Low-noise supercontinuum generation in chiral all-normal dispersion photonic crystal fibers
Markus Lippl,
Michael H. Frosz,
Nicolas Y. Joly
Optics Letters
48
(20)
5297-5300
(2023)
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We present the advantages of supercontinuum generation in chiral, therefore circularly birefringent, all-normal dispersion fibers. Due to the absence of nonlinear power transfer between the polarization eigenstates of the fiber, chiral all-normal dispersion fibers do not exhibit any polarization instabilities and thus are an ideal platform for a low-noise supercontinuum generation. By pumping a chiral all-normal dispersion fiber at 802 nm, we obtained an octave-spanning, robustly circularly polarized supercontinuum with a low noise.
Hollow-Core Fiber for Single-Mode, Low Loss Transmission of Broadband UV Light
D. Dorer,
M. H. Frosz,
S. Haze,
M. Deiß,
W. Schoch,
J. Hecker Denschlag
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics
30
(6)
4300106
(2023)
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We report on an anti-resonant hollow-core fiber (AR-HCF) designed for stable transmission of laser light in a broad wavelength range of 250 nm to 450 nm. We tested for wavelengths of 300 nm and 320 nm. The characterized fiber shows a low transmission power attenuation of 0.13 dB/m and an excellent single-mode profile. The fiber maintains stable transmission after an exposure of tens of hours with up to 60 mW CW-laser light and shows no indication of solarization effects. We further tested its performance under bending and observed a small critical bending radius of about 6 cm. These characteristics make the presented fiber a useful tool for many applications, especially in quantum optics labs where it may be instrumental to improve on stability and compactness.
Low-Volume Reaction Monitoring of Carbon Dot Light Absorbers in Optofluidic Microreactors
Takashi Lawson,
Alexander S. Gentleman ,
Ava Lage,
Carla Casadevall,
Jie Xiao,
Tristan Petit,
Michael Frosz,
Erwin Reisner,
Tijmen G. Euser
Optical monitoring and screening of photocatalytic batch reactions using cuvettes ex situ is time-consuming, requires substantial amounts of samples, and does not allow the analysis of species with low extinction coefficients. Hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PCFs) provide an innovative approach for in situ reaction detection using ultraviolet–visible absorption spectroscopy, with the potential for high-throughput automation using extremely low sample volumes with high sensitivity for monitoring of the analyte. HC-PCFs use interference effects to guide light at the center of a microfluidic channel and use this to enhance detection sensitivity. They open the possibility of comprehensively studying photocatalysts to extract structure–activity relationships, which is unfeasible with similar reaction volume, time, and sensitivity in cuvettes. Here, we demonstrate the use of HC-PCF microreactors for the screening of the electron transfer properties of carbon dots (CDs), a nanometer-sized material that is emerging as a homogeneous light absorber in photocatalysis. The CD-driven photoreduction reaction of viologens (XV2+) to the corresponding radical monocation XV•+ is monitored in situ as a model reaction, using a sample volume of 1 μL per measurement and with a detectability of <1 μM. A range of different reaction conditions have been systematically studied, including different types of CDs (i.e., amorphous, graphitic, and graphitic nitrogen-doped CDs), surface chemistry, viologens, and electron donors. Furthermore, the excitation irradiance was varied to study its effect on the photoreduction rate. The findings are correlated with the electron transfer properties of CDs based on their electronic structure characterized by soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Optofluidic microreactors with real-time optical detection provide unique insight into the reaction dynamics of photocatalytic systems and could form the basis of future automated catalyst screening platforms, where samples are only available on small scales or at a high cost.
Protecting Quantum Modes in Optical Fibers
Muhammad Abdullah Butt,
Paul Roth,
Gordon Wong,
Michael Frosz,
Luis Sanchez-Soto,
E. A. Anashkina,
A. V. Andrianov,
Peter Banzer,
Philip Russell, et al.
Physical Review Applied
19
054080
(2023)
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Polarization-preserving fibers maintain the two polarization states of an orthogonal basis. Quantum communication, however, requires sending at least two nonorthogonal states and these cannot both be preserved. We present an alternative scheme that allows for using polarization encoding in a fiber not only in the discrete, but also in the continuous-variable regime. For the example of a helically twisted photonic crystal fiber, we experimentally demonstrate that using appropriate nonorthogonal modes, the polarization-preserving fiber does not fully scramble these modes over the full Poincaré sphere, but that the output polarization will stay on a great circle; that is, within a one-dimensional protected subspace, which can be parametrized by a single variable. This allows for more efficient measurements of quantum excitations in nonorthogonal modes.
Modulational instability and spectral broadening of vortex modes in chiral photonic crystal fibers
Paul Roth,
Philip Russell,
Michael Frosz,
Yang Chen,
Gordon Wong
Journal of Lightwave Technology
41
(7)
2061-2069
(2023)
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We report on intra- and inter-modal four-wave-mixing (FWM) in N-fold rotationally symmetric (C_N) single- and multi-core chiral photonic crystal fiber (PCF), created by spinning the preform during fiber drawing. The non-circular modal field is forced to rotate as it propagates along the fiber, resulting in circular birefringence and robust maintenance of circular polarization state. Multi-core chiral C_N PCF supports vortex-carrying helical Bloch modes (HBMs) in which the degeneracy between clockwise and counter-clockwise vortices is lifted. This makes possible new kinds of intermodal polarization modulational instability (PMI). We develop PMI theory for vortex HBMs, and illustrate the results by a series of experiments in which two or more PMI sidebands with different vorticities and polarization states are selectively generated by adjusting the polarization state and topological charge of the pump light. In every case both the topological charge and the spin of the pump light are conserved. We also report generation of a broadband supercontinuum in a single circularly polarized vortex mode.
In situ Detection of Cobaloxime Intermediates During Photocatalysis Using Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fiber Microreactors
Takashi Lawson,
Alexander S. Gentleman,
Jonathan Pinnell,
Annika Eisenschmidt,
Daniel Antón-García,
Michael Frosz,
Erwin Reisner,
Tijmen G. Euser
Angewandte Chemie, International Edition in English
62
(9)
e202214788
(2023)
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Hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PCFs) provide a novel approach for in situ UV/Vis spectroscopy with enhanced detection sensitivity. Here, we demonstrate that longer optical path lengths than afforded by conventional cuvette-based UV/Vis spectroscopy can be used to detect and identify the CoI and CoII states in hydrogen-evolving cobaloxime catalysts, with spectral identification aided by comparison with DFT-simulated spectra. Our findings show that there are two types of signals observed for these molecular catalysts; a transient signal and a steady-state signal, with the former being assigned to the CoI state and the latter being assigned to the CoII state. These observations lend support to a unimolecular pathway, rather than a bimolecular pathway, for hydrogen evolution. This study highlights the utility of fiber-based microreactors for understanding these and a much wider range of homogeneous photocatalytic systems in the future.
Selective phase filtering of charged beams with laser-driven antiresonant hollow-core fibers
Luca Genovese,
Max Kellermeier,
Frank Mayet,
Klaus Floettmann,
Gordon Wong,
Michael Frosz,
Ralph Assmann,
Philip Russell,
Francois Lemery
Physical Review Research
5
(1)
013096
(2023)
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Emerging accelerator concepts increasingly rely on the combination of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation with electron beams, enabling longitudinal phase space manipulation which supports a variety of advanced applications. The handshake between electron beams and radiation is conventionally provided by magnetic undulators which unfortunately require a balance between the electron beam energy, undulator parameters, and laser wavelength. Here we propose a scheme using laser-driven large-core antiresonant optical fibers to manipulate electron beams. We explore two general cases using TM01 and HE11 modes. In the former, we show that large energy modulations O(100 keV). can be achieved while maintaining the overall electron beam quality. Further, we show that by using larger field strengths O(100 MV/m) the resulting transverse forces can be exploited with beam-matching conditions to filter arbitrary phases from the modulated electron bunch, leading to the production of ≈100 attosecond FWHM microbunches. Finally, we also investigate the application of the transverse dipole HE11 mode and find it suitable for supporting time-resolved electron beam measurements with sub-attosecond resolution. We expect the findings to be widely appealing to high-charge pump-probe experiments, metrology, and accelerator science.
Optical Vortex Brillouin Laser
Xinglin Zeng,
Philip Russell,
Yang Chen,
Zheqi Wang,
Gordon Wong,
Paul Roth,
Michael Frosz,
Birgit Stiller
Optical vortices, which have been extensively studied over the last decades, offer an additional degree of freedom useful in many applications, such as optical tweezers and quantum control. Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), providing a narrow linewidth and a strong nonlinear response, has been used to realize quasi-continuous wave lasers. Here, stable oscillation of optical vortices and acoustic modes in a Brillouin laser based on chiral photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is reported, which robustly supports helical Bloch modes (HBMs) that carry circularly polarized optical vortex and display circular birefringence. A narrow-linewidth Brillouin fiber laser that stably emits 1st- and 2nd-order vortex-carrying HBMs is implemented. Angular momentum conservation selection rules dictate that pump and backward Brillouin signals have opposite topological charge and spin. Additionally, it is shown that when the chiral PCF is placed within a laser ring cavity, the linewidth-narrowing associated with lasing permits the peak of the Brillouin gain that corresponds to acoustic mode to be measured with resolution of 10 kHz and accuracy of 520 kHz. The results pave the way to a new generation of vortex-carrying SBS systems with applications in optical tweezers, quantum information processing, and vortex-carrying nonreciprocal systems.
Contact
TDSU Fibre Fabrication & Glass Studio Michael Frosz
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light Staudtstr. 2 91058 Erlangen, Germany
