• Current Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.3 no.5
• /
• pp.415-422
• /
• 2019

Retroreflection of vehicle headlights, as induced by spherical glass beads, is a key optical phenomenon that provides road-surface markings with greatly enhanced visibility, thus better securing a driver's safety in the nighttime as well as in unclear daytime. Retroreflectance of glass beads is a quite sensitive function of their refractive index, so that measurement of the refractive index of glass specifically in the shape of spherical beads needs to be performed within a reasonable uncertainty that is tolerable for road-marking applications. The Becke line method has been applied in assessing refractive index of such glass beads as e.g. an industrial standard in the Republic of Korea; however, the reference refractive-index liquids are not commercially available these days for refractive index greater than 1.80 due to the toxicity of the constituent materials. As such, high-refractive-index glass beads require an alternate method, and in this regard we propose a practically serviceable technique with uncertainty tantamount to that of the Becke line method: Based on comparison of calculated and measured retroreflectance values of commercial glass beads, we discover that their refractive index can be determined with reasonable precision via the retroreflectance measurement. Specifically, in this study the normalized retroreflectance originating from a single glass sphere is computed as a function of refractive index using the Fresnel equations, which is then validated as coinciding well with retroreflectance values measured from actual specimens, i.e. glass-bead aggregates. The uncertainties involved are delineated in connection with radius and imperfections of the glass beads.

• Current Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.195-202
• /
• 2018

A Scanning Rayleigh Doppler lidar for wind profiling based on a non-polarized beam splitter cube optically contacted FPI is developed for wind measurement from high troposphere to low stratosphere in 5-35 km. Non-polarized beam splitter cube optically contacted to the FPI are used for a stable optical receiver. Zero Doppler shift correction is used to correct for laser or FPI frequency jitter and drift and the timing sequence is designed. Stability of the receiver for Doppler shift discrimination is validated by measuring the transmissions of FPI in different days and analyzed the response functions. The maximal relative wind deviation due to the stability of the optical receiver is about 4.1% and the standard deviation of wind velocity is 1.6% due to the stability. Wind measurement comparison experiments were carried out in Jiuquan ($39.741^{\circ}N$, $98.495^{\circ}E$), Gansu province of China in 2015, showing good agreement with radiosonde result data. Continuous wind field observation was performed from October 16th to November 12th and semi-continuous wind field of 19 nights are presented.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.331-335
• /
• 2012

A miniaturized laser beam transmitter, in which a visible laser module at ${\lambda}$=650 nm is precisely stacked upon an infrared (IR) module at ${\lambda}$=905 nm, has been proposed and constructed to provide an IR collimated beam in conjunction with a collinear monitoring visible beam. In particular, the IR beam is selectively dispersed through a perforated sheet diffuser, so as to create a rapidly diverging close-range beam in addition to a highly defined long-range beam simultaneously. The complementary close-range beam plays a role in mitigating the blind region in the vicinity of the transmitter, which is inevitably missed by the main long-range beam, thereby uniformly extending the transmitter's effective trajectory that is sensed by a receiver. The proposed transmitter was designed through numerical simulations and then fabricated by incorporating a diffuser sheet, perforated with an aperture of 2 mm. For the manufactured transmitter, the IR long-range beam was observed to have divergences of ~2.3 and 1.6 mrad in the fast and slow axes, respectively, while the short-range beam yielded a divergence of ~24 mrad. The angular alignment between the long-range IR and visible beams was as accurate as ~0.5 mrad. According to an outdoor feasibility test involving a receiver, the combination of the IR long- and short-range beams was proven to achieve a nearly uniform trajectory over a distance ranging up to ~600 m, with an average detectable cross-section of ${\sim}60{\times}80cm^2$.

• Current Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.2 no.5
• /
• pp.448-452
• /
• 2018

A three-wavelength $Pr^{3+}:YLF$ laser at 604 nm, 607 nm and 640 nm simultaneously output by Fabry-Perot (F-P) etalon has been obtained. A 444 nm blue laser diode is used for pumping the $Pr^{3+}:YLF$ crystal, and a 0.1 mm F-P etalon is inserted in the resonator to select wavelength. The theoretical model of three-wavelength $Pr^{3+}:YLF$ laser is established, by adjusting the tilt angle of the etalon, the transmittances of the different wavelengths can be controlled, and the threshold values can be made to equalize by controlling the loss among different wavelengths. In the experiment, when the tilt angle of etalon is $9^{\circ}$ and the optimized length of resonator is 48 mm, the total output power of 25 mW at the three-wavelength is achieved at incident pump power of 7.5 W.

• Current Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.2 no.5
• /
• pp.422-430
• /
• 2018

Rolling shutter operation of CMOS cameras can be utilized in optical camera communications in order to transmit data from an LED to mobile devices such as smart-phones. From temporally modulated light, a spatial flicker pattern is obtained in the captured image, and this is used for signal recovery. Due to the degradation of rolling shutter images caused by light smear, motion blur, and focus blur, the conventional decoding schemes for rolling shutter cameras based on the pattern width for 'OFF' and 'ON' cannot guarantee robust communications performance for practical uses. Aside from conventional techniques, such as polynomial fitting, histogram equalization can be used for blurry light mitigation, but it requires additional computation abilities resulting in burdens on mobile devices. This paper proposes a transition-based decoding scheme for rolling shutter cameras in order to offer simple and robust data decoding in the presence of image degradation. Based on the designed synchronization pulse and modulated data symbols according to the LED dimming level, the decoding process is conducted by observing the transition patterns of two sequential symbol pulses. For this, the extended symbol pulse caused by consecutive symbol pulses with the same level determines whether the second pulse should be included for the next bit decoding or not. The proposed method simply identifies the transition patterns of sequential symbol pulses other than the pattern width of 'OFF' and 'ON' for data decoding, and thus, it is simpler and more accurate. Experimental results ensured that the transition-based decoding scheme is robust even in the presence of blurry lights in the captured image at various dimming levels

• Current Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.2 no.5
• /
• pp.474-481
• /
• 2018

We propose a polarization phase-shifting technique to investigate the thickness of $Ta_2O_5$ thin films deposited on BK7 substrates, using a modified Sagnac interferometer. Incident light is split by a polarizing beam splitter into two orthogonal linearly polarized beams traveling in opposite directions, and a quarter-wave plate is inserted into the common path to create an unbalanced phase condition. The linearly polarized light beams are transformed into two circularly polarized beams by transmission through a quarter-wave plate placed at the output of the interferometer. The proposed setup, therefore, yields rotating polarized light that can be used to extract a relative phase via the self-reference system. A thin-film sample inserted into the cyclic path modifies the output signal, in terms of the phase retardation. This technique utilizes three phase-shifted intensities to evaluate the phase retardation via simple signal processing, without manual adjustment of the output polarizer, which subsequently allows the thin film's thickness to be determined. Experimental results show that the thicknesses obtained from the proposed setup are in good agreement with those acquired by a field-emission scanning electron microscope and a spectroscopic ellipsometer. Thus, the proposed interferometric arrangement can be utilized reliably for non-contact thickness measurements of transparent thin films and characterization of optical devices.

• Current Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.286-292
• /
• 2020

Imaging through multicore fiber (MCF) is of great significance in the biomedical domain. Although several techniques have been developed to image an object from a signal passing through MCF, these methods are strongly dependent on the surroundings, such as vibration and the temperature fluctuation of the fiber's environment. In this paper, we apply a new, strong technique called deep learning to reconstruct the phase image through a MCF in which each core is multimode. To evaluate the network, we employ the binary cross-entropy as the loss function of a convolutional neural network (CNN) with improved U-net structure. The high-quality reconstruction of input objects upon spatial light modulation (SLM) can be realized from the speckle patterns of intensity that contain the information about the objects. Moreover, we study the effect of MCF length on image recovery. It is shown that the shorter the fiber, the better the imaging quality. Based on our findings, MCF may have applications in fields such as endoscopic imaging and optical communication.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.27-32
• /
• 2013

Based on the dispersive feature of the dielectric function of noble metals and the wave vector conservation in physics, both the plasma effect and the complex refractive index, which are profoundly correlated to the complex dielectric function and permeability, have been studied and analyzed. The condition to induce a bulk or a surface plasma in the visible region will not be satisfied, and there will be one solution for the real and the imaginary parts of the refractive index, restricting it only to region I of the complex plane. The results given in this work will aid in understanding the properties of light transmission at the metal/dielectric interface as characterized by the law of refraction in nature.

• Current Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.450-457
• /
• 2021

Upconversion (UC) properties of Y₂O₃:Ho³⁺/Yb³⁺ spherical particles synthesized by spray pyrolysis were investigated by changing the dopant concentration and calcination temperature. Citric acid (CA), ethylene glycol (EG) and N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF) were used to control the microstructure of Y₂O₃:Ho³⁺/Yb³⁺ particles. In terms of achieving the highest UC green emission intensity, the optimal concentrations of Ho³⁺ and Yb³⁺ were found to be 0.3% and 3.0%, respectively. In addition, the UC intensity of Y₂O₃:Ho³⁺/Yb³⁺ showed a linear relationship with the crystallite size. The use of organic additives allows Y₂O₃:Ho³⁺/Yb³⁺ particles to have a spherical and dense structure, resulting in significantly reducing the surface area while maintaining high crystallinity. As a result, the UC emission intensity of Y₂O₃:Ho³⁺/Yb³⁺ particles having a dense structure showed the UC emission intensity about 3.8 times higher than that of hollow particles prepared without organic additives. From those results, when Y₂O₃:Ho³⁺/Yb³⁺ particles are prepared by the spray pyrolysis process, the use of the CA/EG/DMF mixtures as organic additives has been suggested as an effective way to substantially increase the UC emission intensity.

• Current Optics and Photonics
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.186-190
• /
• 2021

In this study, a compact, picosecond, mid-infrared 3.8 ㎛ MgO:PPLN optical parametric oscillator (OPO) laser output with high peak power is realized using a master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) 1 ㎛ solid-state laser seeded by a picosecond fiber laser as the pump source. The pump source was a 50 MHz and 10 ps fiber seed source. After AOM pulse selection and two-stage solid-state amplification, a 1,064 nm laser output with a repetition frequency of 1-2 MHz, pulse width of 9.5 ps, and a maximum average power of 20 W was achieved. Furthermore, a compact short cavity with a unsynchronized pump is adopted through the design of an OPO cavity structure. When the injection pump power was 15 W and the repetition frequency was 1 MHz, the average output power of idler light was 1.19 W, and the corresponding peak power was 119 kW. The optical conversion efficiency was 7.93%. When the repetition frequency was increased to 2 MHz, the average output power of idler light was 1.63 W, the corresponding peak power was 81.5 kW, and the optical conversion efficiency was 10.87%. At the same time, the output wavelength was measured at 3,806 nm, and the beam quality was MX2 = 3.21 and MY2 = 3.34.