Demonstration of a vectorial optical field generator with adaptive close loop control

Author(s):

Jian Chen and Lingjiang Kong and Qiwen Zhan

Abstract:

“We experimentally demonstrate a vectorial optical field generator (VOF-Gen) with an adaptive close loop control. The close loop control capability is illustrated with the calibration of polarization modulation of the system. To calibrate the polarization ratio modulation, we generate 45° linearly polarized beam and make it propagate through a linear analyzer whose transmission axis is orthogonal to the incident beam. For the retardation calibration, circularly polarized beam is employed and a circular polarization analyzer with the opposite chirality is placed in front of the CCD as the detector. In both cases, the close loop control automatically changes the value of the corresponding calibration parameters in the pre-set ranges to generate the phase patterns applied to the spatial light modulators and records the intensity distribution of the output beam by the CCD camera. The optimized calibration parameters are determined corresponding to the minimum total intensity in each case. Several typical kinds of vectorial optical beams are created with and without the obtained calibration parameters, and the full Stokes parameter measurements are carried out to quantitatively analyze the polarization distribution of the generated beams. The comparisons among these results clearly show that the obtained calibration parameters could remarkably improve the accuracy of the polarization modulation of the VOF-Gen, especially for generating elliptically polarized beam with large ellipticity, indicating the significance of the presented close loop in enhancing the performance of the VOF-Gen.”

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Publication: Review of Scientific Instruments
Issue/Year: Review of SCientific Instruments 88, 125111 (2017)
DOI: 10.1063/1.4999656

Tunable third harmonic generation of vortex beams in an optical superlattice

Author(s):

Yu Wu and Rui Ni and Zhou Xu and Yaodong Wu and Xinyuan Fang and Dan Wei and Xiaopeng Hu and Yong Zhang and Min Xiao and Shining Zhu

Abstract:

“We report generation of tunable vortex beams in the blue spectral range, with a 3.3 nm spectral tuning range, by frequency tripling of the near-infrared (IR) wave at around 1.34 um in a LiTaO3 optical superlattice. The nonlinear crystal used in this work has a chirped dual-periodical structure which can provide two expanded reciprocal vectors for tunable performance of the cascaded third harmonic generation (THG). The maximum THG efficiency reaches about 1.4%.”

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Publication: Optics Express
Issue/Year: Optics Express, Vol. 25, Issue 25, pp. 30820- 30826 (2017)
DOI: 10.1364/OE.25.030820

Single shot, three-dimensional fluorescence microscopy with a spatially rotating point spread function

Author(s):

Zhaojun Wang and Yanan Cai and Yansheng Liang and Xing Zhou and Shaohui Yan and Dan Dan and Piero R. Bianco and Ming Lei and Baoli Yao

Abstract:

“A wide-field fluorescence microscope with a double-helix point spread function (PSF) is constructed to obtain the specimen’s three-dimensional distribution with a single snapshot. Spiral-phase-based computer-generated holograms (CGHs) are adopted to make the depth-of-field of the microscope adjustable. The impact of system aberrations on the double-helix PSF at high numerical aperture is analyzed to reveal the necessity of the aberration correction. A modified cepstrum-based reconstruction scheme is promoted in accordance with properties of the new double-helix PSF. The extended depth-of-field images and the corresponding depth maps for both a simulated sample and a tilted section slice of bovine pulmonary artery endothelial (BPAE) cells are recovered, respectively, verifying that the depth-of-field is properly extended and the depth of the specimen can be estimated at a precision of 23.4nm. This three-dimensional fluorescence microscope with a framerate-rank time resolution is suitable for studying the fast developing process of thin and sparsely distributed micron-scale cells in extended depth-of-field.”

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Publication: Biomedical Optics Express
Issue/Year: Biomedical Optics Express, Vol. 8, Issue 12, (2017)
DOI: 10.1364/BOE.8.005493

Fast label-free microscopy technique for 3D dynamic quantitative imaging of living cells

Author(s):

José A. Rodrigo, Juan M. Soto, and Tatiana Alieva

Abstract:

“The refractive index (RI) is an important optical characteristic that is often exploited in label-free microscopy for analysis of biological objects. A technique for 3D RI reconstruction of living cells has to be fast enough to capture the cell dynamics and preferably needs to be compatible with standard wide-field microscopes. To solve this challenging problem, we present a technique that provides fast measurement and processing of data required for real-time 3D visualization of the object RI. Specifically, the 3D RI is reconstructed from the measurement of bright-field intensity images, axially scanned by a high-speed focus tunable lens mounted in front of a sCMOS camera, by using a direct deconvolution approach designed for partially coherent light microscopy in the non-paraxial regime. Both the measurement system and the partially coherent illumination, that provides optical sectioning and speckle-noise suppression, enable compatibility with wide-field microscopes resulting in a competitive and affordable alternative to the current holographic laser microscopes. Our experimental demonstrations show video-rate 3D RI visualization of living bacteria both freely swimming and optically manipulated by using freestyle laser traps allowing for their trapping and transport along 3D trajectories. These results prove that is possible to conduct simultaneous 4D label-free quantitative imaging and optical manipulation of living cells, which is promising for the study of the cell biophysics and biology.”

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Publication: Optics Express
Issue/Year: Optics Express Volume 8, Issue 12
DOI: 10.1364/BOE.8.005507

Deep tissue optical focusing and optogenetic modulation with time-reversed ultrasonically encoded light.

Author(s):

Ruan, Haowen; Brake, Joshua; Robinson, J. Elliott; Liu, Yan; Jang, Mooseok; Xiao, Cheng; Zhou, Chunyi; Gradinaru, Viviana & Yang, Changhuei

Abstract:

“Noninvasive light focusing deep inside living biological tissue has long been a goal in biomedical optics. However, the optical scattering of biological tissue prevents conventional optical systems from tightly focusing visible light beyond several hundred micrometers. The recently developed wavefront shaping technique time-reversed ultrasonically encoded (TRUE) focusing enables noninvasive light delivery to targeted locations beyond the optical diffusion limit. However, until now, TRUE focusing has only been demonstrated inside nonliving tissue samples. We present the first example of TRUE focusing in 2-mm-thick living brain tissue and demonstrate its application for optogenetic modulation of neural activity in 800-μm-thick acute mouse brain slices at a wavelength of 532 nm. We found that TRUE focusing enabled precise control of neuron firing and increased the spatial resolution of neuronal excitation fourfold when compared to conventional lens focusing. This work is an important step in the application of TRUE focusing for practical biomedical uses.”

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Publication: Science Advances
Issue/Year: Science Advances, Volume 3; Number 12; Pages 5520; 2017
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aao5520

Tailoring arbitrary hybrid Poincaré beams through a single hologram

Author(s):

Shiyao Fu and Yanwang Zhai and Tonglu Wang and Ci Yin and Chunqing Gao

Abstract:

“Hybrid Poincaré beams (HPBs) are a kind of structure field with anisotropic polarizations. Here, we demonstrate an approach to tailor HPBs with arbitrary states, through encoding a single hologram on a liquid-crystal display device along with a stable optical system. The state of the obtained HPB is determined only by the encoded holograms with special design, which means it is not necessary to adjust any optical elements or hardware when generating various HPB states. Moreover, perfect HPBs can also be generated through the proposed scheme. In the experiment, the obtained HPBs are analyzed through a polarizer and a special parameter S3/S0, showing good agreement with prediction. This work opens an insight in encoding single holograms for tailoring arbitrary HPBs and inspires various applications.”

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Publication: Applied Physics Letters
Issue/Year: Applied Physics Letters Volume 111, Issue 21
DOI: 10.1063/1.5008954

Binary phase masks for easy system alignment and basic aberration sensing with spatial light modulators in STED microscopy

Author(s):

Klauss, André and Conrad, Florian and Hille, Carsten Hille

Abstract:

“The use of binary phase patterns to improve the integration and optimization of spatial light modulators (SLM) in an imaging system, especially a confocal microscope, is proposed and demonstrated. The phase masks were designed to create point spread functions (PSF), which exhibit specific sensitivity to major disturbances in the optical system. This allows direct evaluation of misalignment and fundamental aberration modes by simple visual inspection of the focal intensity distribution or by monitoring the central intensity of the PSF. The use of proposed phase masks is investigated in mathematical modelling and experiment for the use in a stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscope applying wavefront shaping by a SLM. We demonstrate the applicability of these phase masks for modal wavefront sensing of low order aberration modes up to the third order of Zernike polynomials, utilizing the point detector of a confocal microscope in a ‘guide star’ approach. A lateral resolution of ~25 nm is shown in STED imaging of the confocal microscope retrofitted with a SLM and a STED laser and binary phase mask based system optimization.”

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Publication: Scientific Reports
Issue/Year: Scientific Reports Volume 7, Article number: 15699 (2017)
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-15967-5

Near-eye light field holographic rendering with spherical waves for wide field of view interactive 3D computer graphics

Author(s):

Liang Shi and Fu-Chung Huang and Ward Lopes and Wojciech Matusik and David Luebke

Abstract:

“Holograms display a 3D image in high resolution and allow viewers to focus freely as if looking through a virtual window, yet computer generated holography (CGH) hasn’t delivered the same visual quality under plane wave illumination and due to heavy computational cost. Light field displays have been popular due to their capability to provide continuous focus cues. However, light field displays must trade off between spatial and angular resolution, and do not model diffraction.

We present a light field-based CGH rendering pipeline allowing for reproduction of high-definition 3D scenes with continuous depth and support of intra-pupil view-dependent occlusion. Our rendering accurately accounts for diffraction and supports various types of reference illuminations for hologram. We avoid under- and over-sampling and geometric clipping effects seen in previous work. We also demonstrate an implementation of light field rendering plus the Fresnel diffraction integral based CGH calculation which is orders of magnitude faster than the state of the art [Zhang et al. 2015], achieving interactive volumetric 3D graphics.

To verify our computational results, we build a see-through, near-eye, color CGH display prototype which enables co-modulation of both amplitude and phase. We show that our rendering accurately models the spherical illumination introduced by the eye piece and produces the desired 3D imagery at the designated depth. We also analyze aliasing, theoretical resolution limits, depth of field, and other design trade-offs for near-eye CGH.”

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Publication: {ACM} Transactions on Graphics
Issue/Year: ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 36, No. 6, Article 236. (November 2017)
DOI: 10.1145/3130800.3130832

Single-shot measurement of the orbital-angular-momentum spectrum of light.

Author(s):

Kulkarni, Girish and Sahu, Rishabh and Magaña-Loaiza, Omar S. and Boyd, Robert W. and Jha, Anand K.

Abstract:

“The existing methods for measuring the orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) spectrum suffer from issues such as poor efficiency, strict interferometric stability requirements, and too much loss. Furthermore, most techniques inevitably discard part of the field and measure only a post-selected portion of the true spectrum. Here, we propose and demonstrate an interferometric technique for measuring the true OAM spectrum of optical fields in a single-shot manner. Our technique directly encodes the OAM-spectrum information in the azimuthal intensity profile of the output interferogram. In the absence of noise, the spectrum can be fully decoded using a single acquisition of the output interferogram, and, in the presence of noise, acquisition of two suitable interferograms is sufficient for the purpose. As an important application of our technique, we demonstrate measurements of the angular Schmidt spectrum of the entangled photons produced by parametric down-conversion and report a broad spectrum with the angular Schmidt number 82.1.”

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Publication: Nature Communications
Issue/Year: Nature Communications volume 8, Article number: 1054 (2017)
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01215-x

Propagation dynamics of partially coherent crescent-like optical beams in free space and turbulent atmosphere

Author(s):

F. Wang and J. Li and G. Martinez-Piedra and O. Korotkova
Abstract:

“We introduce theoretically and realize experimentally a class of random, wide-sense stationary optical beams with uniform correlations which, on propagation in free space, produce a crescent-like intensity distribution with the maximum at an off-axis position. The crescent’s position of maximum intensity accelerates transversally at intermediate distances, and then exhibits a constant lateral shift further from the axis in the far zone of the source. We also show that on propagation in the isotropic turbulent atmosphere, the crescent beam shifts away from the axis as well, but slower than in free space, with rate depending on the strength of turbulence. These results are of importance for optical systems operating through long-range turbulent channels in which a beam must have a range-dependent tilt, e.g. on travelling around an obstacle.”

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Publication: Optics Express
Issue/Year: Optics Express Volume 25, Issue 21
DOI: 10.1364/OE.25.026055
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