity under the condition of pump noise and quantum noise cross-related in the form of 'delta' function. It is found that with the change of pump noise correlation time, both SNR and the output power will occur stochastic resonance (SR). If the bias signal 'alpha' is very small, changing the intensities of pump noise and quantum noise respectively does not lead to the appearance of SR in the SNR; while 'alpha' increases to a certain number, SR appears.

The droplet transfer behavior and weld characteristics have been investigated under different pressures of shielding gas in CO2 laser and metal inert/active gas (laser-MIG) hybrid welding process. The experimental results indicate that the inherent droplet transfer frequency and stable welding range of conventional MIG arc are changed due to the interaction between CO2 laser beam and MIG arc in laser-MIG hybrid welding process, and the shielding gas pressure has a crucial effect on welding characteristics. When the pressure of shielding gas is low in comparison with MIG welding, the frequency of droplet transfer decreases, and the droplet transfer becomes unstable in laser-MIG hybrid welding. So the penetration depth decreases, which shows the characteristic of unstable hybrid welding. However, when the pressure of shielding gas increases to a critical value, the hybrid welding characteristic is changed from unstable hybrid welding to stable hybrid welding, and the frequency of droplet transfer and the penetration depth increase significantly.

Optically transparent Er3+-doped tellurite-based nanocrystallized glasses with the composition of 70TeO2-15Li2O-15Nb2O5-0.5Er2O3 (mol) have been prepared by a conventional melting quenching and the subsequent heat treatment processes. The sizes of grown nanocrystals in glass matrix appear to be 35-50 nm from the X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement. The microhardness measurement shows that the Vickers hardness values of the nanocrystallized tellurite glasses are larger (33%-62%) than those in the base glass. The Raman spectra imply that the maximum phonon energy of the based glass decreases and shifts from 668 to 638 /cm after heat-treatment. Visible upconversion luminescence and infrared luminescence of the base glass and heat-treated glasses under 980-nm laser diode (LD) excitation are investigated. The 524-, 546- and 656-nm upconversion intensities by 980-nm pumping increase significantly.

The thermal properties of 68TeO2-15BaF2-5SrF2-10LaF3-2KF glass were measured by different temperature analysis (DTA). Up-conversion luminescence of Er3+ ion in the obtained glass was investigated. Mechanism of up-conversion emission was discussed. The result shows that the obtained oxyfluoride tellurite glass 68TeO2-15BaF2-5SrF2-10LaF3-2KF has a good thermal stability ('Delta'T = 153.6 Celsius degree) and strong up-conversion green emissions around 527 nm and 549 nm and red emission at 660 nm. This glass can be a promising host material for up-conversion fiber lasers.

Upon massive generation of anisotropic grains of azo dye methyl orange in a gelatin film exposed to active polarized light, a cluster of micro crystals with optical axes of similar orientations has been produced. The anisotropy observed has been found to disappear under exposure to active natural light.

We report a new method for measuring particle size distribution (PSD) and refractive index of the top layer in a two-layer tissue phantom simulated epithelium tissue by varying the azimuth angle of incident linearly polarized light. The polarization gating technique is used to decouple the single and multiple scattering components in the returned signal. The theoretical model based on Mie theory is presented and a nonlinear inversion method -- floating genetic algorithm -- is applied to inverting the azimuth dependence of component of polarization light backscattered. The experiment results demonstrate that the size distribution and refractive index of the scatters of the top layer can be determined by measuring and analyzing the differential signal of the parallel and perpendicular components from a two-layer tissue phantom. The method implies to detect precancerous changes in human epithelial tissue.

High-order harmonic generation from one-dimensional (1D) multi-atom molecular ions in an ultra-short laser field is theoretically investigated. The dynamics of the electron in a linearly polarized intense laser field is analyzed in terms of 1D Schrodinger equation with the Crank-Nicolson algorithm. The dependence of high-order harmonics on the laser frequency and the inter-nuclear distance is discussed. It is found that the optimum range of inter-nuclear distance should be changed to get extended harmonic generation for different laser frequency, and the lower frequency laser pulse is favorable to higher order harmonic generation as the inter-nuclear distance increases.

A new sub-wavelength metallic film lens configuration is proposed, which is embedded in a thin ideal metal film, and its near field optical properties are investigated by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. It is found that the optical transmission is greatly enhanced, and the spot size can be reduced by the sub-wavelength metallic film lens in comparison with the bare aperture. This kind of lens is expected to have practical applications in the very small aperture laser (VSAL), a promising nanosource for near-field optical storage and lithography.

Nickel and chromium coatings were produced using plasma spraying and laser remelting on the copper sheet. The corrosion test was carried out in an acidic atmosphere, and the corrosive behaviors of both coatings and original copper samples were investigated by using an impedance comparison method. Experimental results show that nickel and chromium coatings display better corrosion resistance properties relative to the original pure copper sample. The corrosion rate of chromium coating is less than that of nickel coating, and corrosion resistances of laser remelted nickel and chromium samples are better than those of plasma sprayed samples. The corrosion deposit film of copper is loose compared with nickel and chromium.

In the process of the reconstruction of digital holography, the traditional methods of diffraction and filtration are commonly adopted to recover the original complex-wave signal. Influenced by twin-image and zero-order terms, the above-mentioned methods, however, either limit the field of vision or result in the loss of the amplitude and phase. A new method for complex-wave retrieval is presented, which is based on blind signal separation. Three frames of holograms are captured by a charge coupled device (CCD) camera to form an observation signal. The term containing only amplitude and phase of complex-wave is separated, by means of independent component analysis, from the observation signal, which effectively eliminates the zero-order term. Finally, the complex-wave retrieval of pure phase wavefront is achieved. Experimental results show that this method can better recover the amplitude and phase of the original complex-wave even when there is a frequency spectrum mixture in the hologram.

We report experimentally the transformation from the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) resonance to a dispersion-like signal and eventually to a nearly symmetric absorption resonance as coupling detuning increases in 'Lambda'-type three-level system in the cesium vapor cell with buffer gas at room temperature. The observed absorption resonance occupies some remarkable properties of the strong amplitude and the narrow linewidth in comparison with the case without buffer gas. The relation between linewidth of the enhanced absorption resonance and buffer gas pressure is studied. With pressure increasing, linewidth of the absorption resonance becomes narrow. The sub-natural linewidth is observed in Doppler-broadened cesium vapor cell in our experiment. The experimental results are in qualitative agreement with the numerical simulations.

The visibility in magnetostrictive fiber-optic interferometric sensors using a Gaussian laser beam is analyzed. It is shown that the conventional Gaussian laser beam has little influence on the visibility. The visibility depends strongly on the input state of polarization (SOP). We implement a cylindrical transducer and build a measurement setup with a polarization controller. The visibility dependent on the SOP of input light is measured. The estimated values are similar to the experiment results, which verifies the analysis.

A position sensor based on grating projection with spatial filtering and polarization modulation is presented. A grating is projected onto the object to be measured through a 4f optical system with a spatial filter. After reflected by the object, the grating projection is imaged on a detection grating through another 4f optical system to form moire fringes. The polarization modulated moire signal is detected to obtain the position information of the object. In the position sensor, the moire signal varies sinusoidally with the position of object. The measurement is independent of the incident intensity on the projection grating and the reflectivity of the object to be measured. In experiments, the effectiveness of the position sensor is proved, and the root mean square (RMS) error at each measurement position is less than 13 nm.