Capabilities of time-resolved X-ray excited optical luminescence of the Taiwan Photon Source 23A X-ray nanoprobe beamline.

Time-resolved X-ray excited optical luminescence (TR-XEOL) was developed successfully for the 23A X-ray nanoprobe beamline located at the Taiwan Photon Source (TPS). The advantages of the TR-XEOL facility include (i) a nano-focused X-ray beam (<60 nm) with excellent spatial resolution and (ii) a streak camera that can simultaneously record the XEOL spectrum and decay time. Three time spans, including normal (30 ps to 2 ns), hybrid (30 ps to 310 ns) and single (30 ps to 1.72 µs) bunch modes, are available at the TPS, which can fulfil different experimental conditions involving samples with various lifetimes. It is anticipated that TR-XEOL at the TPS X-ray nanoprobe could provide great characterization capabilities for investigating the dynamics of photonic materials.

Achieving high numerical aperture near-infrared imaging based on an ultrathin cylinder dielectric metalens.

An artificial subwavelength dielectric metalens (ML), the realization of being ultrathin and light-weight, provides a potential candidate with replacing a traditional bulky curved lens with a high image quality. A ML with 1.5 mm in diameter having numerical aperture (NA) $\sim{0.60}$∼0.60 at the near-infrared wavelength of $\lambda = 0.94 \,\,{\unicode{x00B5}{\rm m}}$λ=0.94µm was designed by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method with speeding up optimization of the MLs' scheme by the deep neural network (DNN) model. Additionally, an ultrathin high NA ML was achieved by cost effective semiconductor manufacturing technology. The fabricated ML can focus an incident light down to a spot as small as $ \sim{5.2}\,\,{\rm \unicode{x00B5}{\rm m}} $∼5.2µm with high optical efficiency of $\sim{88.4}\% $∼88.4% (focusing efficiency achieved, 23.7%). We also provided an efficient MLs' semiconductor manufacturing technology for the development of an optical device in near-infrared image technology.

Defect induced ferromagnetic ordering in epitaxial Zn0.95Mn0.05O films on sapphire (0 0 0 1).

We report the influence of Mn dopant on magnetic properties of Zn0.95Mn0.05O (ZMO)/Al2O3(0 0 0 1) hetero-epitaxial systems grown by using pulsed-laser deposition. The room temperature (RT) intrinsic ferromagnetic (FM) ordering verified by superconducting quantum interference device magnetometer and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectrum of Mn L 2,3 edges is ascribed to the substitutional Mn atoms in the Zn site of ZnO. Mn in ZMO has a tetrahedral local symmetry instead of the octahedral symmetry of MnO, after verifying the absence of the Mn-related impurities or clusters in ZMO epitaxial film by Mn K-edge and Zn K-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy spectrum, as well as the analysis of long-range structural ordering on Renninger scan of forbidden (0 0 0 5) reflection in x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectrum. Comparison of x-ray absorption spectra of ZMO with those of ZnO epilayers at O K-, Zn K-, and L 3-edges indicates that the substitution of the Zn site with Mn enhances the charge-transfer (CT) transition and the presence of Zn vacancies (VZn) also dominate the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum, implying that the formation of numerous VZn defects plays an important role in activating FM interactions. The strong CT effect and the existence of high-density VZn suggest that the intrinsic RT FM ordering of insulating ZMO is a result of the formation of the bound magnetic polarons (BMPs) that interact with each other via intermediate magnetic impurities.

Investigation of Cavity Enhanced XEOL of a Single ZnO Microrod by Using Multifunctional Hard X-ray Nanoprobe.

The multifunctional hard X-ray nanoprobe at Taiwan Photon Source (TPS) exhibits the excellent ability to simultaneously characterize the X-ray absorption, X-ray excited optical luminescence (XEOL) as well as the dynamics of XEOL of materials. Combining the scanning electron microscope (SEM) into the TPS 23A end-station, we can easily and quickly measure the optical properties to map out the morphology of a ZnO microrod. A special phenomenon has been observed that the oscillations in the XEOL associated with the confinement of the optical photons in the single ZnO microrod shows dramatical increase while the X-ray excitation energy is set across the Zn K-edge. Besides having the nano-scale spatial resolution, the synchrotron source also gives a good temporal domain measurement to investigate the luminescence dynamic process. The decay lifetimes of different emission wavelengths and can be simultaneously obtained from the streak image. Besides, SEM can provide the cathodoluminescence (CL) to be a complementary method to analyze the emission properties of materials, we anticipate that the X-ray nanoprobe will open new avenues with great characterization ability for developing nano/microsized optoelectronic devices.

Peculiar near-band-edge emission of polarization-dependent XEOL from a non-polar a-plane ZnO wafer.

Polarization-dependent hard X-ray excited optical luminescence (XEOL) was used to study not only the optical properties but also the crystallographic orientations of a non-polar a-plane ZnO wafer. In addition to a positive-edge jump and extra oscillations in the near-band-edge (NBE) XEOL yield, we observed a blue shift of the NBE emission peak that follows the polarization-dependent X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) as the X-ray energy is tuned across the Zn K-edge. This NBE blue shift is caused by the larger X-ray absorption, generating higher free carriers to reduce the exciton-LO phonon coupling, which causes a decrease in the exciton activation energy. The extra oscillations in XANES and XEOL as the polarization is set parallel to the c-axis is attributed to simultaneous excitations of the Zn 4p - O 2pπ -bond along the c-axis and the bilayer σ-bond, whereas only the σ-bond is excited when the polarization is perpendicular to the c-axis. The polarization-dependent XEOL spectra can be used to determine the crystallographic orientations.

Saturation and beating of acoustic phonon oscillations excited near the exciton resonance of strained polar ZnO/Zn0.8Mg0.2O multiple quantum wells.

Saturation and beating of coherent acoustic phonon (CAP) oscillations were observed and attributed to the screening of a built-in electric field with increasing pump power using degenerate pump-probe measurements near the exciton resonance of polar ZnO/Zn0.8Mg0.2O multiple quantum wells (MQWs). After purifying the CAP signals by using an empirical mode decomposition, we found not only that the CAP amplitude follows the trend of the band gap renormalization (BGR) and shows saturation at high pump power, but also that the CAP oscillation period coincides with that of the MQWs, consistent with the XRD and TEM results. An additional low-frequency oscillation modifying the CAP signal is revealed due to the negative change in refractive index caused by BGR as the pump power increases.

Non-interferometric phase retrieval using refractive index manipulation.

We present a novel, inexpensive and non-interferometric technique to retrieve phase images by using a liquid crystal phase shifter without including any physically moving parts. First, we derive a new equation of the intensity-phase relation with respect to the change of refractive index, which is similar to the transport of the intensity equation. The equation indicates that this technique is unneeded to consider the variation of magnifications between optical images. For proof of the concept, we use a liquid crystal mixture MLC 2144 to manufacture a phase shifter and to capture the optical images in a rapid succession by electrically tuning the applied voltage of the phase shifter. Experimental results demonstrate that this technique is capable of reconstructing high-resolution phase images and to realize the thickness profile of a microlens array quantitatively.

High-quality and Large-size Topological Insulator Bi2Te3-Gold Saturable Absorber Mirror for Mode-Locking Fiber Laser.

A novel high-quality, large-size, reflection-type topological insulator Bi2Te3-Gold (BG) film-based nonlinear optical modulator has been successfully fabricated as a two-dimensional saturable absorber mirror (SAM) by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). This BG-SAM possesses saturation fluence of 108.3 µJ/cm2, modulation depth (ΔR) of 6.5%, non-saturable loss of 38.4%, high damage threshold above 1.354 mJ/cm2 and excellent uniformity providing for the generation of passive mode-locked (ML) pulses for erbium-doped fiber lasers (EDFLs) on a large sample area. Under 124 mW 976 nm pumping, We obtained 452-fs continuous-wave ML pulses with pulse energy of 91 pJ and full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 6.72-nm from this EDFL. The results clearly evidence that the PLD is an efficient method for fabricating BG-SAM that is suitable for a compact ultrafast ML fiber laser system.

Nonequilibrium and nonlinear defect states in microcavity-polariton condensates.

The nonequilibrium and nonlinear defect modes (NNDMs), localized by a defect in a nonequilibrium microcavity-polariton condensate (MPC), are studied. There are three analytic solutions of NNDMs in a point defect: the bright NNDM, a bound state with two dark solitons for an attractive potential, and a gray soliton bound by a defect for a repulsive potential. We find that the stable NNDMs in a nonequilibrium MPC are the bright NNDM and gray soliton bound by a defect. The bright NNDM, which has the hyperbolic cotangent form, is a bright localized state existing in a uniform MPC. The bright NNDM is a unique state occurring in a nonequilibrium MPC that has pump-dissipation and repulsive-nonlinearity characters. No such state can exist in an equilibrium system with repulsive nonlinearity.

Phase retrieval by using the transport-of-intensity equation with Hilbert transform.

Phase recovery by solving the transport-of-intensity equation (TIE) is a non-iterative and non-interferometric phase retrieval technique. From solving the TIE with conventional, one partial derivative and Hilbert transform methods for both the periodic and aperiodic samples, we demonstrate that the Hilbert transform method can provide the smoother phase images with edge enhancement and fine structures. Furthermore, compared with the images measured by optical and atomic force microscopy, the Hilbert transform method has the ability to quantitatively map out the phase images for both the periodic and aperiodic structures.

Finite-difference time-domain analysis for the dynamics and diffraction of exciton-polaritons.

We adopted a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) scheme to simulate the dynamics and diffraction of exciton-polaritons, governed by the coupling of polarization waves with electromagnetic waves. The polarization wave, an approximate solution to the Schrödinger's equation at low frequencies, essentially captures the exciton behavior. Numerical stability of the scheme is analyzed and simple examples are provided to prove its validity. The system considered is both temporally and spatially dispersive, for which the FDTD analysis has attracted less attention in the literature. Here, we demonstrate that the FDTD scheme could be useful for studying the optical response of the exciton-polariton and its dynamics. The diffraction of a polariton wave from a polaritonic grating is also considered, and many sharp resonances are found, which manifest the interference effect of polariton waves. This illustrates that the measurement of transmittance or reflectance near polariton resonance can reveal subwavelength features in semiconductors, which are sensitive to polariton scattering.

Stable gray soliton pinned by a defect in a microcavity-polariton condensate.

We study the spatially localized dark state, called dark soliton, in a one-dimensional system of the non-resonantly pumped microcavity-polariton condensate (MPC). From the recent work by Xue and Matuszewski [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 216401 (2014)], we know that the dark soliton in the pure MPC system is unstable. But we find that a dark soliton pinned by a defect in the impure MPC becomes a gray soliton and can be stabilized by the presence of a defect. Moreover, the stable regime of the gray soliton is given in terms of the defect strength and pump parameter.

Single-mode selection for hard x-ray cavity resonance.

Single-mode selection is realized for hard x-ray cavity resonance using a three-mirror crystal device. The developed device consists of two coupled Si Fabry-Perot resonators (FPRs) and uses (12 4 0) backward diffraction to reflect back and forth the incident 14.4388 keV x-ray beam. The coupling between the two cavities gives an effective single-mode spectrum with a bandwidth of 0.81 meV. This method can be used to enhance the longitudinal coherent length without affecting transverse coherence, and is potentially useful in generating nearly total coherent beams in synchrotron or free-electron laser facilities.

Tuning the functionalities of a mesocrystal via structural coupling.

In the past decades, mesocrystal, a kind of nanocrystals with specific crystallographic orientation, has drawn a lot of attention due to its intriguing functionalities. While the research community keeps searching for new mesocrystal systems, it is equally crucial to develop new approaches to tune the properties of mesocrystals. In this work, a self-organized two-dimensional mesocrystal composed of highly oriented CoFe2O4 (CFO) nano-crystals with assistance of different perovskite matrices is studied as a model system. We have demonstrated that the strain state and corresponding magnetic properties of the CFO mesocrystal can be modulated by changing the surrounding perovskite matrix through their intimate structural coupling. Interestingly, this controllability is more strongly correlated to the competition of bonding strength between the matrices and the CFO mesocrystals rather than the lattice mismatch. When embedded in a matrix with a higher melting point or stiffness, the CFO mesocrystal experiences higher out-of-plane compressive strain and shows a stronger magnetic anisotropy as well as cation site-exchange. Our study suggests a new pathway to tailor the functionalities of mesocrystals.

Passive mode locking of ytterbium- and erbium-doped all-fiber lasers using graphene oxide saturable absorbers.

Broadband graphene oxide/PVA films were used as saturable absorbers (SAs) for mode locking erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) and ytterbium-doped fiber laser (YDFL) at 1.06 µm and 1.55 µm. They provide modulation depths of 3.15% and 6.2% for EDFL and YDFL, respectively. Stable self-starting mode-locked pulses are obtained for both lasers, confirming that the graphene oxide is cost-effective. We have generated mode-locked pulses with spectral width, repetition rate, and pulse duration of 0.75 nm, 9.5 MHz, and 2.7 ps. This is the shortest pulse duration directly obtained from an all-normal-dispersion YDFL with graphene-oxide saturable absorber.

12 GHz passive harmonic mode-locking in a 1.06 µm semiconductor optical amplifier-based fiber laser with figure-eight cavity configuration.

We report the generation of passively harmonic mode-locked pulses using a 1.06 µm semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) in a figure-eight laser configuration operated in the all-normal-dispersion regime. Different orders of harmonic mode-locking can be obtained from 30 MHz to 12.02 GHz by changing the injection current of the SOA from 80 to 660 mA together with the adjustment of polarization controllers. The highest pulse repetition rate increases almost linearly with the SOA current. As SOA current is set to 660 mA, we obtain the intracavity power of 46 mW at the highest repetition rate of 12.02 GHz, corresponding to the 1202th harmonic of the fundamental mode-locking frequency. To our best knowledge, this is the lowest intracavity power to generate the highest repetition rate with a passively mode-locked laser in the all-normal-dispersion regime.

Complex oxide-noble metal conjugated nanoparticles.

Hybrid nanoparticles (NPs) composed of multiple components offer new opportunities for next-generation materials. In this study, a paradigm for the noble metal/ternary complex oxide hybrid NPs is reported by adopting pulsed laser ablation in liquids. As model hybrids, gold-spinel heterodimer (Au-CoFe2O4) and gold-pervoskite heterodimer (Au-SrTiO3) NPs are investigated. This work has demonstrated the diverse playgroup of NP conjugation enlarged by complex oxides.

Lasing action in gallium nitride quasicrystal nanorod arrays.

We report the observation of lasing action from an optically pumped gallium nitride quasicrystal nanorod arrays. The nanorods were fabricated from a GaN substrate by patterned etching, followed by epitaxial regrowth. The nanorods were arranged in a 12-fold symmetric quasicrystal pattern. The regrowth grew hexagonal crystalline facets and core-shell multiple quantum wells (MQWs) on nanorods. Under optical pumping, multiple lasing peaks resembling random lasing were observed. The lasing was identified to be from the emission of MQWs on the nanorod sidewalls. The resonant spectrum and mode field of the 12-fold symmetric photonic quasicrystal nanorod arrays is discussed.

Room temperature polariton lasing vs. photon lasing in a ZnO-based hybrid microcavity.

We report on the room temperature polariton lasing and photon lasing in a ZnO-based hybrid microcavity under optical pumping. A series of experimental studies of the polariton lasing (exciton-photon detunings of δ = -119 meV) in the strong-coupling regime are discussed and compared to a photon lasing (δ = -45 meV) in the weak-coupling regime obtained in the same structure. The measured threshold power density (31.8 kW/cm2) of polariton lasing is one order of magnitude lower than that of the photon lasing (318.2 kW/cm2). In addition, the comparison between polariton lasing and photon lasing is done in terms of the linewidth broadening, blue-shift of the emission peak, and polarization.

Single frequency 1070 nm Nd:GdVO4 laser using a volume Bragg grating.

We demonstrate a single frequency diode-pumped Nd:GdVO(4) laser at 1070 nm using a volume Bragg grating as the output coupler of a short plano-concave cavity. The TEM(00) output had a maximum power of 300 mW and a linewidth less than 23 MHz. The beam propagation parameter M2 and the divergence angle at 200 mW were 1.2 and 0.37°, respectively. The single frequency tuning range was 5.1 GHz at 100 mW. Upon locking the laser frequency to a confocal reference cavity, a relative stability of 7.58 kHz was achieved. If frequency doubled, such as using a periodically-poled lithium niobate (PPLN) crystal, this laser offers an excellent light source for parity non-conservation experiments of atomic thallium.