We report a high-energy picosecond optical parametric generator/amplifier (OPG/A) based on a MgO:PPLN crystal pumped by a fiber master-oscillator-power-amplifier (MOPA) employing direct amplification. An OPG tuning range of 1450-3615 nm is demonstrated with pulse energies as high as 2.6 μJ (signal) and 1.2 μJ (idler). When seeded with a ~100 MHz linewidth diode laser, damage-limited pulse energ...

The development, the underlying technology and the current status of the fully diode-pumped solid-state laser system POLARIS is reviewed. Currently, the POLARIS system delivers 4 J energy, 144 fs long laser pulses with an ultra-high temporal contrast of 5×1012 for the ASE, which is achieved using a so-called double chirped-pulse amplification scheme and cross-polarized wave generation pulse cle...

Nanocarbon-derived electron emission devices, specifically nanodiamond lateral field emission (FE) diodes and gated carbon nanotube (CNT) triodes, are new configurations for robust nanoelectronic devices. These novel micro/nanostructures provide an alternative and efficient means of accomplishing electronics that are impervious to temperature and radiation. For example, nitrogen-incorporated na...

Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) noise mitigation from a pre-amp Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) to the Photon Detector (PD) in optical receivers can be reduced by minimizing the EDFA ASE noise at the optical receiver level to achieve optimal optical receiver transmission performance. The photon detector used in optical receivers is either a PIN diode or an avalanche photo diode (APD). ...

As optical communication systems continue to advance in speed and complexity, the demand grows for high-speed devices to perform wavelength conversion, multiplexing, and switching operations. Semiconductor diode laser amplifiers exhibit large and ultrafast optical nonlinearities that make them promising candidates as the basic building blocks for such all-optical devices. The primary goal of th...

The signal arrives from the antenna, and is amplified by one or more stages of RF amplification (and sometimes bandpass filterig), and is then presented to the 1 mixer where the signal is converted to a fixed intermediate frequency by the mixing action between the incoming signal frequency and the frequency produced by the Variable Frequency Oscillator. The result is a fixed intermediate freque...

We present an experimental demonstration of a practical nondeterministic quantum optical amplification scheme that employs two mature technologies, state comparison and photon subtraction, to achieve amplification of known sets of coherent states with high fidelity. The amplifier uses coherent states as a resource rather than single photons, which allows for a relatively simple light source, su...

A tunable two-frequemcy high-power diode laser system at 850 nm for terahertz (Thz)wave generation by photomixing in lowtemperature-grown GaAs photo-conductors has been developed. The difference frequency is obtained through a three laser system, where two lasers are locked to different orders of a Fabry-Perot cavity and a third is offset-locked to the first, The difference-frequency signal is ...

Recently, several groups have reported spin-dependent thermoelectric effects in magnetic tunnel junctions. In this paper, we present a setup for time-resolved measurements of thermovoltages and thermocurrents of a single micro- to nanometer-scaled tunnel junction. An electrically modulated diode laser is used to create a temperature gradient across the tunnel junction layer stack. This laser mo...

Tunable narrowband mid-infrared radiation from 3.25 to 4.4 micrometers is generated by a compact fiber-coupled, difference-frequency-based spectroscopic source. A 20-mW external cavity diode laser (with a tuning range from 814 to 870 nm) and a 50-mW distributed-Bragg-reflector diode-laser-seeded ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier operating at 1083 nm are difference-frequency mixed in a multi-grati...