High-sensitivity force sensing using a phonon laser in an active levitated optomechanical system.

Force detection with high sensitivity is of paramount importance in many fields of study, from gravitational wave detection to investigations of surface forces. Here, we propose and demonstrate a force-sensing method based on gain-enhanced nonlinearity in a nonlinear phonon laser. Experimental and simulation results show that the input force leads to the frequency shift of phonon laser, due to nonlinearity. In addition, we further investigate the influences of the pumping power, numerical aperture, and microsphere's refractive index on the performance of this force-sensing system, regarding the sensitivity and the linear response range. Our work paves a new way towards the realization of precise metrology based on the nonlinearity of phonon laser.

Random walk reduction in dithered ring laser gyroscope.

We experimentally demonstrated that the random walk in a dithered ring laser gyroscope caused by lock-in crossing can be eliminated by lock-in error compensation. Computer simulations demonstrated the effectiveness of this method. The experimental results show that the random walk coefficient can be reduced as predicted. Furthermore, gyroscopes with different random walk performances can achieve nearly the same random walk level after compensation, illustrating that the quantum limit can be approached after removing the lock-in error.

Structured-light displacement detection method using split-waveplate for dual-beam optical tweezers.

Structured-light displacement detection method is an innovative approach with extremely high sensitivity for measuring the displacement of a levitated particle. This scheme includes two key components, a split-waveplate (SWP) and a single-mode fiber. In this work, we further investigated the influence of SWP installation on this method regarding the sensitivity of displacement detection. The results indicate that the sensitivity increases with the expanding of SWP offset in the effective range. In addition, we found this method has a significant tolerance rate, with an extensive SWP offset effective range of 5%-25%. However, an excessive offset can render this method ineffective. More interestingly, we demonstrated the feasibility of rotating the SWP to detect displacement in different directions. Our research contributes to guiding the structured-light detection methods in practical applications and expanding their applications in fundamental physics.

Characteristics of the phonon laser in the active levitated optomechanical system.

Phonon lasers, coherent oscillations of phonons, have gradually become one of the emerging frontiers in the last decades, and have promising applications in quantum sensing, information processing, and precise measurement. Recently, phonon lasers based on dissipative coupling have been realized in an active levitated optomechanical (LOM) system for the first time. Here, we further investigated the characteristics of the phonon laser in the system above regarding the oscillator amplitude and the phonon laser linewidth. We established both the experimental system and a physical model of the phonon laser. On the basis of simulations and experiments, the influences of pumping power, numerical aperture, the microsphere's diameter and refractive index on the performance of the phonon lasers are sufficiently discussed. Our work is of great significance for the high-quality phonon lasers generated by the appropriate parameters, which is the basis for the in-depth research and practical application.

Enhanced optical trapping of ZrO2@TiO2 photonic force probe with broadened solvent compatibility.

Optical trapping and manipulating nanoparticles are essential tools for interrogating biomedicine at the limits of space and time. Typically, silica or polystyrene microspheres are used as photonic force probes. However, adapting those probes to organic solvents is an ongoing challenge due to the limited solvent compatibility and low refractive index mismatch. Here we report on the optical force enhancement and solvent compatibility that utilizes ZrO2@TiO2 core-shell nanoparticles. We experimentally demonstrate that the 450-nm-diameter ZrO2@TiO2 core-shell nanoparticles achieve the lateral and axial trap stiffness up to 0.45 pN µm-1 mW-1 and 0.43 pN µm-1 mW-1 in water, showing more than fivefold and ninefold improvement on the ordinary SiO2 particle of the same size. In addition, ZrO2@TiO2 core-shell nanoparticles can realize stable three-dimensional trapping in both polyethylene glycol and glucose solutions. This optical trapping enhancement property, coupled with solvent compatibility, expands the range of feasible optical trapping experiments and will pave the way toward more advanced biological applications.

Millimeter-scale ultrathin suspended metasurface integrated high-finesse optomechanical cavity.

A typical optomechanical system is a cavity with one movable mirror and one fixed mirror. However, this configuration has been considered incapable of integrating sensitive mechanical elements while maintaining high cavity finesse. Although the membrane-in-the-middle solution seems to be able to overcome this contradiction, it introduces additional components that will lead to unexpected insertion loss, resulting in reduced cavity quality. Here we propose a Fabry-Perot optomechanical cavity composed of an ultrathin suspended Si3N4 metasurface and a fixed Bragg grating mirror, with a measured finesse up to 1100. Transmission loss of this cavity is very low as the reflectivity of this suspended metasurface tends to unity around 1550 nm. Meanwhile, the metasurface has a millimeter-scale transverse dimension and a thickness of only 110 nm, which guarantees a sensitive mechanical response and low cavity diffraction loss. Our metasurface-based high-finesse optomechanical cavity has a compact structure, which facilitates the development of quantum and integrated optomechanical devices.

Study of a Mode Separation Due to Polarization Existing in a Cavity-Enhanced Absorption Spectroscopy.

A special phenomenon of resonance mode separation is observed during the study of a high sensitivity folded-cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy for the measurement of trace gases. The phenomenon affects the measurement of gas absorption spectrum in the cavity. This resonant mode separation phenomenon of the resonant cavity is different from the resonant modes previously observed in linear-cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy systems. To explore the mechanism of this phenomenon, a series of hypotheses are proposed. The most likely reason among these hypotheses is based on the different reflectance properties of the plane mirror at the fold of the cavity for S-polarized light and P-polarized light. Based on the matrix calculation method, the different reflectance and phase shift of the plane mirror for S-polarized light and P-polarized light are analyzed theoretically, and the results are in better agreement with the phenomena observed in the experiment. Finally, in order to eliminate the resonant mode separation phenomenon, line polarizers were added. By improving the system, the cavity enhanced absorption spectrum of residual water vapor in the cavity was successfully measured, and a minimum detectable absorption coefficient of αmin = 7.6 × 10-9 cm-1 can be obtained in a single laser scan of 10 s.

A 5.86 Million Quality Factor Cylindrical Resonator with Improved Structural Design Based on Thermoelastic Dissipation Analysis.

The cylindrical resonator is the core component of cylindrical resonator gyroscopes (CRGs). The quality factor (Q factor) of the resonator is one crucial parameter that determines the performance of the gyroscope. In this paper, the finite element method is used to theoretically investigate the influence of the thermoelastic dissipation (TED) of the cylindrical resonator. The improved structure of a fused silica cylindrical resonator is then demonstrated. Compared with the traditional structure, the thermoelastic Q (QTED) of the resonator is increased by 122%. In addition, the Q factor of the improved cylindrical resonator is measured, and results illustrate that, after annealing and chemical etching, the Q factor of the resonator is significantly higher than that of the cylindrical resonators reported previously. The Q factor of the cylindrical resonator in this paper reaches 5.86 million, which is the highest value for a cylindrical resonator to date.

A suspended metasurface achieves complete light absorption: a 50 nm-thick optical nanomicrophone.

Considerably subtle vibrations can be detected by light signals. Commonly, this is achieved based on the phase change of light that can be attributed to the vibration of a movable mirror, which has been used in gravitational wave detection. For a homogeneous dielectric membrane, the thinner the membrane, the greater the membrane vibration amplitude will be with respect to the sound pressure. However, if the membrane is too thin, most of the light will transmit through the membrane and the sensitivity will be reduced. To resolve this contradiction, we have developed a metasurface membrane with a thickness of only 50 nm but a considerably high reflectivity. This membrane is integrated with a 100-nm-thick gold membrane to form a cavity that can achieve perfect absorption of light. The vibration of the metasurface, which records the sound wave information, can change the light absorption. The noise equivalent pressure of the proposed structure is several orders lower than those of the recently reported optoacoustic detectors, and the alternating current signal response can be enhanced by approximately 1500 times compared with that of a membrane without a metasurface. The integration of nanomechanical oscillators and ultrathin membranes with a metasurface may facilitate future ultrasensitive sound and ultrasonic detection and benefit optomechanic design.

Influence of Electrostatic Forces on the Vibrational Characteristics of Resonators for Coriolis Vibratory Gyroscopes.

The Coriolis Vibratory Gyroscopes are a type of sensors that measure angular velocities through the Coriolis effect. The resonator is the critical component of the CVGs, the vibrational characteristics of which, including the resonant frequency, frequency mismatch, Q factor, and Q factor asymmetry, have a great influence on the performance of CVG. The frequency mismatch and Q factor of the resonator, in particular, directly determine the precision and drift characteristics of the gyroscope. Although the frequency mismatch and Q factor are natural properties of the resonator, they can change with external conditions, such as temperature, pressure, and external forces. In this paper, the influence of electrostatic forces on the vibrational characteristics of the fused silica cylindrical resonator is investigated. Experiments were performed on a fused silica cylindrical resonator coated with Cr/Au films. It was shown that the resonant frequency, frequency mismatch, and the decay time slightly decreased with electrostatic forces, while the decay time split increased. Lower capacitive gaps and larger applied voltages resulted in lower frequency mismatch and lower decay time. This phenomenon was theoretically analyzed, and the variation trends of results were consistent with the theoretical analysis. This study indicates that, for fused silica cylindrical resonator with electrostatic transduction, the electrostatic influence on the Q factor and frequency, although small, should be considered when designing the capacitive gap and choosing bias voltages.

Application of Near-Infrared Optical Feedback Cavity Enhanced Absorption Spectroscopy (OF-CEAS) to the Detection of Ammonia in Exhaled Human Breath.

The qualitative and quantitative analysis to trace gas in exhaled human breath has become a promising technique in biomedical applications such as disease diagnosis and health status monitoring. This paper describes an application of a high spectral resolution optical feedback cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy (OF-CEAS) for ammonia detection in exhaled human breath, and the main interference of gases such as CO2 and H2O are approximately eliminated at the same time. With appropriate optical feedback, a fibered distributed feedback (DFB) diode laser emitting at 1531.6 nm is locked to the resonance of a V-shaped cavity with a free spectral range (FSR) of 300 MHz and a finesse of 14,610. A minimum detectable absorption coefficient of αmin = 2.3 × 10-9 cm-1 is achieved in a single scan within 5 s, yielding a detection limit of 17 ppb for NH3 in breath gas at low pressure, and this stable system allows the detection limit down to 4.5 ppb when the spectra to be averaged over 16 laser scans. Different from typical CEAS with a static cavity, which is limited by the FSR in frequency space, the attainable spectral resolution of our experimental setup can be up to 0.002 cm-1 owing to the simultaneous laser frequency tuning and cavity dither. Hence, the absorption line profile is more accurate, which is most suitable for low-pressure trace gas detection. This work has great potential for accurate selectivity and high sensitivity applications in human breath analysis and atmosphere sciences.

Imbalance of Th22/Treg cells causes microinflammation in uremic patients undergoing hemodialysis.

BACKGROUND: Regulatory T (Treg) cells are of critical functionality in immune activation and inflammation in uremic patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD). A disruption in balance of Treg cells has potency to elicit infectious disease progression. Here, we examined possible association between ratio imbalance of Th22/Treg cells and microinflammation in uremic patients undergoing HD. METHODS: Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated to allow measurement of the percentage of Th22 cells and Treg cells using flow cytometry. Subsequently, serum levels of related cytokines, interleukin (IL) 22 (IL-22) and IL-10 and inflammatory factors, C-reactive protein (CRP), (TNF-α), IL-6 were determined via enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Then relationships among dialysis time, microinflammation status (CRP) and dialysis adequacy (immunoreactive parathyroid hormone (iPTH), urea clearance index (Kt/V), ß2-MG, serum calcium, and serum phosphorus) were evaluated. Finally, correlation between microinflammation status and dialysis adequacy was analyzed with Pearson's correlation coefficient. RESULTS: An increased percentage of Th22 and a decreased percentage of Treg cells were evident in uremic patients undergoing HD. Serum levels of IL-22, CRP, TNF-α, and IL-6 were increased, while IL-10 serum level was reduced. An imbalance of Th22/Treg cells was associated with microinflammation status in uremic patients undergoing HD. Furthermore, prolongation of the dialysis time, the microinflammation status and dialysis adequacy were changed. Increased dialysis adequacy was observed to correlate with alleviated microinflammation of uremic patients undergoing HD. CONCLUSIONS: Conjointly, an imbalance of Th22/Treg cells may be a potential cause responsible for uremia occurrence, which in turn indicates that uremia could be effectively alleviated by altering the ratio of Th22/Treg cells.

Cylindrical Fused Silica Resonators Driven by PZT Thin Film Electrodes with Q Factor Achieving 2.89 Million after Coating.

Cylindrical shell fused silica resonators coated with 8 axisymmetric Pb(Zr0.53Ti0.47)O3 (PZT) thin film electrodes (thickness ~2 µm) were reported. The resonators were firstly designed and fabricated, then annealed and processed by chemical etching to increase mechanical quality factor (Q factor) of resonators, which achieved as high as 2.89 million for n = 2 wineglass modes after being coated with PZT thin film electrodes. The n = 2 wineglass modes of the resonators were driven by PZT thin film electrodes in experiment and simulation with fine vibratory shape, which demonstrated the feasibility of the cylindrical fused silica resonator driven by PZT thin film electrodes. The application of PZT thin film electrodes to drive and detect cylindrical shell fused silica resonator can significantly improve Q factor of resonators and improve the sensitivity of Coriolis Vibratory Gyroscope (CVG).

Spatial coating inhomogeneity of highly reflective mirrors determined by cavity ringdown measurements.

The inhomogeneity of high-reflectivity mirror coatings is a potential error source in the application of the cavity ringdown technique. Here, the ringdown times for different transverse modes were recorded. Together with the observed spatial distribution of these modes the ringdown times can be used to approximately locate the position of coating defects. A simple model based on a weighted sum of Hermite-Gaussian mode functions is used to explain the experimental results.

Reanalysis of generalized sensitivity factors for optical-axis perturbation in nonplanar ring resonators.

By utilizing the novel coordinate system for Gaussian beam reflection and the generalized ray matrix for spherical mirror reflection, the generalized sensitivity factors SD1, ST1, SD2 and ST2 influenced by both the radial and axial displacements of a spherical mirror in a nonplanar ring resonator have been obtained. Besides, the singular points of different kinds of non-planar ring resonators under the conditions of incident angle A ranging from 0° to 45° or total coordinate rotation angle ρ ranging from 0° to 360° have also been obtained through the analysis of the determinant of the coefficient matrix of the linear equations. The analysis in this paper is important to the cavity design of non-planar ring resonators and it could be helpful to avoid the violent movement of the optical-axis to small misalignment of the mirrors in non-planar ring resonators.

A developed optical-feedback cavity ring-down spectrometer and its application.

A developed spectrometer based on optical-feedback cavity ring-down spectroscopy (OF-CRDS) has been demonstrated with a distributed feedback laser diode and a V-shaped glass ceramic cavity. The laser is coupled to the V-shaped cavity, which creates an absorption path length greater than 2.8 km, and resonance between the laser frequency and the cavity modes is realized by modulating the cavity length instead of tuning the laser wavelength to obtain a higher resolution. A noise-equivalent absorption coefficient of ~2.6 × 10(-8) cm(-1)Hz(-1/2) (1σ) is determined with spectral resolution of ~0.003 cm(-1) and spectral range of 1.2 cm(-1). As an application example, the absorption spectrum measurement of water vapor in the spectral range of 6590.3~6591.5 cm(-1) is demonstrated with this spectrometer.

Nanosecond square high voltage pulse generator for electro-optic switch.

A scalable square high voltage pulse generator, which has the properties of fast rise time, fast fall time, powerful driving capability, and long lifetime, is presented in this paper by utilizing solid state circuitry. A totem-pole topology is designed to supply a powerful driving capability for the electro-optic (EO) crystal which is of capacitive load. Power MOSFETs are configured in series to sustain high voltage, and proper driving circuits are introduced for the specific MOSFETs configurations. A 3000 V pulse generator with ~49.04 ns rise time and ~10.40 ns fall time of the output waveform is presented. This kind of generator is desirable for electro-optic switch. However, it is not specific to EO switch and may have broad applications where high voltage fast switching is required.

Precise wavelength calibration in continuous-wave cavity ringdown spectroscopy based on the HITRAN database.

We describe the wavelength calibration method of a narrowband laser diode in continuous-wave (CW) cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS). The method uses known spectral lines as wavelength markers to calibrate and refine the wavelength-current relation of laser diodes, and their spectral positions are taken directly from the HITRAN 2004 database. We built a compact CW CRDS apparatus with a 1.517 microm (approximately 6594 cm-1) distributed feedback (DFB) laser diode as the light source and a 25 cm long glass ceramic as the cavity in which to demonstrate the method. A wavelength precision of approximately 0.8 x 10(-3) cm-1 was obtained by comparing the HITRAN 2004 database, which was approximately four times more precise than that of the conventional method.

[Monthly changes in caloric values of five shrubby Palmae species leaves].

Studies on the monthly changes in the ash contents and caloric values of 5 shrubby Palmae species (Chamaerops humilis, Rhapis gracilis, Sabal minor, Chamaedorea cataractarum, Chamaedorea brachypoda) leaves showed that annual average ash content of the five shrubby species was 4.87% +/- 1.37% for Chamaerops humilis, 8.33% +/- 0.89% for Rhapis gracilis, 7.85% +/- 2.64% for Sabal minor, 9.20% +/- 1.35% for Chamaedorea cataractarum, and 12.42% +/- 1.78% for Chamaedorea brachypoda. The monthly changes of gross caloric value were different for Chamaerops humilis, Rhapis gracilis and Sabal minor, but similar to each other for Chamaedorea cataractarum and Chamaedorea brachypoda, and the annual average gross caloric value of the five shrubby species was 20.50 +/- 0.32 kJ x g(-1) for Chamaerops humilis, 20.04 +/- 0.50 kJ x g(-1) for Rhapis gracilis, 20.21 +/- 0.68 kJ x g(-1) for Sabal minor, 20.52 +/- 0.48 kJ x g(-1) for Chamaedorea cataractarum and 18.90 +/- 0.47 kJ x g(-1) for Chamaedorea brachypoda. The gross caloric values were correlated remarkably with ash contents for Chamaedorea cataractarum and Sabal minor (P < 0.05), but there was no significant correlation between gross caloric values and ash contents for other three species (P > 0.05). Rhapis gracilis and Sabal minor, and Chamaedorea cataractarum and Chamaedorea brachypoda had similar monthly changes in ash free caloric values, respectively. The average ash free caloric value of the five shrubby species was 21.55 +/- 0.53 kJ x g(-1) for Chamaerops humilis, 21.87 +/- 0.46 kJ x g(-1) for Rhapis gracilis, 21.84 +/- 0.53 kJ x g(-1) for Sabal minor, 22.60 +/- 0.81 kJ x g(-1) for Chamaedorea cataractarum, and 21.59 +/- 0.63 kJ x g(-1) for Chamaedorea brachypoda. Chamaedorea cataractarum had a higher ash free caloric value than other four species (P < 0.05), and the ash free caloric values of Chamaerops humilis, Rhapis gracilis, Sabal minor and Chamaedorea brachypoda were similar, the differences being not significant by t test (P > 0.05).