Wavelength alteration measurement using the Moiré technique.

For convenient measurements in many applications, wavelength alterations should be translated to the change in intensity of the output light. In this Letter, a novel method based on monitoring the Moiré pattern using a simple dispersive planoconvex lens (chromatic aberration) for wavelength alteration measurement is reported. Due to the chromatic aberration of the lens, different wavelengths have different magnifications. This causes rotation in the Moiré pattern when the wavelength of the incident light is changed. It is shown that by measuring this rotation it is possible to measure the wavelength alterations. The experimental results obtained from four different laser sources with 450, 532, 630, and 632.8 nm wavelengths show total Moiré pattern rotation of about 31.5°, which shows good theory-experimental agreement. This method is simple and more reliable, and might find wide applications in spectrometry, optical sensors, and dispersion measurements.

High-Dimensional Single-Photon Quantum Gates: Concepts and Experiments.

Transformations on quantum states form a basic building block of every quantum information system. From photonic polarization to two-level atoms, complete sets of quantum gates for a variety of qubit systems are well known. For multilevel quantum systems beyond qubits, the situation is more challenging. The orbital angular momentum modes of photons comprise one such high-dimensional system for which generation and measurement techniques are well studied. However, arbitrary transformations for such quantum states are not known. Here we experimentally demonstrate a four-dimensional generalization of the Pauli X gate and all of its integer powers on single photons carrying orbital angular momentum. Together with the well-known Z gate, this forms the first complete set of high-dimensional quantum gates implemented experimentally. The concept of the X gate is based on independent access to quantum states with different parities and can thus be generalized to other photonic degrees of freedom and potentially also to other quantum systems.

Robust cladding light stripper for high-power fiber lasers using soft metals.

In this paper we present a novel method to reliably strip the unwanted cladding light in high-power fiber lasers. Soft metals are utilized to fabricate a high-power cladding light stripper (CLS). The capability of indium (In), aluminum (Al), tin (Sn), and gold (Au) in extracting unwanted cladding light is examined. The experiments show that these metals have the right features for stripping the unwanted light out of the cladding. We also find that the metal-cladding contact area is of great importance because it determines the attenuation and the thermal load on the CLS. These metals are examined in different forms to optimize the contact area to have the highest possible attenuation and avoid localized heating. The results show that sheets of indium are very effective in stripping unwanted cladding light.

Ultra-sensitive measurement of transverse displacements with linear photonic gears.

Accurately measuring mechanical displacements is essential for a vast portion of current technologies. Several optical techniques accomplish this task, allowing for non-contact sensing even below the diffraction limit. Here we introduce an optical encoding technique, dubbed "linear photonic gears", that enables ultra-sensitive measurements of a transverse displacement by mapping it into the polarization rotation of a laser beam. In ordinary ambient conditions, we measure the relative shift between two objects with a resolution of 400 pm. We argue that a resolution of 50 pm should be achievable with existing state-of-the-art technologies. Our single-optical-path scheme is intrinsically stable and it could be implemented as a compact sensor, using cost effective integrated optics. We anticipate it may have a strong impact on both research and industry.