FAST ELECTRONIC DRIVER FOR OPTICAL SWITCHES Electronically controlled optical switches are critical components in many optical systems, including pulsed lasers. Solid-state optical switches based upon the Pockels effect are widely utilized in research and industry, however Pockels cells require electronic drivers capable of switching several kilovolts quickly and cleanly. This thesis reviews Po...

A new approach to perform measurement of potentials in high voltage levels using electrooptical Pockels sensors is presented here. This paper describes an application of the White Light Interferometry technique to a high voltage optical fiber measurement system. In this system the information is encoded in the spectrum of the light, allowing the measurement to be independent of the optical powe...

Several types of electro-optic devices require electrodes that are both optically transparent and electrically conductive. Examples of such devices useful for inertial fusion lasers are given in Table 43.1. Some devices, such as the longitudinal Pockels cell, require application of a transparent electrode to a thermally sensitive substrate of potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP). The applied co...

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...

Here we report the demonstration of a GHz-speed Lithium Niobate (LiNbO3) modulator that uses an amorphous Silicon waveguide to strongly confine light. The compact (o1 mm) modulator is realized by low-temperature deposition of hydrogenated amorphous Silicon (a-Si:H) onto a x-cut LiNbO3 substrate. The a-Si:H provides tight waveguide mode confinement while allowing strong evanescent coupling to th...

The propagation of Dyakonov surface waves (DSWs) at the planar interface between an isotropic material and a linear electro-optic birefringent material can be dynamically controlled using the Pockels effect. The range of directions for DSW propagation has been previously found to be rather narrow. By careful choice of various parameters, this range of directions can be increased by more than an...

We present a theory of low-frequency Raman scattering in glasses, based on the concept that light couples to the elastic strains via spatially fluctuating elasto-optic (Pockels) constants. We show that the Raman intensity is not proportional to the vibrational density of states (as was widely believed), but to a convolution of Pockels constant correlation functions with the dynamic strain susce...

The Pockels effect can increase the effective birefringence of ambichiral, electro–optic rejection filters made of materials with a 4̄2m point group symmetry, when a dc electric field is applied parallel to the axis of nonhomogeneity. The reflectances and the transmittances of such an ambichiral structure for obliquely incident plane waves is solvable through a boundary–value problem that is for...

Surface waves can propagate on the planar interface of a linear electro-optic (EO) material and an isotropic dielectric material, for restricted ranges of the orientation angles of the EO material and the refractive index of the isotropic material. These ranges can be controlled by the application of a dc electric field, and depend on both the magnitude and the direction of the dc field. Thus, ...