No Arabic abstract
Transmission of UV light with high beam quality and pointing stability is desirable for many experiments in atomic, molecular and optical physics. In particular, laser cooling and coherent manipulation of trapped ions with transitions in the UV require stable, single-mode light delivery. Transmitting even ~2 mW CW light at 280 nm through silica solid-core fibers has previously been found to cause transmission degradation after just a few hours due to optical damage. We show that photonic crystal fiber of the kagome type can be used for effectively single-mode transmission with acceptable loss and bending sensitivity. No transmission degradation was observed even after >100 hours of operation with 15 mW CW input power. In addition it is shown that implementation of the fiber in a trapped ion experiment significantly increases the coherence times of the internal state transfer due to an increase in beam pointing stability.
Supercritical Xe at 293 K offers a Kerr nonlinearity that can exceed that of fused silica while being free of Raman scattering. It also has a much higher optical damage threshold and a transparency window that extends from the UV to the infrared. We report the observation of nonlinear phenomena, such as self-phase modulation, in hollow-core photonic crystal fiber filled with supercritical Xe. In the subcritical regime, intermodal four-wave-mixing resulted in the generation of UV light in the HE12 mode. The normal dispersion of the fiber at high pressures means that spectral broadening can clearly obtained without influence from soliton effects or material damage.
Single molecule detection provides detailed information about molecular structures and functions, but it generally requires the presence of a fluorescent marker which can interfere with the activity of the target molecule or complicate the sample production. Detecting a single protein with its natural UV autofluorescence is an attractive approach to avoid all the issues related to fluorescence labelling. However, the UV autofluorescence signal from a single protein is generally extremely weak. Here, we use aluminum plasmonics to enhance the tryptophan autofluorescence emission of single proteins in the UV range. Zero-mode waveguides nanoapertures enable observing the UV fluorescence of single label-free beta-galactosidase proteins with increased brightness, microsecond transit times and operation at micromolar concentrations. We demonstrate quantitative measurements of the local concentration, diffusion coefficient and hydrodynamic radius of the label-free protein over a broad range of zero-mode waveguide diameters. While the plasmonic fluorescence enhancement has generated a tremendous interest in the visible and near-infrared parts of the spectrum, this work pushes further the limits of plasmonic-enhanced single molecule detection into the UV range and constitutes a major step forward in our ability to interrogate single proteins in their native state at physiological concentrations.
We report on a highly-efficient experimental scheme for the generation of deep-ultraviolet ultrashort light pulses using four-wave mixing in gas-filled kagome-style photonic crystal fiber. By pumping with ultrashort, few $mu$J, pulses centered at 400 nm, we generate an idler pulse at 266 nm, and amplify a seeded signal at 800 nm. We achieve remarkably high pump-to-idler energy conversion efficiencies of up to 38%. Although the pump and seed pulse durations are ~100 fs, the generated ultraviolet spectral bandwidths support sub-15 fs pulses. These can be further extended to support few-cycle pulses. Four-wave mixing in gas-filled hollow-core fibres can be scaled to high average powers and different spectral regions such as the vacuum ultraviolet (100-200 nm).
In this letter, an energetic and highly efficient dispersive wave (DW) generation at 200 nm has been numerically demonstrated by selectively exciting LP$_{02}$-like mode in a 10 bar Ar-filled hollow-core anti-resonant fiber pumping in the anomalous dispersion regime at 1030 nm with pulses of 30 fs duration and 7 $mu$J energy. Our calculations indicate high conversion efficiency of $>$35% (2.5 $mu$J) after propagating 3.6 cm fiber length which is due to the strong shock effect and plasma induced blue-shifted soliton. It is observed that the efficiency of fundamental LP$_{01}$-mode is about 15% which is much smaller than LP$_{02}$-like mode and also emitted at longer wavelength of 270 nm.
We report on two types of Raman laser sources emitting in the near and middle ultraviolet spectral ranges by the use of a solarization-resilient gas-filled inhibited-coupling (IC) hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber (HCPCF) with record low transmission loss (minimum of 5 dB/km at 480 nm). The first source type emits a Raman comb generated in a hydrogen-filled HCPCF pumped by a 355 nm wavelength microchip nanosecond pulsed laser. The generated comb lines span from 270 nm to the near-infrared region with no less than 20 lines in the 270-400 nm wavelength range. The second type stands for the first dual-wavelength Raman source tuned to the ozone absorption band in the ultraviolet. Such dual-wavelength source emits at either 266 nm and 289 nm, or 266 nm and 299 nm. The relative power of the pair components is set to optimize the sensitivity of ozone detection in differential absorption lidar (DIAL). The sources physical package represents more than 10-fold size-reduction relative to current DIAL lasers, thus opening new opportunities in on-field ozone monitoring and mapping. Both Raman sources exhibit a very small footprint and are solarization-free.