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Information Acquisition, Processing, and Display

  • Spotlight Summary by Paul Steinvurzel

    • Raman probes based on optically-poled double-clad fiber and coupler
    • “You really ought to get more fiber” is an increasingly common refrain told to doctors by many biomedical imaging research groups. Whereas fibers are still often considered primarily as pipes for light, many of the...
    • Opt. Express 20(27) 28563-28572 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Roarke Horstmeyer

    • Multispectral integral imaging acquisition and processing using a monochrome camera and a liquid crystal tunable filter
    • 3D-camera technology’s rise in popularity over the past several years suggests that both consumers and researchers alike desire something beyond just “conventional” photographs. Recent commercially successful 3D cameras...
    • Opt. Express 20(23) 25960-25969 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Jeffery J. Puschell

    • Dynamic range and sensitivity requirements of satellite ocean color sensors: learning from the past
    • Routine measurements of sunlight reflected from the ocean have been made continuously from space since 1997 by a variety of US, European, Indian, Chinese and South Korean instruments. These imaging spectroradiometers in...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(25) 6045-6062 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Emishaw Iffa and Wolfgang Heidrich

    • Laser-absorption tomography beam arrangement optimization using resolution matrices
    • In the last few decades. optical diagnostics tools have become the most commonly used techniques for measuring concentration distribution of gas species The facts that they have high spatial and temporal resolution,...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(29) 7059-7068 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David M. Paganin

    • Understanding the twin-image problem in phase retrieval
    • Time and again I find myself returning my mind’s eye to a small number of archetypal experiments in optics, examining them afresh from a (hopefully!) ever deeper perspective.

      The Young’s double-slit...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(11) 2367-2375 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Development of a scalable image formation pipeline for multiscale gigapixel photography
    • Capturing digital images with gigapixel resolution is of great interest in a variety of applications from astronomy to landscape photography, photomicrography, computer graphics and potentially many others. Typically, a...
    • Opt. Express 20(20) 22048-22062 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Prof. Zhi-shen Liu

    • Remote sensing of seawater and drifting ice in Svalbard fjords by compact Raman lidar
    • This article reports on a new compact ocean lidar developed by researchers at the Russian Academy of Science’s Wave Research Center at the Prokhorov General Physics Institute, the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, and...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(22) 5477-5485 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Lorenzo Scalise

    • Measurement of wide frequency range structural microvibrations with a pocket digital camera and sub-pixel techniques
    • Non-destructive testing in large civil structures often requires the measurement of low-frequency sub-millimetric displacements. Few are the cases in which this can be achieved by the use of contact sensors, which...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(14) 2664-2671 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Edge enhancement of color images using a digital micromirror device
    • In image processing, edge detection is used for segmentation, classification and identification of objects. Edges are discontinuities in image brightness and represent variations associated with changes in illumination,...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(16) 3439-3444 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brynmor Davis

    • Face recognition performance with superresolution
    • Automated facial recognition from imagery is a valuable tool, particularly in law enforcement where it allows screening against criminal databases in situations where that may not otherwise be possible. Due to the...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(18) 4250-4259 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Edward Fry

    • Measurement of light absorption by aquatic particles: improvement of the quantitative filter technique by use of an integrating sphere approach
    • Traditionally, one measures the optical absorption in a medium by measuring the transmission of a beam of light through it. Unfortunately, this does not work well if there are particulates suspended in the medium, e.g....
    • Appl. Opt. 51(9) 1336-1351 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David M. Paganin

    • Experimental compressive phase space tomography
    • Compressive sensing—the foundations of which are associated with names such as Candès, Romberg, Tao and Donoho—is sweeping through many areas at the forefront of optics research. The basic idea is that with an...
    • Opt. Express 20(8) 8296-8308 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brynmor Davis

    • Using phase diversity for the measurement of the complete spatiotemporal electric field of ultrashort laser pulses
    • Ultrafast laser sources offer extremely brief bursts of energy and correspondingly high peak optical powers. For example, commercially available sources can exceed a megawatt of peak power and produce pulses of...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(2) 244-248 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shalin Mehta

    • Super deep 3D images from a 3D omnifocus video camera
    • If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a stereoscopic scene seems like worth a million words. Ability to communicate a 3D scene as the observer perceives it can have fundamental impact on human communication....
    • Appl. Opt. 51(6) 763-770 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Kedar Khare

    • Tracking of multiple objects in unknown background using Bayesian estimation in 3D space
    • Automated tracking of objects in an image scenery is an important practical problem for remote sensing, surveillance, security imaging, robotic vision and related areas. While it may seem straightforward to track an...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(9) 1935-1940 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • High-speed scattering medium characterization with application to focusing light through turbid media
    • Seeing through scattering media is a fundamental problem in optics. Scattering in inhomogeneous media are of particular interest in many areas such as acoustics, radiofrequency communications and microscopy. In optics,...
    • Opt. Express 20(2) 1733-1740 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

Light–Matter Interactions

  • Spotlight Summary by Ilya Shadrivov

    • High temperature epsilon-near-zero and epsilon-near-pole metamaterial emitters for thermophotovoltaics
    • Solar panels are becoming more and more widespread, and they can be seen in different backgrounds, from individual houses to space stations, providing electricity on the scales of solar power plants to portable...
    • Opt. Express 21(S1) A96-A110 (2013) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Richard Bowman

    • Orbital angular momentum generation and mode transformation with high efficiency using forked polarization gratings
    • The trouble with diffraction gratings is that you get more than you ask for---light is sent into several diffraction orders, meaning that the input light is split between several spots. Gratings that have a single...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(34) 8236-8245 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Kirankumar Hiremath

    • Analysis of bistable memory in silica toroid microcavity
    • Microcavity-assisted optical resonators are one of the important building blocks for all-optical signal processing. These microresonators have been explored for a variety of applications like filters, modulators,...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(12) 3335-3343 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • High-finesse cavity external optical feedback DFB laser with hertz relative linewidth
    • Precise optical experiments, like the measurement of variations in the Earth’s gravity field, employ lasers with highly stabilized emission frequency, or, in other words, extremely narrow linewidth. To develop the...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(22) 4729-4731 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by John Ballato

    • Silica exposed-core microstructured optical fibers
    • Having made a wide variety of specialty optical fibers for more than 20 years now, I never cease to be amazed by the possibilities of microstructured (and photonic crystal) fibers. Without question, optical fibers have...
    • Opt. Mater. Express 2(11) 1538-1547 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Periklis Petropoulos

    • Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in tapered chalcogenide fiber for producing octave-spanning frequency comb around 3 μm
    • The mid-infrared region of the spectrum, that is, the wavelengths covering the range between 2 and 20um, offers important benefits in many areas of science and technology, including chemical and biological sensing (e.g....
    • Opt. Express 20(22) 24218-24225 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brad Deutsch

    • Broadband mid-infrared frequency upconversion and spectroscopy with an aperiodically poled LiNbO3 waveguide
    • What makes tomatoes look red or green? When sunlight, composed of all of the visible colors, hits carotenoids in a ripe tomato, the red light is picked out and scattered toward our eyes. By contrast, chlorophyll in...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(20) 4332-4334 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Silvia Vignolini

    • Disordered packings of core-shell particles with angle-independent structural colors
    • The brightest colours in nature are obtained in nature by nanostructuring materials on length scales of the order of the light wavelength. Self-assembly techniques that lead the production of such materials allow...
    • Opt. Mater. Express 2(10) 1343-1352 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Ossi Kimmelma

    • Blue-pumped whispering gallery optical parametric oscillator
    • For many quantum information applications, quantum optics or spectroscopy, the ideal light source has narrow linewidth, tunable wavelength and it is at the same time stable and small. These requirements are met by the...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(20) 4224-4226 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Jesper Lægsgaard

    • New approach to pulse propagation in nonlinear dispersive optical media
    • Nonlinear optical propagation in waveguides is a rich and flourishing research field due to the simultaneous development of ever more powerful short-pulse lasers on the one hand, and novel waveguide types, such as...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(10) 2958-2963 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Giovanni Cirmi

    • Generation of 30 fs pulses tunable from 189 to 240 nm with an all-solid-state setup
    • Ultrashort pulses in the femtosecond and attosecond regimes are able to catch the dynamics of electrons, atoms and molecules. Such pulses make it possible to take “movies” of these particles via spectroscopic...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(10) 2765-2769 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Alan Heins

    • Tailoring a 67 attosecond pulse through advantageous phase-mismatch
    • A strobe light can “freeze” mechanical motion, provided the object being strobed moves very little during the duration of the light flash. Conventional electronics can produce picosecond (1 ps = 10-12 s)...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(18) 3891-3893 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Alan Bristow

    • Ultrafast field-resolved semiconductor spectroscopy utilizing quantum interference control of currents
    • The flow of ideas sometimes takes a circuitous route. Photocurrents, for example are ubiquitous in optoelectronic devices, but often this subject is more to do with the electrons than the photons. The group of Markus...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(18) 3879-3881 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Matthew Evans

    • Multicolor cavity metrology
    • The direct detection of gravitational waves with kilometer-scale laser interferometers has become a monumental effort involving many hundreds of researchers worldwide. When Einstein first predicted the existence of...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(10) 2092-2103 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • Design of ultrahigh brightness solar-pumped disk laser
    • As mentioned in the article of D. Liang and J. Almeida published in the Applied Optics, the idea of direct converting the broad-band non-coherent solar radiation into coherent and narrow-band laser radiation is almost...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(26) 6382-6388 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Taek Yong Hwang

    • Pulse synthesis in the single-cycle regime from independent mode-locked lasers using attosecond-precision feedback
    • In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle limits the minimum uncertainty of the measurements of energy and time. This fundamental principle demands that a pulse’s temporal width times its frequency...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(17) 3579-3581 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Liang Pan

    • Integrated head design using a nanobeak antenna for thermally assisted magnetic recording
    • With the goal of overcoming the superparamagnetic limit in magnetic data storage, many researchers have focused on the long-known approach of recording data on hard magnetic media with the assistance of laser heating to...
    • Opt. Express 20(17) 18946-18954 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Xuan Yang and Claire Gu

    • Surface enhanced Raman scattering in the presence of multilayer dielectric structures
    • Since its discovery in 1974, surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has become a promising spectroscopic technology for molecular identification due to its high sensitivity and molecular specificity, with applications...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(8) 1863-1874 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Periklis Petropoulos

    • Dispersion-dominated nonlinear fiber-optic channel
    • The face of optical communications has changed drastically in the last few years. New – seemingly contradictory – challenges have emerged, relating to the imminent capacity crunch looming upon optical networks on one...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(14) 2931-2933 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • Unified theoretical model for calculating laser-induced wavefront distortion in optical materials
    • One of the great advantages of laser sources is the high quality of their output beams, which are close to diffraction-limited Gaussian beams. A high beam quality can be important in a wide range of applications, e.g....
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(7) 1772-1777 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David M. Paganin

    • Generalized laws of refraction that can lead to wave-optically forbidden light-ray fields
    • I still fondly remember the first time I learned of the connection between Snell’s law of refraction, and Fermat’s principle of least time. From that day forth, I looked at Snell’s law in a new and more general light,...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(7) 1407-1411 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David Hostutler

    • Gain and lasing of optically pumped metastable rare gas atoms
    • An area of active research in lasers is to identify new schemes that leverage the advantages of both gas and solid state concepts. The goal of these hybrid laser systems is to efficiently produce high output power light...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(11) 2157-2159 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brad Deutsch

    • Electron acceleration driven by ultrashort and nonparaxial radially polarized laser pulses
    • Undergraduate physics students are very good at solving about five problems in electromagnetics. Why so few? After all, everything in classical optics and electronics can be solved exactly using Maxwell’s equations. The...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(13) 2442-2444 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shalin Mehta

    • Polarization-resolved four-wave mixing microscopy for structural imaging in thick tissues
    • Probing the structure of tissues with light presents the microscopist with contradictory requirements of imaging deeper, with good signal to noise ratio, and with structural specificity. Many cellular and extra-cellular...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(6) 1541-1550 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Cesar Jauregui, Jens Limpert, and Andreas Tuennermann

    • Origin of thermal modal instabilities in large mode area fiber amplifiers
    • Over the last decade, fiber laser systems have gained the reputation of being a power-scalable concept with power-independent, nearly-diffraction-limited beam quality. This reputation is grounded on the unparalleled...
    • Opt. Express 20(10) 11407-11422 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Willie Padilla

    • THz near-field Faraday imaging in hybrid metamaterials
    • The electronic and magnetic structure of materials can be studied through characterization of the interaction of electromagnetic waves and matter. Although the spatial resolution of such investigations is fundamentally...
    • Opt. Express 20(10) 11277-11287 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Aaron E. Leanhardt

    • Hyperfine Paschen–Back regime realized in Rb nanocell
    • Atomic spectroscopy is a sensitive probe of the interactions amongst the constituents of an atom as well as between the atom and its environment. Historically, this has lead to numerous fundamental discoveries as well...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(8) 1379-1381 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Zhipei Sun and Andrea C. Ferrari

    • Observation of white-light amplified spontaneous emission from carbon nanodots under laser excitation
    • Light sources have an indispensable role in everyday life. From the first lamp using animal fat around 70,000 BC, to modern light sources, these have been widely used and developed for diverse applications going much...
    • Opt. Mater. Express 2(4) 490-495 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Ilya Shadrivov

    • Low-loss plasmonic metamaterial based on epitaxial gold monocrystal film
    • Modern physics establishes links between many areas of research and pushes technological limits. Metamaterials and plasmonics are amongst such multidisciplinary branches of physics, as they require the best material...
    • Opt. Express 20(9) 9545-9550 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Chih-Hao Li and Ronald Walsworth

    • Demonstration of on-sky calibration of astronomical spectra using a 25 GHz near-IR laser frequency comb
    • The mode-locked laser frequency comb (LFC) provides a broad spectrum of regularly-spaced emission lines, which can be stabilized by an atomic clock and serve as a coherent link between the optical and radio-frequency...
    • Opt. Express 20(6) 6631-6643 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Cross-phase modulation imaging
    • The nonlinearity of the index of refraction is responsible for various effects in optical beam propagation, such as self-phase modulation (spatial and temporal), self-focusing, self-dispersion and self-steepening. These...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(5) 800-802 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey Kuzmin

    • Continuous-wave interband cascade lasers operating above room temperature at λ = 4.7-5.6 μm
    • The development of new laser sources that operate in the mid- and longwave-infrared wavelength range between 3.5 and 25 µm, also known as the molecular fingerprint region, is a task of great importance due to wide...
    • Opt. Express 20(3) 3235-3240 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by S. Mark Ammons

    • Piston and tilt cophasing of segmented laser array using Shack-Hartmann sensor
    • High-power, high-radiance lasers are becoming increasingly important for a multitude of applications. Yet it is difficult to scale up the power of a single laser beam due to operational problems like the avoidance of...
    • Opt. Express 20(4) 4663-4674 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Goery Genty

    • Supercontinuum generation in ZBLAN fibers—detailed comparison between measurement and simulation
    • With the advent of photonic crystal fibers and availability of suitable pump sources producing high energy pulses in the visible and near-IR, supercontinuum (SC) generation has been extensively studied in the last...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(4) 635-645 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

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