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SEMINAR TOPIC: Amplitude squeezing by means of second-harmonic generation in a quasi-phasematched lithium niobate waveguide
SPEAKER: Darwin K. Serkland, Post-Doctoral Fellow, EECS Dept.
LOCATION: Tech Room L324
ABSTRACT: Second-harmonic generation is theoretically expected to produce squeezing in both the fundamental and second-harmonic fields. We have observed amplitude squeezing of the fundamental field in traveling-wave second-harmonic generation. Mode-locked pulses at 1.5 microns are frequency doubled in a quasi-phasematched lithium niobate waveguide. Power fluctuations of the transmitted fundamental are observed to be reduced by 0.5dB below the shot-noise level.
Pizza and beverages will be provided! We will also report on our latest outreach activities.
OPTICS OUTREACH: Willard Elementary School, Evanston
On Friday, May 17th, the Willard Elementary School in Evanston held their "Invention Convention" Science Fair. Our student chapter of OSA provided a variety of optics demonstrations and activities, including the OSA Optics Discovery Classroom Kit (hands-on activities with lenses, filters, polarizers, holograms, mirrors, fibers, etc), the fishtank demos (including the water waveguide demo with a new pump donated by Prof. Kath), fun with highly-concentrated jello waveguides, diffraction grating eyeglasses, and much more.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Nonlinear Optical Interaction in Microdroplets: Possible Applications?
SPEAKER: Richard K. Chang, Applied Physics Department, Yale University
LOCATION: Tech Room L324
ABSTRACT:
Spherical and slightly deformed microdroplets act as high Q (10^7 - 10^8) optical cavities and have dimilar optical properties as semiconductor microdisk and glass cylinders. The pump intensity is enhanced within the microparticle and the internally generated radiation, such as lasing and stimulated Raman scattering, experiences efficient optical feedback. The lasing and nonlinear optical spectra from the droplets provide information on the droplet size change, shape deformation, temperature, and species content. Specific mention will be made of the phase-matching condition with the cavity modes and of injection seeding to enhance the stimulated Raman scattering intensity of minority species.
Coffee at 2:45 pm.
OPTICS OUTREACH: Freshman Open House
The department held an open house to introduce McCormick students and our own majors to the various areas of electrical and computer engineering. Jerry LaChapelle (OSA co-president) hosted an optics session as part of the OSA outreach effort. Students were introduced to the optics courses offered in the department. A few optics principles were demonstrated, including interference patterns and coupling laser light into a fiber.
SEMINAR TOPIC: A High-Speed, High-Capacity, All-Optical Network: Architecture, Technology, and Test-Bed Activities
SPEAKER: Roe Hemenway, Ph.D., Optical Communication Technology, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
LOCATION: Tech Room A230
ABSTRACT:
Over the past few decades there has been tremendous progress in the area of optical communication systems. The advent of single-mode laser diodes, low-loss fiber, and high-performance optical amplifiers in the 1.55 micron region are notable technology milestones that have been achieved. There are many metrics by which to quantify this progress including decreasing transmission cost/bit, increasing link capacities, and increasing system bit-rate distance product where, for instance, over four orders of magnitude increase has been achieved. Today there are several technology development fronts being pursued. One important area is the development of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). WDM systems send several wavelengths down a single fiber thereby increasing the utilization of the fiber bandwidth. Already several major long haul and local exchange carriers are upgrading their installed infrastructure to WDM point-to-point trunks. While WDM is used on the links, electronic switching is used to cross-connect or drop traffic at the nodes. It is currently an active area of research around the world to develop truly transparent optical WDM networks. The vision for these networks is that routing and switching of traffic within the network is accomplished without the necessity of undergoing optical-to-electrical and electrical-to-optical conversions. It is anticipated that this technology may prove to be very high capacity (e.g. eliminating the "electronic bottleneck"), very flexible and reconfigurable, compatible with legacy network and future networks, and will be cost effective. An ARPA sponsored All-Optical Network (AON) Consortium made up of AT&T, DEC, and MIT is one of the groups working in this area. This talk will provide an overview of the AON including: 1) the architectural design issues; 2) the status of advanced technology components (e.g. tunable lasers and receivers, array lasers and receivers, all-optical WDM add/drop multiplexers and cross-connect switches, all-optical wavelength converters, etc.); and 3) status of the AON Boston metropolitan area test-bed.
Coffee at 2:30 pm.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Photonic Bandgap Solitons
SPEAKER: Richart E. Slusher, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies
LOCATION: Tech Room B211
ABSTRACT:
Nonlinear optical pulse propagation experiments will be described where the pulse wavelength is near the photonic bandgap associated with a 1-D index grating in an optical fiber. Solitons form even in regions where the dispersion depends strongly on wavelength. Recent fabrication techniques allow a wide range of grating properties including chirping, apodization, phase shifts and superstructures which lead to a rich set of nonlinear phenomena.
Coffee at 3:00 pm.
SEMINAR TOPIC: A Tunable Erbium-Doped Fiber Laser
SPEAKER: Jerry LaChapelle, EECS Dept, Northwestern University
LOCATION: EECS Conference Room (Tech Room L324)
*** Pizza and drinks at 1 pm ***
SEMINAR TOPIC: Photonic Switching Using VLSI Optoelectronic Devices
SPEAKER: Dr. Anthony L. Lentine, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville
LOCATION: Tech Room L324
ABSTRACT:
Optical interconnections are playing an increasing role in the development of large telecommunications switching and computing systems. While fiber optic interconnections between circuit boards are now common, enhanced performance and lower cost may be possible by integrating optical receivers and transmitters directly onto VLSI circuitry. Using lenses, beam splitters, and other optical components to access these circuits, thousands of optical connections between chips are possible, without many of the current limitations of electrical interconnections.
Current research at AT&T in this area includes VLSI optoelectronic circuits consisting of the hybrid integration of quantum well optical modulators and detectors. Arrays with more than 140K FETs and 4000 optical I/O have been demonstrated, and a recent demonstration switching fabric using these circuits has been built and tested at speeds exceeding 200 Mb/s.
In this talk, I will describe recent research in free space photonic switching, including motivation, architectures, optical and optomechanical system design, the optoelectronic VLSI devices, and results from photonic switching system experiments. I will conclude with a discussion of future work in this area.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Active and Passive Planar Waveguide Devices in Glasses and Crystals
SPEAKER: Prof. Kim Allen Winick, University of Michigan
LOCATION: A230
ABSTRACT:
The wide-scale deployment of fiber-based optical communication systems has stimulated the development of planar, optical, integrated circuits (OIC's). OIC's have been fabricated in a variety of materials including glasses, crystals, polymers and semiconductors. The excellent transparency of glass at visible and infrared wavelengths, its resistance to chemical attack, along with good mechanical properties and low cost make it an ideal material. Furthermore, active glass components can be produced by the addition of dopants. In silica glasses alone, rare earth-doped waveguide lasers (either fiber or planar) have been demonstrated at wavelengths covering a band from 0.651 mm to 2.05 mm. The broad gain of rare earth-doped glass has also led to the spectacular demonstration of miniature ultrashort pulse, mode-locked lasers. In addition, the recent development of erbium-doped glass, waveguide amplifiers has had a profound affect on optical communications.
In this talk several new planar waveguide devices recently demonstrated in our laboratory will be described. These include, glass waveguide dispersion compensators based on chirped gratings, erbium-ytterbium co-doped glass lasers, and chromium-doped lithium niobate amplifiers. The performance, limitations, and modeling of these planar waveguide devices will be discussed.
OPTICS OUTREACH: Park View Lutheran School, Chicago, IL
The NWU-OSA Student Chapter presented demonstrations and supervised Optics Discovery Kit experiments for 4th, 5th/6th, and 7th/8th grade classes at Park View Lutheran School in Chicago.
We also donated a Classroom Optics Discovery Kit to the school, which does not have the resources to buy such supplies. We met with the 4th grade teacher, who will serve as the optics resource person at the school, to highlight the tools in the kit.
The goal of this outreach program is to spread awareness of optics to elementary and junior high school students. To motivate an interest in science, we provide hands-on experiments and try to relate the physics to the students' daily lives.
SEMINAR TOPIC: New Developments in Quantum Information and Computation
SPEAKER: Dr. Charles H. Bennett, IBM, Thomas J. Watson Research Center
LOCATION: Lecture Room 6
ABSTRACT:
A new branch of information and computation theory is emerging in which the stuff transmitted or processed is not classical information but rather arbitrary quantum states. We review quantum and quantum/classical communications schemes such as quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation, as well as quantum analogs of data compression and error-correction. Finally we explain how quantum computers, in which multiple computation paths undergo constructive and destructive interference, can factor large numbers exponentially faster than a comparable classical computer.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Long-Term Storage of a Soliton Bit Stream Using Phase-Sensitive Amplification
SPEAKER: Prof. William L. Kath, Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics Department, Northwestern University
LOCATION: 3396
ABSTRACT:
Many properties of phase-sensitive optical parametric amplifiers make them attractive for ultra-high-speed optical communication systems and networks. In this talk the benefits of using a phase-sensitive amplifier (PSA) to stabilize the long-term storage of a soliton bit stream in a loop or ring of optical fiber will be described. In such a fiber ring noise is present from both quantum fluctuations and guided acoustic-wave Brillouin scattering (GAWBS). It will be shown that the PSA helps suppress the noise so that the `ones' in the ring (the soliton pulses) are asymptotically stable, while the noise on the `zeros' of the bit stream (where pulses are absent) is bounded. In addition, the soliton-soliton interaction will be shown to be efficiently suppressed by the PSA.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Controlling Light by Light Induced Atomic Nonlinearities
SPEAKER: Dr. Girish S. Agarwal, Director, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India
LOCATION: A230
ABSTRACT:
The behavior of an atomic system interacting with electromagnetic fields is intrinsically nonlinear and one has studied very extensively these nonlinearities over the last three decades though one encounters tremendous computational difficulties even if the wavefunctions and eigen values are available. The nonlinearities however are small and one enhances the nonlinear signal either by increasing the field strengths or by tuning the fields close to resonance. However, both these techniques lead to limited success - for example if power is increased too much then one has to include nonperturbative effects. On the other hand tuning too close to resonance will kill the nonlinear signal due to absorption. In my lecture I will review the progress made towards achieving large nonlinear signals by using new methods which themselves are based on the nonlinear nature of the interaction with electromagnetic field.
SEMINAR TOPIC: A High-Speed, High-Capacity, All-Optical Network: Architecture, Technology, and Test-Bed Activities
SPEAKER: Eric A. Swanson, Assistant Group Leader, Optical Communication Technology, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
LOCATION: B211
ABSTRACT:
Over the past few decades there has been tremendous progress in the area of optical communication systems. The advent of single-mode laser diodes, low-loss fiber, and high-performance optical amplifiers in the 1.55 micron region are notable technology milestones that have been achieved. There are many metrics by which to quantify this progress including decreasing transmission cost/bit, increasing link capacities, and increasing system bit-rate distance product where, for instance, over four orders of magnitude increase has been achieved. Today there are several technology development fronts being pursued. One important area is the development of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). WDM systems send several wavelengths down a single fiber thereby increasing the utilization of the fiber bandwidth. Already several major long haul and local exchange carriers are upgrading their installed infrastructure to WDM point-to-point trunks. While WDM is used on the links, electronic switching is used to cross-connect or drop traffic at the nodes. It is currently an active area of research around the world to develop truly transparent optical WDM networks. The vision for these networks is that routing and switching of traffic within the network is accomplished without the necessity of undergoing optical-to-electrical and electrical-to-optical conversions. It is anticipated that this technology may prove to be very high capacity (e.g. eliminating the "electronic bottleneck"), very flexible and reconfigurable, compatible with legacy network and future networks, and will be cost effective. An ARPA sponsored All-Optical Network (AON) Consortium made up of AT&T, DEC, and MIT is one of the groups working in this area. This talk will provide an overview of the AON including: 1) the architectural design issues; 2) the status of advanced technology components (e.g. tunable lasers and receivers, array lasers and receivers, all-optical WDM add/drop multiplexers and cross-connect switches, all-optical wavelength converters, etc.); and 3) status of the AON Boston metropolitan area test-bed.
Anyone in a technical field should check out System Engineering at AT&T.
AT&T Bell Laboratories invites you to join us for a short introduction to this exciting career.
ROOM: 2C - Norris Center
DATE: 12/1/95
TIME: 3 - 5 pm
*** Refreshments will be provided ***
SEMINAR TOPIC: Rare Earth Doped LiNbO3 Waveguide Lasers and Optical Amplifiers"
SPEAKER: Prof. Leon McCaughan, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison
LOCATION: A230
ABSTRACT:
Although the term integrated optics can include optical circuitry fabricated in semiconductors, polymers, glasses, and various ferroelectrics, the most sophisticated, efficient, and highly integrated guided wave structures fabricated to date are LiNbO3-based. Recently, guided wave optical amplification and lasing have been added to the functional elements of this technology. I will briefly review the progress in and challenges of these new devices, and then discuss our recent results using an alternate pump wavelength.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Long Exposure Imaging Through Weak Turbulence
SPEAKER: Dave Gerwe, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Northwestern University
*** Pizza and Drinks at 4pm ***
For those of us who are career minded: don't forget about
INDUSTRY DAY at the Omni Orrington Hotel, 10am to 1pm.
Over 55 company reps from throughout the US will present to recruit students in Engineering disciplines for summer, co-op, and permanent employment.
We will be leaving at 7:00am SHARP from the the parking lot in front of Tech (corner of Noyes and Sherman), in order to reach Purdue by 10am.
There has been significant interest in this event, so if you plan to join us, RSVP to doc@nwu.edu so we can make appropriate travel arrangements.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS: 10:00am to 6:00pm
OPTICS OUTREACH: EECS Department Freshmen Orientation Program
NWU-OSA members organized several demonstrations for the departmental orientatio n program for freshmen. The optics demonstrations included a new "Water Light Pip e" waveguide. Approximatly 100 students attended the open house. The purpose of this program is to give incoming students an idea of what is available within the department, so that they can choose areas of specialization and prepare for their careers.
OPTICS OUTREACH: National High School Institute, Engineering Science Division
NWU-OSA members gave optics demonstrations and tutorials to groups of 15-20 students during the National High School Institute (a summer program at Northwestern for juniors and seniors in high school).
SEMINAR TOPIC: Noiseless Amplification of Optical Images
SPEAKER: Dr. Mikhail Kolobov, University of Essen
INVITED PUBLICATION: D. Rafizadeh, D. Caplan, "Optics in the Fishtank", Optics and Photonics News, 1995
SEMINAR TOPIC: Microchip Lasers
SPEAKER: Dr. John Zayhowski, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
SEMINAR TOPIC: Overcoming third-order nonlinearities in optical communication links.
SPEAKER: Prof. Michel Marhic, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Northwestern University
SEMINAR TOPIC: Maxwell's Equations Models for Nonlinear Optics
SPEAKER: Dr. Rose Joseph, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Northwestern University
SEMINAR TOPIC: Gap Solitons in Periodically-Varying Nonlinear Media
SPEAKER: Prof. J. E. Sipe, Physics Department, University of Toronto
OPTICS OUTREACH: Evanston Township High School, Evanston, IL
The NWU-OSA Student Chapter presented demonstrations to ETHS seniors on topics such as optical communications, fiber optics, interference, holography , polarization, and scattering.
NWU-OSA has been invited back to ETHS in the spring for additional demonstration s that will coincide with the scheduled study of electromagnetic waves and optics.
The goal of this outreach program is to spread awareness of optics and motivate interest in the subject and science in general. To achieve this goal, we focus on emphasizing the relevance of optics and physics outside of the classroom and how it impacts our daily lives.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Amplification of Optical Signals via Four-wave Mixing in Semiconductors
SPEAKER: David Caplan, EECS Dept., Northwestern University
After the talk, we will discuss plans for the OSA Outreach Program (geared towards introducing students at local high schools to optics through demos and hands-on projects).
SEMINAR TOPIC: Double-disk structure for output coupling in microdisk lasers
SPEAKER: Daniel Chu
We will discuss and plan upcoming OSA student chapter projects.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Entrepreneurship in the Field of Optics
SPEAKER: Prof. Max Epstein, EECS & BME Depts.
SEMINAR TOPIC: A New Way to Create 3-Dimensional Images using Volumetric Displays
SPEAKER: Robert G. Batchko, President of Lamda Systems Corp.
ABSTRACT:
There have been many approaches to real-time three-dimensional (3-D) imaging. Stereo techniques, include red-green or polarizing glasses, and holograms which can be displayed in real-time using acousto-optic modulators. The drawback of these techniques is that they are essentially 3-D images projected onto 2-D screens. Even at their best, they have substantially less than 180 degree fields of view. In contrast, volumetric displays can be seen through 360 degrees. Robert Batchko has developed (and will demonstrate) his patented "Volumetric Display" device that produces images inside a transparent acrylic cylinder. The effect is a bit like enclosing a model ship inside a bottle, which a person can view from any side, with the added benefit that a person could see the inner workings of the ship because the outside edges are largely transparent. Applications include air traffic control displays, medical imaging and 3-D entertainment (neat games).
SEMINAR TOPIC: Wideband Optical Networks
SPEAKER: Vincent W. S. Chan, Associate Head, Communications Division, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
The Education Council of the Optical Society of America has awarded the NWU-OSA Student Chapter a $1000 grant for its proposed Student Outreach Program.
For those who helped in drafting the proposal, CONGRATULATIONS are in order.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Phase sensitive fiber amplifiers for all fiber optical communications
SPEAKER: Glenn Bartolini, EECS Department
Glenn Bartolini from Professor Kumar's Quantum Optics Laboratory is doing research at Amoco Laser Company. He will give a presentation on his research which has been accepted by the Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) conference to be held later this month in in San Jose, CA.
SEMINAR TOPIC: Quantum Noise Reduction with Pulsed Light in Optical Fibers
SPEAKER: Dr. Keren Bergman, MIT
SEMINAR TOPIC An Optical Magnetic Ink Code Recognition System
SPEAKER: Yi-Chiun Chen, MSEE Candidate
SEMINAR TOPIC: Pulse Amplification at 1.5 Microns Using Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers
SPEAKER: Deana Rafizadeh, EECS Department
Deana Rafizadeh from Professor Ho's Nonlinear Optics and Quantum Electronics Lab in the EE/CS Dept will talk on her research at Northwertern and her experience working at AT&T Bell Labs.
Second NWU-OSA meeting - Fall Quarter 1993
Students/Profs. attending the conference will highlight events for students that did not attend. (De-briefing)
A group of roughly 15 students, post doc's, and professors will be attending the OSA Annual Meeting.
First NWU-OSA Meeting - Fall Quarter 1993
SEMINAR TOPIC: Soliton Propagation and Novel Nonlinear Amplification Schemes
SPEAKER: Nathan Kutz, NSF Fellow from the Applied Math Dept at Northwestern University
NWU-Chapter officially recognized by OSA!
Itinerary of events during the year was planned.
Started the compilation of an NWU mailing list for the purpose of facilitating communications between academia and industry after students graduate.
Second official OSA meeting.
Students from Prof. P. Kumar's Quantum Optics Lab give presentations on their research activities.
D.Caplan: DFWM theory/experiment and applications
D.Gerwe: Nonlinear Waveguides
D.Levandovski: Ti-Saphire Laser sytems
NWU-OSA Chapter officers elect Professor Prem Kumar as OSA Faculty Advisor. Chapter goals/objectives are discussed.
First official OSA meeting.
NWU-OSA Chapter officers elections, Rolando Espindola appointed as President, David Caplan appoitned as Vice President, and David Gerwe appointed as Secretary/Treasurer by approximately 20 student OSA members.
Student membership is diverse, including undergraduate and graduate students from EE/CS, Chemistry, Material Science, Applied Math and Physics departments
OSA contacted, and membership applications rec'd at NWU. Initial emailing list generated, and information sent out to perspective students.
Many enthusiastic responses received from the first OSA mailing.
Optics Bulletin Board is provided by EE/CS dept, allows for the posting of OSA news, events, and other optics related information.
URL: http://www.ece.nwu.edu/~kumarp/nuosa/old_osa_events.html, last modified Jan. 16, 1997