Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) have attracted a lot of interest because of their application potential in the field of optical communications. Their use has been envisaged in different applications in the access, core and metropolitan networks. Particularly, they have been envisioned for all-optical signal processing tasks at very high bit rates that cannot be handled by electronics, s...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to investigate the repeatability of retinal oximetry using slit-lamp adapted ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence tomography (SL-UHR-OCT). METHODS SL-UHR-OCT was developed and fringe patterns were obtained for a major retinal artery and a major retinal vein. A-scans at the central wavelengths of 805 nm and 855 nm were analyzed for calculating optical...

Plasmonics, which are based on the collective oscillation of electrons due to light excitation, involve strongly enhanced local electric fields and thus have potential applications in nonlinear optics, which requires extraordinary optical intensity. One of the most studied nonlinearities in plasmonics is nonlinear absorption, including saturation and reverse saturation behaviors. Although scatt...

Artists and astronomers noticed centuries ago that humans perceive dark features in an image differently from light ones; however, the neuronal mechanisms underlying these dark/light asymmetries remained unknown. Based on computational modeling of neuronal responses, we have previously proposed that such perceptual dark/light asymmetries originate from a luminance/response saturation within the...

The aim of this study was to use pulsed near infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy to determine the oxygen saturation (SO2) of a saline suspension of red blood cells in vitro. The photoacoustic measurements were made in a cuvette which formed part of a larger circuit through which the red blood cell suspension was circulated. Oxygen saturation of the red blood cell suspension was altered between ...

We present a setup capable of overcoming the saturation output power of semiconductor optical amplifiers operating in the pulsed regime. The concept is to couple different time delays to orthogonal polarization modes, amplify the pulses multiplexed in time, and use the polarization information to recombine them into a single high-power optical pulse. Making use of a single amplifier and two pol...

It is shown that current saturation in semiconducting carbon nanotubes is indistinguishable from metallic nanotubes if the carrier density is above a critical value determined by the bandgap and the optical phonon energy. This feature stems from the higher number of current-carrying states in the semiconducting tubes due to the van Hove singularity at the band edge. Above this critical carrier ...

High speed, high efficiency, low noise and high saturation power are the characteristics desired for detectors in high bit-rate long-haul optical communication systems. We present the modeling of Traveling-wave Amplification Photodetectors (TAP detectors). These novel monolithic devices combine optical gain and absorption in a distributed fashion along a traveling-wave structure, providing high...