The Beamlet is a single-beam prototype of future multibeam megajoule-class Nd:glass laser drivers for inertial confinement fusion. It uses a multipass main amplifier, adaptive optics, and efficient, high-fluence frequency conversion to the third harmonic. The Beamlet amplifier contains Brewster-angle glass slabs with a clear aperture of 39 cm x 39 cm and a full-aperture plasma-electrode Pockels...

The design, alignment, calibration, and field deployment of a solid-state lightning detector is described. The primary sensing component of the detector is a potassium dihydrogen phosphate electro-optic crystal that is attached in series to a flat-plate aluminum antenna; the antenna is exposed to the ambient thundercloud electric field. A semiconductor laser diode (lambda = 685 nm), polarizing ...

Brillouin spectroscopy has been used to characterize shear acoustic phonons in materials. However, conventional instruments had slow acquisition times over 10 min per 1 mW of input optical power, and they required two objective lenses to form a 90° scattering geometry necessary for polarization coupling by shear phonons. Here, we demonstrate a confocal Brillouin microscope capable of detecting ...

Multiple-layer perovskite Pb0.91La0.09Zr0.65Ti0.35O3/SrTiO3 (PLZT/STO) heterostructures have been grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on (001) MgO/GaAs substrates. The perovskite layers are single phase with 35nm RMS roughness on the top surface. Electrically induced birefringence in the PLZT layers, resulted in both optical phase and optical amplitude modulation. The application of an elect...

A method of measuring molecular diffusion rates in microscopic sample volumes is described. This method utilizes the standing wave interference created by colliding two counterpropagating laser beams at the focus of two opposing microscope objectives, creating a periodic light distribution in a volume on the order of 1 fl. By using a Pockels cell to vary the laser intensity with a time resoluti...

Microresonator-based soliton generation promises chip-scale integration of optical frequency combs for applications spanning from time keeping to synthesis. Access the repetition rate is a prerequisite those applications. While miniaturized cavities harness Kerr nonlinearity and enable terahertz rates, such high rates are not amenable direct electronic detection. Here, we demonstrate hybrid ele...

Microresonators on a photonic chip could enhance nonlinear optics effects and thus are promising for realizing scalable high-efficiency frequency conversion devices. However, fulfilling phase matching conditions among multiple wavelengths remains significant challenge. Here, we present feasible scheme degenerate sum-frequency that only requires the two-mode condition. When drive signal both nea...

Many applications of metasurfaces require an ability to dynamically change their properties in the time domain. Electrical tuning techniques are particular interest, since they pave a way on-chip integration with optoelectronic devices. In this work, we propose and experimentally demonstrate electro-optic lithium niobate (EO-LN) metasurface that shows dynamic modulations phase retardation trans...

Optical modulation by varying the intensity, wavelength, or switching time can dynamically alter the performance parameters of direct optically controlled power semiconductor device. Understanding the effect of optical parameters on these parameters from a first principle approach is necessary for making optimal design choices and gaining design insights. We focus on performance parameters whos...