Magneto-chiral backscatterings by rotationally symmetric nonreciprocal structures.

It was proved that the joint operation of electromagnetic reciprocity and n-fold (n ≥ 3) rotational symmetry would secure arbitrary polarization-independent backscattering efficiency [Phys. Rev. B103(4), 045422 (2021)10.1103/PhysRevB.103.045422]. Here we remove the restriction of reciprocity and study the backscatterings of plane waves by rotationally symmetric magneto-optical structures, with collinear incident wavevector, rotational axis and externally applied magnetic field. It is revealed that though nonreciprocity removes the degeneracy of backscattering efficiencies for circularly-polarized incident waves of opposite handedness, the remaining rotational symmetry is sufficient to guarantee that the efficiency is related to the polarization ellipticity only, having nothing to do with the orientations of the polarization ellipses. Moreover, the backscattering efficiency reaches its extremes (maximum or minimum values) always for circularly-polarized incident waves, and for other polarizations the efficiency is their ellipticity-weighted arithmetic average. The principles we have revealed are dictated by rotational symmetries only, which are irrelevant to specific geometric or optical parameters and are intrinsically robust against any rotational-symmetry preserving perturbations. The correlations we have discovered could be further exploited for fundamental explorations in nonreciprocal photonics and practical applications including polarimetry and ellipsometry.

Visible light emission enhancement from a graphene-based metal Fabry-Pérot cavity.

The high saturation current density and ultrafast heating modulation of graphene makes it a competitive candidate for future thermal emission source. However, the low emissivity and easy oxidation under high temperature in air limit graphene application in the spectral range from the visible to near infrared. Here, we report a visible graphene thermal emitter based on the metal Fabry-Pérot (FP) cavity, which can greatly enhance the emissivity of graphene at wavelength around 637 nm and protect graphene from oxidation. We investigate the temperature characteristics of the emitter, and find the temperature of hot electrons in graphene is much higher than that of graphene lattice. Moreover, we also demonstrate the wavelength and intensity of graphene emission could be controlled by tuning the dielectric thickness between two gold layers. These results are helpful in the development of advanced graphene electro-thermal emission controlling application.

Implementation of a real-time star centroid extraction algorithm with high speed and superior denoising ability.

Star tracker is the most precise attitude measuring device, and its advantages include a high resolution and high update rate. Star centroid extraction, which is a very time-consuming process, has great influence on the attitude update rate. This paper proposes a real-time star centroid extraction algorithm based on a field programmable gate array. First, a 1D top-hat filter is used for star segmentation, which is suitable for both uniform and nonuniform background conditions. Second, multichannel image data is reorganized together into a complete frame through image stitching, which prevents the star spots on the channel boundary from being divided into different parts. Finally, star coordinates are extracted by the center-of-mass algorithm. For an image sensor with a resolution of 2048×2048 pixels, simulation results conducted by a ModelSim simulator show that the star centroid processing time of a single frame is roughly 5.2 ms. Real night experiments demonstrate that the standard deviation of a star centroid error is within 10-2 pixel and the standard deviation of attitude is (2.6 2.2 12.0) arcseconds, which proves that the proposed star centroid extraction algorithm can work continuously and stably.

Improved one-dimensional dilation-based top-hat algorithm for star segmentation under complicated background conditions.

The white top-hat transformation has been widely used in small bright target extraction. It usually applies an erosion operation to remove the target and then a dilation operation to recover the intensity of the processed image. A bright target will be extracted by subtracting the opening operation (erosion followed by dilation) from the raw image. The drawback of this method is that its denoising ability is poor because the estimated background threshold by an opening operation is smaller than the raw image. This study puts forward the viewpoint that by use of a proposed one-dimensional (1D) symmetrical line-shaped structuring element a bright target can also be removed by the dilation operation. Consequently, the white top-hat transformation can be implemented by subtracting only the dilation operation from the raw image. To the best knowledge of the authors, it is the first time to use this method to achieve the top-hat transformation. The simulation experiment shows that the proposed 1D top-hat algorithm has excellent performance in denoising ability and detection ability. Moreover, real night experiments demonstrate that our proposed algorithm can work reliably under both complicated background conditions and good weather conditions. It is noticeable that the performance of computational efficiency and resource consumption have been considerably improved because a 1D structuring element is employed and the erosion operation is not included.

Adaptive section non-uniformity correction method of short-wave infrared star images for a star tracker.

Using a short-wave infrared (SWIR) camera to improve daytime star detection ability has become a trend for near-ground star trackers. However, the noise of SWIR star images greatly decreases the accuracy of the attitude measurement results. Aiming at a real-time application of the star tracker, an adaptive section non-uniformity correction method based on the two-point correction algorithm for SWIR star images is proposed. The correction parameters of different sections are first calculated after the defective pixels are detected and excluded, and the real-time image is corrected using adaptive section parameters according to its gray value distribution. Finally, the defective pixels are compensated for by their adjacent corrected pixels. The correction results of both simulated and live-shot star images have verified the validity of the proposed method. It adapts to different sky background radiation, which is effective for the application of a star tracker. By comparing with other linear correction methods, it has the advantages of low calculation complexity, better real-time performance, and easier implementation in the hardware.

A Novel Two-Axis Differential Resonant Accelerometer Based on Graphene with Transmission Beams.

In this paper, a novel two-axis differential resonant accelerometer based on graphene with transmission beams is presented. This accelerometer can not only reduce the cross sensitivity, but also overcome the influence of gravity, realizing fast and accurate measurement of the direction and magnitude of acceleration on the horizontal plane. The simulation results show that the critical buckling acceleration is 460 g, the linear range is 0-89 g, while the differential sensitivity is 50,919 Hz/g, which is generally higher than that of the resonant accelerometer reported previously. Thus, the accelerometer belongs to the ultra-high sensitivity accelerometer. In addition, increasing the length and tension of graphene can obviously increase the critical linear acceleration and critical buckling acceleration with the decreasing sensitivity of the accelerometer. Additionally, the size change of the force transfer structure can significantly affect the detection performance. As the etching accuracy reaches the order of 100 nm, the critical buckling acceleration can reach up to 5 × 104 g, with a sensitivity of 250 Hz/g. To sum up, a feasible design of a biaxial graphene resonant accelerometer is proposed in this work, which provides a theoretical reference for the fabrication of a graphene accelerometer with high precision and stability.

Electrically tunable absorber based on a graphene integrated lithium niobate resonant metasurface.

Perfect absorbers are of great importance in various applications such as photodetectors, optical sensors and optical modulators. Recently, perfect absorption metasurface based on monolayer graphene has attracted lots of research interest. In this paper, a graphene-lithium niobate (LN) perfect absorption metasurface is constructed, where graphene works as a thin absorptive layer as well as a conductive electrode. The proposed device achieves 99.99% absorption at 798.42 nm and 1.14 nm redshift of the absorption peak is realized at 300 V(from -150 V to 150 V) external bias voltage through the electro-optical effect of LN, which enables the proposed device work as a electrically tunable absorber in the visible and near infrared range. The switching ratio of reflected light R/R0 could reach -44.08 dB with an applied voltage tuning from -150 V to 0 V at 798.42 nm. Our work demonstrates the potential of LN integrated high-Q resonant metasurface in realizing electro-optic tunable nanophotonic devices in the visible and near infrared band. It will promote the research of graphene integrated optoelectronic devices as well as LN based tunable nanophotonic devices which have widespread applications such as modulators and optical phase arrays.

Error coupling analysis of the laboratory calibration method for a star tracker.

A star tracker should be well calibrated before it is equipped in order to achieve high accuracy. There exists, however, the coupling problem between the internal and external parameters for most commonly used laboratory calibration methods, which affect the star tracker's performance. We theoretically analyze the major aspects of the coupling mechanism based on the star tracker laboratory calibration model, which means the coupling between the principal point and the installation angle. The concept of equivalent principal point error, which illustrates the effectiveness of the calibration even with poor decoupling accuracy between the principal point and the installation angle, is introduced. Simulation and bench experiments are conducted to verify the laboratory calibration method and its coupling mechanism. The decoupling accuracy can be improved with more samples during calibration. In addition, the equivalent principal point error converges quickly and hardly affects the attitude of the star tracker, which is verified by both theory and experiment. The comprehensive calibration accuracy can still reach a high level even with poor decoupling accuracy.

Ultra-narrowband visible light absorption in a monolayer MoS2 based resonant nanostructure.

Enhance light absorption in two-dimensional (2D) materials are of great importance for the development of many optoelectronic devices such as photodetectors, modulators and thermal emitters. In this paper, a resonant nanostructure based on subwavelength gratings of monolayer molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) is proposed. It is shown numerically that the excitation of guided modes in the proposed structure leads to perfect absorption in the visible range. The linewidth of the absorption spectrum can be narrow down to 0.1 nm. The resonance wavelength exhibits an almost linear dependence on the incidence angle. The proposed structure provides a method to design ultra-narrowband absorbers and similar designs can be applied to other 2D materials. It may find applications for optical filters, directional thermal emitters, 2D materials based lasers and others.

Influence of Temperature Variation on the Vibrational Characteristics of Fused Silica Cylindrical Resonators for Coriolis Vibratory Gyroscopes.

The fused silica cylindrical resonator is a type of axisymmetric resonator that can be used for Coriolis vibratory gyroscopes. Although the resonant frequency, frequency mismatch, and Q factor are natural properties of the resonator, they can change with temperature. Therefore, the temperature drift severely limits the detection accuracy and bias stability of the gyroscope. In this paper, the influence of temperature variation on the vibrational characteristics of fused silica cylindrical resonators was investigated. Experiments were performed on a fused silica cylindrical resonator coated with Cr/Au films. It was shown that at the temperature range from 253.15 K to 353.15 K, the resonant frequency linearly increased with temperature, the frequency mismatch remained unchanged, and the Q factor gradually increased till about 333.15 K, when it began to decrease. Meanwhile, the change of thermoelastic damping with temperature may dominate the variation of Q factor at the temperature range from 253.15 K to 353.15 K. This phenomenon was theoretically analyzed and the variation trends of results were consistent with the theoretical analysis. This study indicates that, for the fused silica cylindrical resonator, to discover the influence of temperature variation on the resonant frequency, frequency mismatch, and Q factor, there are certain rules to follow and repeat. The relationship between temperature and frequency can be established, which provides the feasibility of using self-calibration based on temperature characteristics of the resonator for temperature drift compensations. Additionally, there is an optimum temperature that may improve the performance of the Coriolis vibratory gyroscope with the fused silica cylindrical resonator.

Influence of Electrostatic Forces on the Vibrational Characteristics of Resonators for Coriolis Vibratory Gyroscopes.

The Coriolis Vibratory Gyroscopes are a type of sensors that measure angular velocities through the Coriolis effect. The resonator is the critical component of the CVGs, the vibrational characteristics of which, including the resonant frequency, frequency mismatch, Q factor, and Q factor asymmetry, have a great influence on the performance of CVG. The frequency mismatch and Q factor of the resonator, in particular, directly determine the precision and drift characteristics of the gyroscope. Although the frequency mismatch and Q factor are natural properties of the resonator, they can change with external conditions, such as temperature, pressure, and external forces. In this paper, the influence of electrostatic forces on the vibrational characteristics of the fused silica cylindrical resonator is investigated. Experiments were performed on a fused silica cylindrical resonator coated with Cr/Au films. It was shown that the resonant frequency, frequency mismatch, and the decay time slightly decreased with electrostatic forces, while the decay time split increased. Lower capacitive gaps and larger applied voltages resulted in lower frequency mismatch and lower decay time. This phenomenon was theoretically analyzed, and the variation trends of results were consistent with the theoretical analysis. This study indicates that, for fused silica cylindrical resonator with electrostatic transduction, the electrostatic influence on the Q factor and frequency, although small, should be considered when designing the capacitive gap and choosing bias voltages.

Bolometric Effect in Bi2 O2 Se Photodetectors.

Bi2 O2 Se is emerging as a photosensitive functional material for optoelectronics, and its photodetection mechanism is mostly considered to be a photoconductive regime in previous reports. Here, the bolometric effect is discovered in Bi2 O2 Se photodetectors. The coexistence of photoconductive effect and bolometric effect is generally observed in multiwavelength photoresponse measurements and then confirmed with microscale local heating experiments. The unique photoresponse of Bi2 O2 Se photodetectors may arise from a change of hot electrons during temperature rises instead of photoexcited holes and electrons. Direct proof of the bolometric effect is achieved by real-time temperature tracking of Bi2 O2 Se photodetectors under time evolution after light excitation. Moreover, the Bi2 O2 Se bolometer shows a high temperature coefficient of resistance (-1.6% K-1 ), high bolometric coefficient (-31 nA K-1 ), and high bolometric responsivity (>320 A W-1 ). These findings offer a new approach to develop bolometric photodetectors based on Bi2 O2 Se layered materials.

WSe2 Photovoltaic Device Based on Intramolecular p-n Junction.

High quality p-n junctions based on 2D layered materials (2DLMs) are urgent to exploit, because of their unique properties such as flexibility, high absorption, and high tunability which may be utilized in next-generation photovoltaic devices. Based on transfer technology, large amounts of vertical heterojunctions based on 2DLMs are investigated. However, the complicated fabrication process and the inevitable defects at the interfaces greatly limit their application prospects. Here, an in-plane intramolecular WSe2 p-n junction is realized, in which the n-type region and p-type region are chemically doped by polyethyleneimine and electrically doped by the back-gate, respectively. An ideal factor of 1.66 is achieved, proving the high quality of the p-n junction realized by this method. As a photovoltaic detector, the device possesses a responsivity of 80 mA W-1 (≈20% external quantum efficiency), a specific detectivity of over 1011 Jones and fast response features (200 µs rising time and 16 µs falling time) at zero bias, simultaneously. Moreover, a large open-circuit voltage of 0.38 V and an external power conversion efficiency of ≈1.4% realized by the device also promises its potential in microcell applications.

Attitude-correlated frames adding approach to improve signal-to-noise ratio of star image for star tracker.

When applied inside Earth's atmosphere, the star tracker is sensitive to sky background produced by atmospheric scattering and stray light. The shot noise induced by the strong background reduces star detection capability and even makes it completely out of operation. To improve the star detection capability, an attitude-correlated frames adding (ACFA) approach is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the attitude changes of the star tracker are measured by three gyroscope units (GUs). Then the mathematical relationship between the image coordinates at different time and the attitude changes of the star tracker is constructed (namely attitude-correlated transformation, ACT). Using the ACT, the image regions in different frames that correspond to the same star can be extracted and added to the current frame. After attitude-correlated frames adding, the intensity of the star signal increases by n times, while the shot noise increases by n~n/2 times due to its stochastic characteristic. Consequently, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the star image enhances by a factor of n~2n. Simulations and experimental results indicate that the proposed method can effectively improve the star detection ability. Hence, there are more dim stars detected and used for attitude determination. In addition, the star centroiding error induced by the background noise can also be reduced.

Hybrid metal-graphene plasmonic sensor for multi-spectral sensing in both near- and mid-infrared ranges.

This paper proposes a hybrid metal-graphene plasmonic sensor which can simultaneously perform multi-spectral sensing in near- and mid-IR ranges. The proposed sensor consists of an array of asymmetric gold nano-antennas integrated with an unpatterned graphene sheet. The gold antennas support sharp Fano-resonances for near-IR sensing while the excitation of graphene plasmonic resonances extend the sensing spectra to the mid-IR range. Such a broadband spectral range goes far beyond previously demonstrated multi-spectral plasmonic sensors. The sensitivity and figure of merit (FOM) as well as their dependence on the thickness of the sensing layer and Fermi energy of graphene are studied systematically. This new type of sensor combines the advantages of conventional metallic plasmonic sensors and graphene plasmonic sensors and may open a new door for high-performance, multi-functional plasmonic sensing.

Optical activity in monolayer black phosphorus due to extrinsic chirality.

The phenomenon of optical activity has fundamental importance and widespread applications in polarization optics, analytical chemistry, and molecular biology. In the past two decades, there has been much research on designing metamaterials with strong optical activity, which generally employs chiral plasmonic or dielectric nanostructures with resonant responses. In this Letter, we show theoretically and numerically that strong optical activity can be obtained in unpatterned monolayer black phosphorus (BP) without using resonant structures. The optical activity can be attributed to the extrinsic chirality from the mutual orientation of the BP film with in-plane anisotropy and the incident light. The obtained circular dichroism in this atomically thick material is comparable to that in previously reported chiral metamaterials, and the optical activity is inherently tunable by controlling the Fermi level of monolayer BP.

In-plane anisotropy in twisted bilayer graphene probed by Raman spectroscopy.

Monolayer graphene has high symmetrical crystal structure and exhibits in-plane isotropic physical properties. However, twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) is expected to differ physically, due to the broken symmetry introduced by the interlayer coupling between adjacent graphene layers. This symmetry breaking is usually accompanied by in-plane anisotropy in their electrical, optical and thermal properties. However, the existence of in-plane anisotropy in tBLG has remained evasive until now. Here, an unambiguous identification of the in-plane anisotropy in tBLG is established by angle-resolved polarized Raman spectroscopy. It was found that the double-resonant two-dimensional band is anisotropic. The degree of in-plane anisotropy is found to be dependent on the misorientation angles, which is two- and four-fold for tBLG with misorientation angles of 15° and 20°, respectively. This finding adds a new dimension to the properties of graphene, which opens a possibility to the development of graphene-based angle-resolved photonics and electronics.

Phase-Controlled Growth of One-Dimensional Mo6Te6 Nanowires and Two-Dimensional MoTe2 Ultrathin Films Heterostructures.

Controllable synthesizing of one-dimensional-two-dimensional (1D-2D) heterostructures and tuning their atomic and electronic structures is nowadays of particular interest due to the extraordinary properties and potential applications. Here, we demonstrate the temperature-induced phase-controlled growth of 1D Mo6Te6-2D MoTe2 heterostructures via molecular beam epitaxy. In situ scanning tunneling microscopy study shows 2D ultrathin films are synthesized at low temperature range, while 1D nanowires gradually arise and dominate as temperature increasing. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirms the good stoichiometry and scanning tunneling spectroscopy reveals the semimetallic property of grown Mo6Te6 nanowires. Through in situ annealing, a phase transition from 2D MoTe2 to 1D Mo6Te6 is induced, thus forming a semimetal-semiconductor junction in atomic level. An upward band bending of 2H-MoTe2 is caused by lateral hole injection from Mo6Te6. The work suggests a new route to synthesize 1D semimetallic transition metal chalcogenide nanowires, which could serve as ultrasmall conducting building blocks and enable band engineering in future 1D-2D heterostructure devices.

A Colloidal-Quantum-Dot Infrared Photodiode with High Photoconductive Gain.

The photodiode is a prevailing architecture for photodetection with the merits of fast response and low dark current. However, an ideal photodiode is also desired for both high responsivity and high external quantum efficiency (EQE), which may facilitate more applications. Here the photoconducting effect in a photodiode is discussed and an Au-PbS colloidal quantum dot (CQD)-indium tin oxide Schottky junction photodiode is fabricated. The long carrier lifetime and improved carrier mobility in tetrabutylammonium iodide-modified PbS CQDs cooperating with the proper band structure and an ultrashort channel in the diode enable the photodiode with high photoconductive gain, realizing an EQE of ≈400% and a responsivity (R) of 5.15 A W-1 while simultaneously achieving a response time of 110 µs and a specific detectivity of 1.96 × 1010 Jones under 1550 nm illumination. In addition, this CQD-based photodiode is stable, low cost, and compatible with complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology. All of these promise this device great potential in applications.

Coherent perfect absorption and asymmetric interferometric light-light control in graphene with resonant dielectric nanostructures.

Engineering light absorption in graphene has been the focus of intensive research in the past few years. In this paper, we show numerically that coherent perfect absorption can be realized in monolayer graphene in the near infrared range by harnessing resonances of dielectric nanostructures. The asymmetry of the structure results in different optical responses for light illuminated from the top side and the substrate side and enables asymmetric interferometric light-light control. The absorbed and scattered light exhibit interesting nonlinear behavior, allowing switching a strong optical signal output with a weak light. This work may stimulate potential applications including new types of sensors, coherent photodetectors and all-optical logical devices.