Optical vortex beams in the visible and near-infrared spectrum over a wide spectral region are generated by a single S-waveplate polarization converter using polarization-selective filtering. A spectral coverage of 600 nm is demonstrated, with maximum efficiency at a wavelength of 530 nm. The broadband coverage is obtained using polarization filtering, which is applicable for any component based on geometric phase retardation. The efficiency of the filtering varies from 50% to 95% depending on the wavelength. This technique has potential application in stimulated emission microscopy and lithography. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America

We demonstrate a comprehensive modification study of silica glass, crystalline silicon, and amorphous silicon film, irradiated by tightly focused cylindrical vector beams with azimuthal and radial polarizations. The evidence of the longitudinal field associated with radial polarization is revealed by second harmonic generation in z-cut lithium niobate crystal. Despite the lower threshold of ring-shaped modification of silicon materials, the modification in the center of single pulse radially polarized beam is not observed. The phenomenon is interpreted in terms of the enhanced reflection of longitudinal component at the interface with high-index contrast, demonstrating that the longitudinal component is inefficient for the flat surface modification. Enhanced interaction of the longitudinal light field with silicon nanopillar structures produced by the first pulse of double-pulse irradiation is also demonstrated.

Polymeric nanofibers containing gold nanorods (GNRs) are aligned in a uniform orientation through electrospinning. The dispersive and absorptive parts of the third-order optical nonlinear optical refractive index of the composite film measured by polarization dependent z-scan method are demonstrated to be anisotropically enhanced. Anisotropic optical response of the aligned GNRs and its connection with the ultrafast electron dynamics are discussed in light of the results of resonant femtosecond pump-probe experiments. The significant appearance of anisotropic nonlinear optical properties of ensembles of GNRs is attributed to the sensitive excitation of longitudinal surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of highly aligned GNRs. For the macroscopic applications of ensembles of GNRs, such as passive mode-locking and all-optical switching, the experimental results demonstrate that the alignment of GNRs through electrospinning should be very high efficient, and economic.

Owing to the unique mechanism of photoelectron storage and release, long persistent phosphorescence, also called long persistent luminescence or long lasting afterglow/phosphorescence, plays a pivotal role in the areas of spectroscopy, photochemistry, photonics and materials science. In recent years, more research has focused on the manipulation of the morphology, operational wavebands and persistent duration of long persistent phosphors (LPPs). These desired achievements stimulated the growing interest in designing bio-labels, photocatalysts, optical sensors, detectors and photonic devices. In this review, we present multidisciplinary research on synthetic methods, afterglow mechanisms, characterization techniques, materials system, and applications of LPPs. First, we introduce the recent developments in LPPs for the synthesis of nanoparticles from the aspects of particle sizes, monodispersity and homogeneity based on the urgent application of bio-imaging. In the later sections, we present the possible mechanisms, which involve the variation of trap distribution during the trapping and de-trapping process, complicated photo-ionization reaction of trap site levels and impurity centers together with their corresponding migration kinetics of carriers. Meanwhile, we emphasize the characterization techniques of defects, used to qualitatively or quantitatively describe the types, concentrations and depths of the traps. This review article also highlights the recent advances in suggested LPPs materials with a focus on the LPPs' hosts and optically active centers as well as their control, tuning and intrinsic links. We further discuss the classification of LPPs based on the different emission and excitation wavebands from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared region along with an overview of the activation mode of afterglow. Afterwards, we provide an exhibition of new products towards diverse application fields, including solar energy utilization, bio-imaging, diagnosis, and photocatalysts. Finally, we summarize the current achievements, discuss the problems and provide suggestions for potential future directions in the aforementioned parts.

Tailoring optical nonlinear transmittance relying on excitation at various NIR wavelengths in LaF3:Er3+nanocrystals embedded in germanate oxyfluoride glass ceramics.

We present a novel “Top-down” strategy to design the long phosphorescent phosphors in the second biological transparency window via energy transfer. Inherence in this approach to material design involves an ingenious engineering for hybridizing the coordination networks of hosts, tailoring the topochemical configuration of dopants and bridging a cascaded tunnel for transferring the persistent energy from traps, to sensitizers and then to acceptors. Another significance of this endeavour is to highlight a rational scheme for functionally important hosts and dopants, Cr/Nd co-doped Zn 1−x Ca x Ga 2 O 4 solid solutions. Such solid-solution is employed as an optimized host to take advantage of its characteristic trap site level to establish an electron reservoir and network parameters for the precipitation of activators Nd 3+ and Cr 3+ . The results reveal that the strategy employed here has the great potential, as well as opens new opportunities for future new-wavelength, NIR phosphorescent phosphors fabrication with many potential multifunctional bio-imaging applications.

We report the observation of an anomalous polarization dependent process in an isotropic glass induced by long time stationary irradiation of a high repetition rate near-infrared femtosecond laser. Two distinctive types of polarization dependent microstructures were induced at different irradiation stages. At early stage (a few seconds), a dumbbell-shaped structure elongated perpendicularly to the laser polarization formed at the top of the modified region, which was later erased by further irradiation. At later stage (above 30 s), bubbles filled with O2 formed by the irradiation, which were distributed along the laser polarization at a distance far beyond the radius of the laser beam. Based on a simple modeling of light reflection on boundaries, a thermal accumulation process was proposed to explain the formation and evolution of the dumbbell-shaped microstructure. The possible factors responsible for polarization dependent distribution of bubbles are discussed, which needs further systematic investigations. The results may be helpful in the development of femtosecond laser microprocessing for various applications.

We demonstrate achromatic polarization rotators implemented by femtosecond laser assisted nanostructuring of silica glass. The rotation of polarization plane results from the chiral arrangement of optical axis embedded in the multi-layered stack of birefringent layers. In our experiments, we achieved rotation of 46.0 ± 0.6° and 93 ± 6° in the broad spectral range of 600–1600 nm, which can be extended even further up to 5 μm. These silica birefringent optical components exhibit advantages over liquid crystal polarizing devices or broadband crystalline waveplates, including large acceptance angle, high thermal stability, and high damage threshold.

A novel fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy（FLIM） working with deep UV 240–280 nm wavelength excitations has been developed. UV-FLIM is used for measurement of defect-related fluorescence and its changes upon annealing from femtosecond laser-induced modifications in fused silica. This FLIM technique can be used with microfluidic and biosamples to characterize temporal characteristics of fluorescence upon UV excitation, a capability easily added to a standard microscope-based FLIM. UV-FLIM was tested to show annealing of the defects induced by silica structuring with ultrashort laser pulses. Frequency-domain fluorescence measurements were converted into the time domain to extract long fluorescence lifetimes from defects in silica.

A femto- and picosecond laser assisted periodic nanostructuring of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) is demonstrated. The grating structure with the subwavelength modulation of refractive index shows form birefringence (Δn ≈ −0.6) which is two orders of magnitude higher than commonly observed in uniaxial crystals and femtosecond laser nanostructured silica glass. The laser-induced giant birefringence and dichroism in a-Si:H film introduce extra dimensions to the polarization sensitive laser writing with applications that include data storage, security marking, and flat optics.

Conventional optics (e.g. lenses or mirrors) manipulates the phase via optical path difference by controlling thickness or refractive index of material. Recently, a promising type of optics emerged which exploits geometric phase shift, when a lightwave is transformed by parameter other than optical path difference, e.g. polarization. Here, wavefront is modified by introducing spatially varying anisotropy and is a result of Panchatraman-Berry phase [1]. Theoretically any phase pattern can be achieved solely by means of geometric phase with efficiencies reaching 100% [2]. This allows continuous optical phase shifts and without phase resets, in stark contrast to conventional elements, wherein phase profiles are encoded as discrete optical path variations in refractive index or thickness, limiting performance. The geometric phase optics is a promising alternative for controlling and manipulating light, but it stumbles on the lack of adequate fabrication technology.

Recent applications of femtosecond laser assisted self-assembled nanostructures will be overviewed. Specifically, polarization sensitive optical elements and 5-dimensional optical data storage with practically unlimited life-time will be demonstrated and discussed.

In this theses I will concentrate on femtosecond laser induced modification in silica glass. One type of modification in fused silica is subwavelength nanogratings. This modification exhibits form birefringence and therefore optical elements can be fabricated based on nanogratings. The main goal of my work was development and fabrication of practical optical elements based on femtosecond laser induced nanogratings. In order to be able to fabricate optical elements, laser induced modification had to be uniform and exhibit strong birefringence. Also fabrication speed has to be high in order to write reasonable size optical element in short time. Optimal fabrication parameters were found by studying physical and optical properties of nanogratings. The first polarization sensitive optical element to be demonstrated was polarization converter, which transforms Gaussian beam with uniform polarization distribution into a cylindrical vector beam. Later on, polarization converters for different types of laser beams and spectral ranges were demonstrated. Properties of generated beams were measured and compared with theoretical modelling. Generated beams were also successfully exploited for material modification and results are compared with theoretical simulations. Same converters can be also used for optical vortices generation. Unique property of such converters is that they allow tuning orbital angular momentum of photons in the light beam and therefore adjusting the torque of the vortex beam. The important feature of this vortex generation technique is that optical angular momentum is changed without affecting intensity distribution of the laser beam. The benefits of tunable optical angular momentum were demonstrated in optical trapping experiment where silica micro spheres were trapped into a rotating ring is performed. The ability to tune the torque of the beam is proved by changing rotation speed change of the beads’ ring. Birefringence can be exploited not only for polarization control but also for phase. Half-wave retarder can induce phase delay to circularly polarized light depending on the azimuth of slow axis of the retarder. Based on that, converter for “diffraction-free” Airy and Bessel beams are fabricated. Properties of generated beams are measured and compared with theoretical simulations. Airy beam converter based on laser induced nanogratings has unique ability to generate dual Airy beam which is superposition two Airy beams accelerating in opposite direction. Generated Airy beam is also used in material modification. Self-detachment of fibre-like structure is observed from laser modified substrate which is speculated to be caused by properties of Airy beam. Finally, an array of micro waveplates is fabricated which together with a linear polarizer and a CCD camera allows real time polarization imaging. Full state of polarization can be measured. For the demonstration, polarization distribution of cylindrical vector beams was measured.

Surface texturing is demonstrated by the combination of wet etching and ultrafast laser nanostructuring of silica glass. Using potassium hydroxide (KOH) at room temperature as an etchant of laser modified glass, we show the polarization dependent linear increase in retardance reaching a threefold value within 25 hours. The dispersion control of birefringence by the etching procedure led to achromatic behaviour over the entire visible spectral range. The mechanism of enhanced KOH etching selectivity after femtosecond laser exposure is discussed and correlated to the formation of various laser-induced defects, such as silicon-rich oxygen deficiency and color centers.

We present a series of efficient near-infrared (NIR) Cr3+-doped non-gallate long-persistence phosphors (Zn2SnO4: Cr and Zn(2-x)Al2xSn(1-x)O4: Cr) and highlight their special optical characteristics of broad emission band (650–1200 nm, peaking at 800 nm) and long afterglow duration (>35 h). In the context of materials selection, these systems successfully avoid the existing ubiquitous reliance on gallates as hosts in Cr3+-doped phosphorescent phosphors. Zn2SnO4 is employed as a host to take advantage of its characteristic inverse spinel crystal structure, easy substitution into Zn2+ and Sn4+ sites by Cr3+ in distorted octahedral coordination and non-equivalent substitution. In this work, Al dopant was introduced both to precisely tailor the local crystal field around the activator center, Cr3+, and to redeploy trap distribution in the system. Indeed, such redeployment permits band gap adjustment and the dynamic variation of the annihilation and the formation of defects. The results demonstrate that the method employed here can be an effective way to fabricate multi-wavelength, low-cost, NIR phosphorescent phosphors with many potential multifunctional bio-imaging applications. An international team has found a way to lower the cost and tune the emission properties of phosphorescent probes used for bioimaging. Long phosphorescent phosphors are newly developed materials that can absorb energy and release it as biologically compatible, near-infrared light over extended time frames. Typically, long phosphorescent phosphors rely on gallium ions for super-long emission, but gallium is becoming increasingly expensive. Jianrong Qiu from Guangzhou, China, and co-workers sought a cheaper alternative based on a zinc-tin oxide doped with chromium and/or aluminum atoms. The compound structure allowed the crystal field surrounding the transition metals to be easily modified through using dopants and defects; in turn, this crystal field change significantly affected the phosphorescence. Careful fabrication strategies uncovered new gallium-free phosphors that operate at multiple wavelengths and radiate for longer than 35 hours. Novel Cr3+-doped non-gallate near-infrared phosphorescent phosphor, Zn2SnO4: Cr, with the special optical characteristics of broad emission band (650–1200 nm, peaking at 800 nm) and long afterglow duration (>35 h) was presented, which successfully avoid the existing ubiquitous reliance on gallates as hosts in Cr3+-doped phosphorescent phosphors. This research also deals with the method of finely tailoring the local crystal field around the activator center, Cr3+, along with essential redeployment of trap distributions by adding Al. Indeed, such redeployment permits band gap adjustment and the dynamic variation of the annihilation and formation of defects.

We demonstrate a single beam generated optical vortices of topological charge up to 100 with tunable orbital angular momentum. The continuous control of torque without altering the intensity distribution was implemented in optical trapping.

Formation of sub-wavelength periodic structures in bulk transparent materials during irradiation with intense ultrashort light pulses remains a mystery. Nevertheless the phenomenon has enabled unique applications ranging from printed flat optics to eternal data storage.

We demonstrate femto- and picosecond laser assisted nanostructuring of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H). The laser-induced periodic sub-wavelength structures exhibit the dichroism and giant form birefringence giving extra dimensions to the polarization sensitive image recording.