Correlations between the performance characteristics of a liquid crystal laser and the macroscopic material properties.

In order to understand how the performance of a liquid-crystal laser depends on the physical properties of the low molar mass nematic host, we have studied the energy threshold and slope efficiency of ten optically pumped liquid-crystal lasers based on different hosts. Specifically, this leads to a variation in the birefringence, the orientational order parameter, and the order parameter of the transition dipole moment of the dye. It is found that low threshold energies and high slope efficiencies correlate with high order parameters and large birefringences. To a first approximation this can be understood by considering analytical expressions for the threshold and slope efficiency, which are derived from the space-independent rate equations for a two-level system, in terms of the macroscopic liquid crystal properties.

Distributed-feedback fiber laser sensor for simultaneous strain and temperature measurements operating in the radio-frequency domain.

Radio-frequency (rf) beat frequencies between two longitudinal modes and two polarization modes of a birefringent dual-longitudinal-mode moiré distributed-feedback fiber laser are employed to measure strain and temperature simultaneously. Operating entirely in the rf domain, this approach potentially allows one to employ low-cost and precise rf measuring techniques. A strain-temperature cross sensitivity of the strain- and the thermo-optic coefficients, which can be neglected in wavelength-based grating sensors, has been observed. The achieved sensor accuracy was +/-15 microepsilon and +/-0.2 degrees C.

Stability of an Er-Yb-doped fiber distributed-feedback laser with external reflections.

The maximum tolerable amplitude backreflection coefficient r(ext,c) into a fiber distributed-feedback laser before the onset of instability has been investigated. r(ext,c) was found to decrease with increasing external cavity lengths up to ~320 m and to be proportional to the relative linewidth of the relaxation oscillation resonance. The tolerable length of Rayleigh backscattering standard telecom fiber was found to be 135-200 m. An observed degradation in the laser stability and slope efficiency at low pump powers is believed to be due to UV-induced saturable absorbers.

Polarimetric distributed feedback fiber laser sensor for simultaneous strain and temperature measurements.

We report the application of a dual polarization distributed feedback (DFB) fiber laser as a strain and temperature sensor. By measurement of the absolute wavelength of one polarization as well as the polarization beat frequency, strain and temperature were determined simultaneously. The sensor has an accuracy of +3 microepsilon and +/-0.04 degrees C. Self-heating of the DFB fiber laser as a function of pump power was measured with this sensor.