Fast diffraction-limited cylindrical microlenses.

We describe a technique for fabricating fast well-corrected cylindrical microlenses for applications such as collimating laser diodes and coupling light into and out of integrated optics devices. The lenses are produced by first grinding a glass preform to a desired cross-sectional shape and then heating and drawing the preform into a fiber of the desired diameter. The heating and drawing operations polish the glass surface and reduce the cross-sectional dimensions but maintain the cross-sectional shape. Diffraction-limited 220-microm focal length immersion lenses with numerical aperture >0.6 have been demonstrated.

Efficient self-pumped phase conjugation at near-infrared wavelengths using cobalt-doped BaTiO(3).

Using BaTiO(3) crystals doped with cobalt, we have measured the reflectivity of self-pumped phase-conjugate mirrors operating in the total-internal-reflection geometry as a function of wavelength in the range between 633 and 933 nm. We find that for cobalt concentrations above 25 parts in 10(6), the reflectivity is higher than 50% for all the investigated wavelengths. At a wavelength of 800 nm the reflectivity is independent of incident power over a range of 12 to 600 mW.

Near-IR dyes in three-color volumetric capillary cytometry: cell analysis with 633- and 785-nm laser excitation.

Several fluorescent dyes that absorb in the near-infrared are described. The photostability and aggregation properties of the dyes were examined. Two of the dyes, BHMP and BHDMAP, emit at 805 nm and were useful dyes for protein labeling. A dual-laser, three-color scanning instrument was constructed. CD3+CD4+ and CD3+CD8+ populations were enumerated in undiluted, whole blood based on the fluorescence of Cy5, Cy5.5 and BHMP.