Opticist.org

A. Davila, J. M. Huntley, C. Pallikarakis, P. D. Ruiz, J. M. Coupland
Wavelength scanning interferometry and swept-source optical coherence tomography require accurate measurement of time-varying laser wavenumber changes. We describe here a method based on recording interferograms of multiple wedges to provide simultaneously high wavenumber resolution and immunity to ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 558-567 (2012)]

Tingbi Yuan, Zhe Wang, Lizhi Li, Zongyu Hou, Zheng Li, Weidou Ni
Quantitative carbon measurement in anthracites remains difficult with laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) due to its relatively high measurement uncertainty. To improve the measurement repeatability, binders to bind the anthracite powder together were utilized for LIBS measurement. Results ... [Appl. Opt. 51, B22-B29 (2012)]

Wen Xiong, C. S. Cai, Xuan Kong
Scour is one of the main causes of bridge failures. In order to measure and monitor scour depth variations including deposition (refilling) process, three designs for a scour monitoring system using fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are discussed in the present study. By a comparative study, one of ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 547-557 (2012)]

Eliot Petersen, Wei Shi, Arturo Chavez-Pirson, Nasser Peyghambarian
We have developed a monolithic high power pulsed fiber laser in a master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) configuration, which is capable of reaching 0.38 mJ pulse energy and 128 kW peak power for 3 ns pulses at ∼1550??nm while maintaining transform-limited linewidth. The fiber laser pulse ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 531-534 (2012)]

Narak Choi, James E. Harvey
Image analysis in the presence of surface scatter due to residual optical fabrication errors is often perceived to be complicated, nonintuitive, and achieved only by computationally intensive nonsequential ray tracing with commercial optical analysis codes such as ASAP, Zemax, Code V, TracePro, or ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 535-546 (2012)]

Rikard Heimsten, Douglas G. MacMynowski, Torben Andersen, Mette Owner-Petersen
While it is attractive to integrate a deformable mirror (DM) for adaptive optics (AO) into the telescope itself rather than using relay optics within an instrument, the resulting large DM can be expensive, particularly for extremely large telescopes. A low-cost approach for building a large DM is ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 515-524 (2012)]

Arash Sabatyan, Alireza Hemmat
A new and simple method for generating binary masks for fabrication of gray scale micro-optical elements is proposed and examined. In this technique the main idea is superimposing two or more gratings with slightly different pitches that depend on the considered gray tone level. This causes ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 525-530 (2012)]

Gisele Bennett, Peter B. Catrysse, Joyce E. Farrell, Boyd Fowler, Joseph N. Mait
Imaging systems are used in consumer, medical, and military applications. Designing, developing, and building imaging systems requires a multidisciplinary approach. This issue features current research in imaging systems that ranges from fundamental theories to novel applications. Although the ... [Appl. Opt. 51, ISA1-ISA1 (2012)]

Giacomo Langfelder
The use of full color-sensitive photodetectors with three electrically tunable spectral responses allows the design of sensors that can be real-time reconfigured for different color acquisition modes. All the (physically identical) pixels can be biased in the same way, each giving the same set of ... [Appl. Opt. 51, A91-A98 (2012)]

Joyce E. Farrell, Peter B. Catrysse, Brian A. Wandell
We describe a simulation of the complete image processing pipeline of a digital camera, beginning with a radiometric description of the scene captured by the camera and ending with a radiometric description of the image rendered on a display. We show that there is a good correspondence between ... [Appl. Opt. 51, A80-A90 (2012)]

Justin A. Hogan, Joseph A. Shaw, Rick L. Lawrence, Randal M. Larimer
As a component of a multisensor approach to monitoring carbon sequestration sites for possible leaks of the CO_2 gas from underground reservoirs, a low-cost multispectral imaging system has been developed for indirect detection of gas leaks through observations of the resulting stress in overlying ... [Appl. Opt. 51, A59-A66 (2012)]

Vicha Treeaporn, Amit Ashok, Mark A. Neifeld
Compressive imaging systems typically exploit the spatial correlation of the scene to facilitate a lower dimensional measurement relative to a conventional imaging system. In natural time-varying scenes there is a high degree of temporal correlation that may also be exploited to further reduce the ... [Appl. Opt. 51, A67-A79 (2012)]

Manjunath Somayaji, Marc P. Christensen, Esmaeil Faramarzi, Dinesh Rajan, Juha-Pekka Laine, Peter Sebelius, Arthur Zachai, Murali Chaparala, Gregory Blasche, Keith Baldwin, Babatunde Ogunfemi, Domhnull Granquist-Fraser
The design, development, and field-test results of a visible-band, folded, multiresolution, adaptive computational imaging system based on the Processing Arrays of Nyquist-limited Observations to Produce a Thin Electro-optic Sensor (PANOPTES) concept is presented. The architectural layout that ... [Appl. Opt. 51, A48-A58 (2012)]

Mathew Polek, Sivanandan S. Harilal, A. Hassanein
We performed two-dimensional (2D) mapping of the electron density in a laser-produced plasma with high spatial and temporal resolution. The plasma was produced by irradiating an aluminum target with 1064 nm, 6 ns pulses from a Nd:YAG laser under vacuum conditions. Stark broadening of the lines was ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 498-503 (2012)]

Yanbing Zhang, Ting Mei, Dao Hua Zhang
The temporal coupled-mode theory (TCMT) for a ring–bus–ring Mach–Zehnder interferometer device is developed by taking energy conservation into account. The intercavity interaction in the device is facilitated via a tricoupler, which makes the decay of modes quantitatively ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 504-508 (2012)]

Jian Fen Wu, Yong Yan Chen, Tai Sheng Wang
In order to deal with the conflicts between broad spectral region and high resolution in compact spectrometers based on a flat field concave holographic grating and line array CCD, we present a simple and practical method to design a flat field concave holographic grating that is capable of imaging ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 509-514 (2012)]

Yongqiang Zhao, Qingyong Zhang, Jinxiang Yang
Multiband polarization epithelial tissue imaging is an effective tool to measure tissue’s birefringence and structure for quantitative pathology analysis. To discriminate the pathology accurately, high-resolution multiband polarization images are essential. But it is difficult to acquire ... [Appl. Opt. 51, A27-A35 (2012)]

Predrag Milojkovic, Joseph N. Mait
We examine the space-bandwidth product of wide field-of-view imaging systems as the systems scale in size. Our analysis is based on one conducted to examine the behavior of a plano-convex lens imaging onto a flat focal geometry. We extend this to consider systems with monocentric lenses and curved ... [Appl. Opt. 51, A36-A47 (2012)]

Psang Dain Lin
The first-order derivative matrix of a function with respect to a variable vector is referred to as the Jacobian matrix in mathematics. Current commercial software packages for the analysis and design of optical systems use a finite difference (FD) approximation methodology to estimate the Jacobian ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 486-493 (2012)]

Ujjal Dutta, Lakshminarayan Hazra
In this report, we present an analysis for the primary chromatic aberrations of a diffractive lens on a spherically curved substrate having nonunity refractive index. This analysis facilitates achieving an optimal thin lens layout during structural design of the diffractive lens with prespecified ... [Appl. Opt. 51, 494-497 (2012)]