Giant optical absorption of a PtSe2-on-silicon waveguide in mid-infrared wavelengths.

Low-dimensional platinum diselenide (PtSe2) is a promising candidate for high-performance optoelectronics in the short-wavelength mid-infrared band due to its high carrier mobility, excellent stability, and tunable bandgap. However, light usually interacts moderately with low-dimensional PtSe2, limiting the optoelectronic responses of PtSe2-based devices. Here we demonstrated a giant optical absorption of a PtSe2-on-silicon waveguide by integrating a ten-layer PtSe2 film on an ultra-thin silicon waveguide. The weak mode confinement in the ultra-thin waveguide dramatically increases the waveguide mode overlap with the PtSe2 film. Our experimental results show that the absorption coefficient of the PtSe2-on-silicon waveguide is in the range of 0.0648 dB µm-1 to 0.0704 dB µm-1 in a spectral region of 2200 nm to 2300 nm wavelengths. Furthermore, we also studied the optical absorption in an ultra-thin silicon microring resonator. Our study provides a promising approach to developing PtSe2-on-silicon hybrid optoelectronic integrated circuits.

Pol2Pol: self-supervised polarimetric image denoising.

In this Letter, we present a self-supervised method, polarization to polarization (Pol2Pol), for polarimetric image denoising with only one-shot noisy images. First, a polarization generator is proposed to generate training image pairs, which are synthesized from one-shot noisy images by exploiting polarization relationships. Second, the Pol2Pol method is extensible and compatible, and any network that performs well in supervised image denoising tasks can be deployed to Pol2Pol after proper modifications. Experimental results show Pol2Pol outperforms other self-supervised methods and achieves comparable performance to supervised methods.

Polarized image super-resolution via a deep convolutional neural network.

Reduced resolution of polarized images makes it difficult to distinguish detailed polarization information and limits the ability to identify small targets and weak signals. A possible way to handle this problem is the polarization super-resolution (SR), which aims to obtain a high-resolution polarized image from a low-resolution one. However, compared with the traditional intensity-mode image SR, the polarization SR is more challenging because more channels and their nonlinear cross-links need to be considered as well as the polarization and intensity information need to be reconstructed simultaneously. This paper analyzes the polarized image degradation and proposes a deep convolutional neural network for polarization SR reconstruction based on two degradation models. The network structure and the well-designed loss function have been verified to effectively balance the restoration of intensity and polarization information, and can realize the SR with a maximum scaling factor of four. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms other SR methods in terms of both quantitative evaluation and visual effect evaluation for two degradation models with different scaling factors.

A Fabry-Perot Sensor with Cascaded Polymer Films Based on Vernier Effect for Simultaneous Measurement of Relative Humidity and Temperature.

In this paper, fiber sensor based on Vernier effect for simultaneous measurement of relative humidity (RH) and temperature is proposed. The sensor is fabricated by coating two kinds of ultraviolet (UV) glue with different refractive indexes (RI) and thicknesses on the end face of a fiber patch cord. The thicknesses of two films are controlled to generate the Vernier effect. The inner film is formed by a cured lower-RI UV glue. The exterior film is formed by a cured higher-RI UV glue, of which thickness is much thinner than the inner film. Through the analysis of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of the reflective spectrum, the Vernier effect is formed by the inner lower-RI polymer cavity and the cavity composed of both polymer films. By calibrating the RH and temperature response of two peaks on the envelope of the reflection spectrum, simultaneous measurements of RH and temperature are realized by solving a set of quadratic equations. Experimental results show that the highest RH and temperature sensitivities of the sensor are 387.3 pm/%RH (in 20%RH to 90%RH) and -533.0 pm/°C (in 15 °C to 40 °C), respectively. The sensor has merits of low cost, simple fabrication, and high sensitivity, which makes it very attractive for applications that need to simultaneously monitor these two parameters.

Subwavelength structure engineered passband filter for the 2-µm wave band.

In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a passband filter for the 2-µm wave band on the silicon-on-insulator platform. The device consists of a strip waveguide and an apodized subwavelength-structured waveguide. Fabricated on a 340-nm-thick silicon membrane, the proposed passband filter shows a 3-dB bandwidth of 16-33 nm, a high sidelobe suppression ratio (SLSR) of 24 dB, and a low insertion loss (IL) of 0.4 dB.

Two-photon collagen crosslinking in ex vivo human corneal lenticules induced by near-infrared femtosecond laser.

Myopia and keratoconus have become common corneal diseases that threaten the quality of human vision, and keratoconus is one of the most common indications for corneal transplantation worldwide. Collagen crosslinking (CXL) using riboflavin and ultraviolet A (UVA) light is an effective approach for treating ophthalmic disorders and has been shown clinically not only to arrest further progression of keratoconus but also to improve refractive power for cornea. However, CXL surgery irradiated by UVA has various potential risks such as surface damage and endothelial cell damage. Here, near-infrared femtosecond laser-based two-photon CXL was first applied to ex vivo human corneal stroma, operating at low photon energy with high precision and stability. After two-photon CXL, the corneal stiffness can be enhanced by 300% without significantly reducing corneal transparency. These findings illustrate the optimized direction that depositing high pulses energy in corneal focal volume (not exceeding damage threshold), and pave the way to 3D CXL of in vivo human cornea with higher safety, precision, and efficacy.

Mid-infrared polarization-insensitive grating coupler.

Mid-infrared (Mid-IR) (2-20 µm) silicon photonics has attracted much attention in the past few years due to its application potential in free-space optical communications, light detection and ranging, and molecular analysis. The grating coupler technology is one of the most widely employed approaches for light coupling between optical fibers and waveguides. In the mid-IR spectral region, due to the lack of reliable chalcogenide-fiber or ZBLAN-fiber polarization controllers, grating couplers usually suffer from huge insertion losses induced by the arbitrary polarization states of light coupled out of mid-IR fibers. As a result, it is significant to explore polarization-insensitive grating coupling techniques in mid-IR wavelengths. However, the study is currently still in its infancy. Here, we demonstrate an ultra-thin mid-IR polarization-insensitive grating coupler. The grating coupler has a maximum coupling efficiency of -11.5 dB at a center wavelength of ∼2200 nm with a 1-dB bandwidth of ∼148 nm. Compared with conventional subwavelength grating couplers, the polarization-dependent loss was improved from 9.6 dB to 2.1 dB. Moreover, we demonstrated a polarization-insensitive grating coupler at 2700-nm wavelength with a maximum coupling efficiency of -12.0 dB. Our results pave the way for the development of mid-IR photonic integrated circuits.

Effectiveness of collagen cross-linking induced by two-photon absorption properties of a femtosecond laser in ex vivo human corneal stroma.

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of two-photon induced collagen cross-linking (CXL) using femtosecond lasers in human corneal stroma. An 800-nm femtosecond laser optical path for CXL was established. Corneal samples that received two-photon induced CXL and ultraviolet-A (UVA) CXL underwent uniaxial stretching experiments, proteolytic resistance assays and observation of collagen fiber structure changes. Two-photon induced CXL can achieve corneal stiffening effects comparable to UVA CXL and showed better advantages at low strains. The cornea after two-photon induced CXL exhibited high enzymatic resistance and tight collagen fiber arrangement. Two-photon induced CXL promises to be a new option for keratoconus.

Attention-based neural network for polarimetric image denoising.

In this Letter, we propose an attention-based neural network specially designed for the challenging task of polarimetric image denoising. In particular, the channel attention mechanism is used to effectively extract the features underlying the polarimetric images by rescaling the contributions of channels in the network. In addition, we also design the adaptive polarization loss to make the network focus on the polarization information. Experiments show that our method can well restore the details flooded by serious noise and outperforms previous methods. Moreover, the underlying mechanism of channel attention is revealed visually.

Ultra-thin mid-infrared silicon grating coupler.

Mid-infrared (mid-IR) silicon photonics has been attracting great attention due to its tremendous potential applications in nonlinear optics, ranging, sensing, and spectroscopy. To date, mid-IR silicon devices have usually been developed based on silicon wafers with top-layer silicon thicknesses of hundreds of nanometers. Compared with the thick silicon devices, tens-of-nanometers thin silicon devices can provide giant evanescent-field energy proportions and optical mode areas, being significant for many biochemical sensing and nonlinear optics applications. However, ultra-thin mid-IR silicon devices have seldom been studied due to the difficulty of light coupling. Here, we demonstrated an ultra-thin focusing subwavelength-grating coupler for mid-IR ultra-thin suspended subwavelength-grating-cladding waveguide coupling. The results show that the grating has a maximum coupling efficiency of -7.1 dB at a center wavelength of 2200 nm with a 1-dB bandwidth of ∼115 nm and back reflection of -19.9 dB. We also measured the fiber alignment tolerance of 12 µm for 3-dB coupling efficiency reduction and bending optical loss of 0.25 dB/90°. Our results pave the way to developing mid-IR ultra-thin photonic integrated circuits.

Nonlinear optical properties of human cornea measured by spectral domain Z-scan method.

In the myopia correction surgery by femtosecond laser, such as Laser in Situ Keratomileusis (LASIK) and Small Incision Lenticule Extraction (SMILE), the nonlinear refractive index of the cornea may cause the deviation of cutting depth. In order to improve the cornea cutting's accuracy and reduce the possibility of undercorrection, the nonlinear refractive index coefficient n2 of the human cornea must be measured with high accuracy. The spectral domain Z-scan technique can measure n2 of the highly scattering biological tissues with much better signal to noise ratio and thus better accuracy than the conventional methods. In this paper, the n2 coefficient of one ex-vivo human corneal sample was measured by the spectral domain Z-scan technique. Experimental results show that as this corneal sample gradually dehydrates, its n2 coefficients are 1.1 ± 0.1×10-19 m2/W, 1.4 ± 0.2×10-19 m2/W and 1.6 ± 0.2 ×10-19 m2/W respectively for the corneal sample with water contents of 89%, 82%, and 78%. The increase of the water content reduces the value of n2, which is reasonable since the nonlinear refractive index coefficient of water is one order of magnitude smaller than that of the cornea.

Automatic underwater polarization imaging without background region or any prior.

Previous polarization underwater imaging methods based on the physical scattering model usually require background region included in the image and the prior knowledge, which hinders its practical application. In this paper, we analyze and optimize the physically feasible region and propose an improved method by degenerating intermediate variables, which can realize automatic underwater image recovery without background region or any prior. The proposed method does not need to estimate the intermediate variables in the traditional underwater imaging model and is adaptable to the underwater image with non-uniform illumination, which avoids the poor and unstable image recovery performance caused by inaccurate estimation of intermediate parameters due to the improper identification of the background region. Meanwhile, our method is effective for both images without background region and images in which the background region is hard to be identified. In addition, our method solves the significant variation in recovery results caused by the different selection of background regions and the inconsistency of parameter adjustment. The experimental results of different underwater scenes show that the proposed method can enhance image contrast while preserving image details without introducing considerable noise, and the proposed method is effective for the dense turbid medium.

All-dielectric chiral-field-enhanced Raman optical activity.

Raman optical activity (ROA) is effective for studying the conformational structure and behavior of chiral molecules in aqueous solutions and is advantageous over X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in sample preparation and cost performance. However, ROA signals are inherently minuscule; 3-5 orders of magnitude weaker than spontaneous Raman scattering due to the weak chiral light-matter interaction. Localized surface plasmon resonance on metallic nanoparticles has been employed to enhance ROA signals, but suffers from detrimental spectral artifacts due to its photothermal heat generation and inability to efficiently transfer and enhance optical chirality from the far field to the near field. Here we demonstrate all-dielectric chiral-field-enhanced ROA by devising a silicon nanodisk array and exploiting its dark mode to overcome these limitations. Specifically, we use it with pairs of chemical and biological enantiomers to show >100x enhanced chiral light-molecule interaction with negligible artifacts for ROA measurements.

NaYF4:Yb/Tm@SiO2-Dox/Cur-CS/OSA nanoparticles with pH and photon responses.

Stimulus-triggered drug delivery systems (DDSs) based on lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) have attracted significant attention for treating cancers due to their merits of high drug availability, precisely controlled drug release, and low side-effects. However, such DDSs usually exhibit a single stimulus-response, which may limit the efficiency of cancer treatment. To extend response types in a single DDS, we construct NaYF4:Yb/Tm@SiO2-doxorubicin (Dox)/curcumin (Cur)-chitosan (CS)/2-Octen-1-ylsuccinic anhydride (OSA) nanoparticles with core-shell structures. Our method is based on the exploration of the synergistic effect of UCNPs and multiple drugs. In particular, the NaYF4:Yb/Tm is used to convert near-infrared light to visible light, activating Cur photosensitizers to produce singlet oxygen for photodynamic therapy, while CS/OSA responds to a low pH environment to release cancer drugs, including Dox and Cur for chemotherapy through breaking a free carboxyl group. The results show that the UCNPs with a 40 nm diameter, 23 nm thick mesoporous SiO2, and 19/1 mol% Yb3+/Tm3+concentrations could continuously release Dox and Cur at a pH value of 6.5 within 6 h after the excitation of a 980 nm-wavelength CW laser. Our study provides a promising approach for developing efficient DDSs for cancer treatment.

Porous carbon nanowire array for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a powerful tool for vibrational spectroscopy as it provides several orders of magnitude higher sensitivity than inherently weak spontaneous Raman scattering by exciting localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) on metal substrates. However, SERS can be unreliable for biomedical use since it sacrifices reproducibility, uniformity, biocompatibility, and durability due to its strong dependence on "hot spots", large photothermal heat generation, and easy oxidization. Here, we demonstrate the design, fabrication, and use of a metal-free (i.e., LSPR-free), topologically tailored nanostructure composed of porous carbon nanowires in an array as a SERS substrate to overcome all these problems. Specifically, it offers not only high signal enhancement (~106) due to its strong broadband charge-transfer resonance, but also extraordinarily high reproducibility due to the absence of hot spots, high durability due to no oxidization, and high compatibility to biomolecules due to its fluorescence quenching capability.

Graphene-based dual-mode modulators.

Mode-division multiplexing (MDM) has attracted broad attention as it could effectively boost up transmission capability by utilizing optical modes as a spatial dimension in optical interconnects. In such a technique, different data channels are usually modulated to the respective carriers over different spatial modes by using individual parallel electro-optic modulators. Each modulated channel is then multiplexed to a multi-mode waveguide. However, the method inevitably suffers from a high cost, large device footprint and high insertion loss. Here, we design intensity and phase dual-mode modulators, enabling simultaneous modulations over two channels via a graphene-on-silicon waveguide. Our method is based on the exploration of co-planar interactions between structured graphene nanoribbons (GNs) and spatial modes in a silicon waveguide. Specifically, the zeroth-order transverse electric (TE0) and first-order transverse electric (TE1) modes are modulated separately and simultaneously by applying independent driving electrodes to different GNs in an identical modulator. Our study is expected to open an avenue to develop high-density MDM photonics integrated circuits for tera-scale optical interconnects.

Learning-based denoising for polarimetric images.

Based on measuring the polarimetric parameters which contain specific physical information, polarimetric imaging has been widely applied to various fields. However, in practice, the noise during image acquisition could lead to the output of noisy polarimetric images. In this paper, we propose, for the first time to our knowledge, a learning-based method for polarimetric image denoising. This method is based on the residual dense network and can significantly suppress the noise in polarimetric images. The experimental results show that the proposed method has an evident performance on the noise suppression and outperforms other existing methods. Especially for the images of the degree of polarization and the angle of polarization, which are quite sensitive to the noise, the proposed learning-based method can well reconstruct the details flooded in strong noise.

Temperature compensation of optical alternating magnetic field sensor via a novel method for on-line measuring.

The variation of environment temperature is a crucial problem for optical magnetic field sensors based on the magneto-optical crystal. In this paper, we propose a novel temperature compensation method for optical alternating magnetic field measuring by analyzing the demodulation principle and establishing the temperature compensation model, which can implement the functions of temperature compensation and on-line measuring simultaneously. Both the temperature and the alternating magnetic field flux density can be obtained only by adding two magnet rings on the magnetic field sensor. The experimental phenomenon agrees well with the temperature characteristics of the magneto-optical crystal and the theoretical compensation model. The experimental results demonstrate that this sensor has excellent stability whose max relative fluctuation is only 0.7402% in the range of 0-4 mT under a constant temperature. In the temperature compensation experiment of 0 °C, 20 °C and 40 °C, the sensor shows strong temperature robustness that the max absolute and relative errors are 0.07 mT and 3.50%, respectively. Meanwhile, compensation efficiency reaches 83.968%, which can effectively avoid temperature crosstalk to a large extent. Additionally, it has a better compensation performance whose max absolute and relative errors are 0.15 mT and 1.66% in the broader range of 0-16 mT when the actual temperature is accurately known.

Waveguide-integrated graphene spatial mode filters for on-chip mode-division multiplexing.

On-chip mode-division multiplexing (MDM), as a promising method of scaling communication bandwidth, has attracted tremendous attention due to potential applications in optical interconnects ranging from intra-chip to board-to-board communications. However, the MDM technique usually suffers from signal degradation due to crosstalk between spatial modes in multimode waveguide devices. Here we design waveguide-integrated graphene spatial mode filters for on-chip MDM to overcome this limitation. Specifically, TE1-mode-pass and TE2-mode-pass filters are designed based on different waveguide architectures. For the TE1-mode-pass filters, we have obtained a maximum TE1-to-TE0 modal extinction ratio (ER) of 9.19 dB in a 200-µm-long waveguide. While, for the TE2-mode-pass filters, we have achieved a maximum TE2-to-TE1 modal ER of 5.37 dB and TE2-to-TE0 modal ER of 6.44 dB in a 200-µm-long waveguide. Our study could help improve the signal-to-noise ratio for on-chip MDM optical interconnects.

Contrast optimization in broadband passive polarimetric imaging based on color camera.

Broadband polarimetric imaging consists of forming an image under spectrally wide illumination after having optimized the polarization state analyzer (PSA) to maximize the target/background discriminability. In previous works, the image sensor was monochrome, and only the intensity contrast was optimized. However, due to its spectrally varying response, the PSA not only changes the light's intensity, but also its color. This color information can serve as a further parameter to improve discrimination. In this paper, we employ a color camera in a broadband Stokes (passive) polarimetric imaging system and take into color difference's contribution to discrimination ability in optimizing the PSA setting. We show through experiments that a significant improvement of discrimination ability over monochrome imaging is obtained, especially when there are multiple objects in the scene.