This biography is a personal portrait of one of the best-known Dutch physicists, Nicolaas Bloembergen. Born in 1920 in Dordrecht, Bloembergen studied physics in Utrecht, leaving after World War II for the United States, where he became an American citizen in 1958. At Harvard University, he pioneered nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR, used in chemistry and biology for structure identification; moreover leading to MRI), laser theory and nonlinear optics. In 1978 he was awarded the Lorentz Medal for his contribution to the theory of nonlinear optics (used in fiber optics), and in 1981 he received the Nobel Prize for physics, along with Arthur Schawlow and Kai Siegbahn. The book is based on numerous conversations with Nicolaas Bloembergen himself, his wife Deli Brink, his family, and colleagues in science. It describes his childhood and study in Bilthoven and Utrecht, the first postwar years at Harvard, the discoveries of masers and lasers, and the award of the Nobel Prize. It also delves into Bloembergen's involvement in American politics, particularly his role in Ronald Reagan's controversial Star Wars program.

This books focuses on recent break-throughs in the development of a variety of photonic devices, serving distances ranging from mm to many km, together with their electronic counter-parts, e.g. the drivers for lasers, the amplifiers following the detectors and most important, the relevant advanced VLSI circuits. It explains that as a consequence of the increasing dominance of optical interconnects for high performance workstation clusters and supercomputers their complete design has to be revised. This book thus covers for the first time the whole variety of interdependent subjects contributing to green photonics and electronics, serving communication and energy harvesting. Alternative approaches to generate electric power using organic photovoltaic solar cells, inexpensive and again energy efficient in production are summarized. In 2015, the use of the internet consumed 5-6% of the raw electricity production in developed countries. Power consumption increases rapidly and without some transformational change will use, by the middle of the next decade at the latest, the entire electricity production. This apocalyptic outlook led to a redirection of the focus of data center and HPC developers from just increasing bit rates and capacities to energy efficiency. The high speed interconnects are all based on photonic devices. These must and can be energy efficient but they operate in an electronic environment and therefore have to be considered in a wide scope that also requires low energy electronic devices, sophisticated circuit designs and clever architectures. The development of the next generation of high performance exaFLOP computers suffers from the same problem: Their energy consumption based on present device generations is essentially prohibitive.

Since the invention of the first working laser in 1960, development of these devices has progressed at an unprecedented rate, to the extent that the laser is now a common part of everyday life, from the semiconductor laser used in CD players and telecommunication systems to the high power eximer lasers used in manufacturing processes. This book traces the history of the laser, from the first theoretical predictions of stimulated emission made in the 1920s, through the experimental development of masers and lasers in the 50s and 60s, to the advanced applications of lasers in the present day. Along the way it tells the fascinating and at times controversial story of the people behind the discoveries. Written in a style suitable for the general public, it will be of interest to those working within the laser community, and to anyone with an interest in the history of science.

One of the key advances in photonic technology in recent years is the development of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs. These devices have a huge range of potential applications in areas such as communications, printing, and optical switching. This book, first published in 1999, provides a clear insight into the physics of VCSELs, as well as describing details of their fabrication and applications. All of the book's contributors are at the forefront of VCSEL research and development. Together they provide complete and coherent coverage of the current state-of-the-art. The opening chapters cover VCSEL design, emission from microcavities, growth, fabrication, and characterization. These are followed by chapters on long and short-wavelength VCSELs, optical data links, and free space optical processing. The book will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers in electrical engineering, applied physics, and materials science. It will also be an excellent reference volume for practising engineers in the photonics industry.

Diode lasers use nearly microscopic chips of gallium-arsenide or other exotic semiconductor material to generate coherent light in a very small package. Their compact size, reliability, and low cost means that they find applications in all aspects of modern technology-most importantly they drive modern optical telecommunication systems.
Diode Lasers presents a comprehensive introduction to the principles and operation of diode lasers. It begins with a review of semiconductor physics and laser fundamentals, before describing the most basic homojunction laser. Later chapters describe more advanced laser types and their applications, and the book concludes with chapters describing the most recently developed and exotic laser designs. The author's intuitive style, coupled with an extensive set of worked examples and sample problems, make this the ideal introduction for undergraduate and graduate level students.

Since first coming into existence in the early 90s, the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) has made several quantum leaps in performance. The performance of VCSELs now exceeds that of edge-emitting lasers in many respects, and offers a superior optical beam and much easier monolithic integrability. As the VCSEL technology improves further, and their number and variety multiply, their potential applications will likely expand at a rapid pace. This title addresses two main objectives. It provides the researcher and device engineer with a reference guide to understanding vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers: technology, and applications as well as the physical principles and practical design concepts of VCSELs. Furthermore, it provides the system designer or application engineer with a review of the properties of VCSELs, and an overview of some of the applications in which the VCSEL has already played an important role. Featuring contributions from prominent researchers in the field,

This thesis unifies the dissipative dynamics of an atom, particle or structure within an optical field that is influenced by the position of the atom, particle or structure itself. This allows the identification and exploration of the fundamental 'mirror-mediated' mechanisms of cavity-mediated cooling leading to the proposal of a range of new techniques based upon the same underlying principles. It also reveals powerful mechanisms for the enhancement of the radiation force cooling of micromechanical systems, using both active gain and the resonance of a cavity to which the cooled species are external. This work has implications for the cooling not only of weakly-scattering individual atoms, ions and molecules, but also for highly reflective optomechanical structures ranging from nanometre-scale cantilevers to the metre-sized mirrors of massive interferometers.

This book gathers a selection of peer-reviewed papers presented at the Tiangong-2 Data Utilization Conference, which was held in Beijing, China, in December 2018. As the first space laboratory in China, Tiangong-2 carries 3 new types of remote sensing payloads - the Wide-band Imaging Spectrometer (WIS), Three-dimensional Imaging Microwave Altimeter (TIMA), and Multi-band Ultraviolet Edge Imaging Spectrometer (MUEIS) - for observing the Earth. The spectrum of the WIS covers 18 bands, from visible to thermal infrared, with a swath of 300km. The TIMA is the first-ever system to use interferometric imaging radar altimeter (InIRA) technology to measure sea surface height and land topography at near-nadir angles with a wide swath. In turn, the MUEIS is the world's first large-field atmospheric detector capable of quasi-synchronously detecting the characteristics of ultraviolet limb radiation in the middle atmosphere. The Earth observation data obtained by Tiangong-2 has attracted many research groups and been applied in such diverse areas as land resources, water resources, climate change, environmental monitoring, agriculture, forestry, ecology, oceanography, meteorology and so on. The main subjects considered in this proceedings volume include: payload design, data processing, data service and application. It also provides a comprehensive introduction to the research results gleaned by engineers, researchers and scientists throughout the lifecycle of the Tiangong-2 Earth observation data, which will improve the payload development and enhance remote sensing data applications.

Recent years have witnessed rapid advances in the development of solid state, fiber, semiconductor, and parametric sources of coherent radiation, which are opening up new opportunities for laser applications. Laser Sources and Applications provides a tutorial introduction to the basic principles of these developments at a level suitable for postgraduate research students and others with a basic knowledge of lasers and nonlinear optics. Encompassing both the physics and engineering aspects of the field, the book covers the nature of nonlinear optical interactions; solid state, fiber, and semiconductor lasers; optical parametric oscillators; and ultrashort pulse generation and applications. It also explores applications of current interest, such as electromagnetically induced transparency, atomic trapping, and soliton optical communications.

This volume discusses the basic principles necessary to understand lasers, explains laser interactions with materials, and surveys the wide variety of industrial applications of the major laser types, covering in detail the operating mechanisms of carbon dioxide, Nd: YAG, and excimer lasers. It presents lasers as manufacturing tools rather than laboratory devices

In spite of the increasing importance of microcavities, device physics or the observable phenomena in optical microcavities such as enhanced or inhibited spontaneous emission and its relation with the laser oscillation has not been systematically well-described-until now.
Spontaneous Emission and Laser Oscillation in Microcavities presents the basics of optical microcavities. The volume is divided into ten chapters, each written by respected authorities in their areas.
The book surveys several methods describing free space spontaneous emission and discusses changes in the feature due to the presence of a cavity. The effect of dephasing of vacuum fields on spontaneous emission in a microcavity and the effects of atomic broadening on spontaneous emission in an optical microcavity are examined. The book details the splitting in transmission peaks of planar microcavities containing semiconductor quantum wells.
A simple but useful way to consider the change in the spontaneous emission rate from the viewpoint of mode density alteration by wavelength-sized cavities is provided. Authors also discuss the spontaneous emission in dielectric planar microcavities. Spontaneous emission in microcavity surface emitting lasers is covered, as are the effects of electron confinement in semiconductor quantum wells, wires, and boxes also given.
The volume extends the controlling spontaneous emission phenomenon to laser oscillation. Starting from the Fermi golden rule, the microcavity laser rate equations are derived, and the oscillation characteristics are analyzed. Recent progress in optical microcavity experiments is summarized, and the applicability in massively optical parallel processing systems and demands for the device performance are explored.
This volume is extremely useful as a textbook for graduate and postgraduate students and works well as a unique reference for researchers beginning to study in the field.

This book deals specifically with the manipulation of atoms by laser light, describing the focusing, channeling and reflection of atoms by laser fields. It also describes the potential fields required to cause the phase change of the wave function necessary for the atomic interactions to occur.

This book covers recent developments in laser plasma physics such as absorption, instability, energy transport and radiation from the standpoint of theory and simulation for plasma corona, showing how the elements for the high density compression depend on the interaction physics and heat transport.

Provides an overview of and introduction to nanoscale materials Explains the features of 0D, 1D, 2D and 3D nanomaterials Exhibits the wide range of applications of nanomaterials in optoelectronics, photonics, biosensing, x-rays and x-ray detectors, medical imaging, visible light photodetectors, etc. Discusses the advances in miniaturized nanoscale devices for biomedical applications Describes the various preparation methods for advanced nanomaterials and their functionalization for fabrication of nanoelectronics devices Enlightens on the challenges and future prospects in nanoscale research

"Information on recent progress in laser remote sensor (LIDAR) technology can be found scattered throughout numerous journal articles and conference proceedings, but until now there has been no work that summarizes recent advancements and achievements in the field in a detailed format. Laser Remote Sensing provides an up-to-date, comprehensive review on LIDAR, focusing mainly on applications to current topics in atmospheric science. The scope of the book includes laser remote sensing of the atmosphere, including measurement of aerosols, water vapor, clouds, winds, trace constituents, and temperature. It also covers other interesting applications such as vegetation monitoring and altimetry. LIDAR systems described in this volume include ground-based (fixed or mobile), airborne, and spaceborne (satellite-based) systems. The book emphasizes instrumentation and measurement techniques to enable the reader to understand what kind of a LIDAR system is necessary for a certain application.

Polymer optical fibers (POFs) have been regarded as a viable alternative to silica fibers in a variety of sensing applications. Fiber optic sensors offer key advantages over other sensing technologies, which include immunity to electromagnetic interference, compact, lightweight, multiplexing capability, and higher sensitivity. This book gives an overview of the polymer optical fiber Bragg grating (POFBG) technology over the last 20 years, covering aspects related to the fiber Bragg grating fabrication and also sensing applications. The book is split into five chapters, and it is written in such a way that can provide a comprehensive and simple route to new users, scientists and engineers working or wishing to work in the field of POFBGs: Describes the systems commonly employed for producing fiber Braggs gratings (FBGs) in silica fibers that can be used for the production of POFBGs; Explores different laser sources for the inscription of POFBGs; Explores the capability of using this technology at the visible and infrared region, in different fiber types (e.g., step-index, microstructured, unclad, highly birefringent) and in fibers composed of different polymer materials such as PMMA, doped PMMA, PS and ZEONEX; Reports the fabrication of different types of POF gratings, such as uniform, phase-shifted, tilted, chirped, and long-period gratings; Shows the opportunities of POFBGs for a variety of sensing applications. The insight to the use of POFBGs provides a vision for the opportunities of this fiber optic technology.

Miniaturization and high precision are rapidly becoming a requirement for many industrial processes and products. As a result, there is greater interest in the use of laser microfabrication technology to achieve these goals. This book composed of 16 chapters covers all the topics of laser precision processing from fundamental aspects to industrial applications to both inorganic and biological materials. It reviews the sate of the art of research and technological development in the area of laser processing.

This book is motivated by the very favorable reception given to the previous editions as well as by the considerable range of new developments in the laser ?eld since the publication of the third edition in 1989. These new developmentsinclude, among others, Quantum-Well and Multiple-Quantum Well lasers, diode-pumpedsolid-state lasers, new concepts for both stable and unstable resonators, femtosecond lasers, ultra-high-brightness lasers etc. The basic aim of the book has remained the same, namely to providea broad and uni?ed description of laser behavior at the simplest level which is compatible with a correct physical understanding. The book is thereforeintendedas a text-bookfor a senior-levelor ?rst-year graduatecourse and/or as a reference book. This edition corrects several errors introduced in the previous edition. The most relevant additions or changes to since the third edition can be summarized as follows: 1. A much-more detailed description of Ampli?ed Spontaneous Emission has been given [Chapt. 2] and a novel simpli?ed treatment of this phenomenon both for homogeneousor inhomogeneouslines has been introduced [Appendix C]. 2. A major fraction of a chapter [Chapt. 3] is dedicated to the interaction of radiation with semiconductor media, either in a bulk form or in a quantum-con?ned structure (quantum-well, quantum-wire and quantum dot). 3. A moderntheory of stable and unstable resonatorsis introduced,where a more ext- sive use is made of the ABCD matrix formalism and where the most recent topics of dynamically stable resonators as well as unstable resonators, with mirrors having Gaussian or super-Gaussian transverse re?ectivity pro?les, are considered [Chapt. 5].