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Deciding on appropriate materials and designs for use in light sails, like the one proposed in the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, is a topic that requires much care and forethought. Here, we offer a feasible option in the form of…
Silicon carbide (SiC) is an indirect-gap semiconductor material widely used in electronic and optoelectronic applications. While experimental measurements of the phonon-assisted absorption coefficient of SiC across its indirect gap have…
Studying thermal transport at the nanoscale poses formidable experimental challenges due both to the physics of the measurement process and to the issues of accuracy and reproducibility. The laser-induced transient thermal grating (TTG)…
We have used a photothermal technique, in which chopped light heats the front surface of a small ( ~ 1 mm2) sample and the chopping frequency dependence of thermal radiation from the back surface is measured with a liquid nitrogen cooled…
Exploring novel materials with enhanced optical nonlinearities at low power levels with ultrafast response and small footprints is of great interests for information processing, communication, sensing and quantum systems. Recent progress on…
Low-loss photonic integrated circuits (PIC) and microresonators have enabled novel applications ranging from narrow-linewidth lasers, microwave photonics, to chip-scale optical frequency combs and quantum frequency conversion. To translate…
Silicon photonics is being extended from the near-infrared (near-IR) window of 1.3-1.5 {\mu}m for optical fiber communications to the mid-infrared (mid-IR) wavelength-band of 2 {\mu}m or longer for satisfying the increasing demands in many…
Among the top priorities for high-energy astronomy in the coming decade are sensitive surveys in the hard X-ray/soft \gamma-ray (10-600 keV) and medium-energy \gamma-ray (0.2-80 MeV) bands. Historically, observations in the soft and medium…
Light trapping photonic crystal (PhC) patterns on the surface of Si solar cells provides a novel opportunity to approach the theoretical efficiency limit of 32.3%, for light-to-electrical power conversion with a single junction cell. This…
A technique is demonstrated which efficiently transfers light between a tapered standard single-mode optical fiber and a high-Q, ultra-small mode volume, silicon photonic crystal resonant cavity. Cavity mode quality factors of 47000 are…
We studied the ultrafast third-order optical nonlinearity in a single crystal of multiferroic bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) in the near-infrared range of 0.5-1.0 eV, where the material is fundamentally transparent,at room temperature. With pump…
A tightly focused pulsed laser can locally modify the crystal structure inside the bulk of a scintillator. The result is incorporation of so-called optical barriers with a refractive index (RI) different from that of the crystal bulk, that…
The Cu nanowires were electrodeposited in polycarbonate track-etched (PCT) membrane. SEM, TEM and XPS techniques were used to characterize the morphology, structure and size of nanowires as well as chemical Composition. The absorption…
Two-dimensional (2D) materials have received considerable attention as possible electrodes in Li-ion batteries (LIBs), although a deeper understanding of the Li adsorption behavior as well as broad screening of the materials space is still…
We demonstrate the combination of a hemispherical solid immersion lens with a micro-photoluminescence setup. Two advantages introduced by the SIL, an improved resolution of 0.4 times the wavelength in vacuum and a 5 times enhancement of the…
We propose a fundamentally new design strategy of light-pulsed atom interferometry (LPAI) with a single atomic beam splitter. A traditional $\pi/2$-pulse Raman beam is employed to render a small momentum transfer at the initial state. After…
A numerical modeling study based on 3D finite element method (FEM) simulation and 1D analytical solutions has been carried out to evaluate the capabilities of two ac methods for measuring in-plane thermal conductivity of thin film deposited…
Integrated photonics has revolutionized optical communication, sensing, and computation, offering miniaturized and lightweight solutions for spacecraft with limited size and payload. Novel chip-scale instruments based on ultralow-loss…
Waveguide-integrated plasmonics is a growing field with many innovative concepts and demonstrated devices in the visible and near-infrared. Here, we extend this body of work to the mid-infrared for the application of surface-enhanced…
Silicon nitride (Si$_3$N$_4$) photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have emerged as a versatile platform for a wide range of applications, such as nonlinear optics, narrow-linewidth lasers, and quantum photonics. While thin-film Si$_3$N$_4$…