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Cadmium oxide (CdO) has recently attracted attention as a material with controllable properties tailored for optoelectronic and nanophotonic devices due to its superior mobility. However, its potential application in near-infrared (NIR) remains to be explored. In this work, we demonstrate that the epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) wavelength and nonlinear optical properties of CdO films can be effectively tuned by Mo doping. The results show that Mo doping increases the electron concentration as well as improve the crystalline quality of CdO. With increasing Mo doping, we achieve blueshifts of the ENZ wavelength from 2.89 to 1.56 μm. The nonlinear absorption (NLA) behavior at 1550 nm changes from reverse saturable absorption to saturable absorption with increasing Mo content. Moreover, significant improvement in NLA performance with nonlinear absorption coefficient β = −72 cm/GW is observed at the highest doping content. Our work shows that doped CdO films with tunable optoelectrical and nonlinear optical properties can be an ideal candidate for optoelectronic and nanophotonic application in the NIR region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current solution for multiwavelength achromatic flat lenses, a one-to-one correspondence exists between the number of writing phase distributions and the number of achromatic wavelengths. Breaking this correspondence requires a complex phase design and parameter optimization. Here, we show that a dual-layer cascade liquid crystal Pancharatnam-Berry lens (CLCPBL) with two writing phase distributions and a specific coupled phase distribution between the layers can achieve three wavelength achromaticity without any parameter optimization process. Similarly, in a three-layer cascade, the number of achromatic wavelengths increases to seven through the permutations of the layers, with adjustable amplitude factors. We fabricate a three-layer CLCPBL with the design wavelengths of 396.8 nm, 1064 nm, and 1550 nm, which theoretically allows the light at 632.8, 532.8, 3383 and 450 nm to form a common focus, and test such structure. Our CLCPBL enables a wider range of applications than conventional achromatic flat lenses. Metalenses are lightweight and compact alternative to achromatic lens assemblies, but they usually fulfill the focusing requirements for a single wavelength. The authors design and fabricate a cascade liquid crystal Pancharatnam-Berry lens that enables a seven-wavelength achromatic focusing in a broad range of frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mid‐infrared (MIR) pulsed lasers operating at 2–5 µm have important applications in communication, sensing, and medicine. However, the lack of robust MIR saturable absorbers (SAs) remains a major obstacle. Here, a semiconductor material cadmium oxide (CdO) film with high laser‐induced damage threshold (800 nm, 134 mJ cm−2) and broadband saturable absorption (2.0–3.9 µm) is investigated. The effective tuning of the nonlinear optical response of CdO is demonstrated by adjusting the carrier concentration via a tungsten (W)‐doping scheme. The saturable absorption is improved and carrier relaxation process is accelerated after increasing the W‐dopant level. Based on these findings, the robust CdO‐SAs with customizable parameters are realized and Q‐switched lasers with decreasing pulse width from 372 to 254.3 ns are obtained at 2 µm. The design flexibility provided by CdO opens up a large parameter space that enables the continuous improvement of compact and high‐performance MIR ultrafast lasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-performance thin films combining large optical bandgap Al 2 O 3 and high refractive index HfO 2 are excellent components for constructing the next generation of laser systems with enhanced output power. However, the growth of low-defect plasma-enhanced-atomic-layer-deposited (PEALD) Al 2 O 3 for high-power laser applications and its combination with HfO 2 and SiO 2 materials commonly used in high-power laser thin films still face challenges, such as how to minimize defects, especially interface defects. In this work, substrate-layer interface defects in Al 2 O 3 single-layer thin films, layer-layer interface defects in Al 2 O 3 -based bilayer and trilayer thin films, and their effects on the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) were investigated via capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements. The experimental results show that by optimizing the deposition parameters, specifically the deposition temperature, precursor exposure time, and plasma oxygen exposure time, Al 2 O 3 thin films with low defect density and high LIDT can be obtained. Two trilayer anti-reflection (AR) thin film structures, Al 2 O 3 /HfO 2 /SiO 2 and HfO 2 /Al 2 O 3 /SiO 2 , were then prepared and compared. The trilayer AR thin film with Al 2 O 3 /HfO 2 /SiO 2 structure exhibits a lower interface defect density, better interface bonding performance, and an increase in LIDT by approximately 2.8 times. We believe these results provide guidance for the control of interface defects and the design of thin film structures and will benefit many thin film optics for laser applications.

The machining-induced subsurface damage (SSD) on fused silica optics would incur damage when irradiated by intense lasers, which severely restricts the service life of fused silica optics. The high absorption of fused silica to 10.6 µm makes it possible to utilize pulsed CO 2 laser to remove and characterize SSD by layer-by-layer ablation, which improves its laser-induced damage threshold. However, thermal stress during the laser ablation process may have an impact on SSD, leading to extension. Still, the law of SSD morphology evolution mechanism has not been clearly revealed. In this work, a multi-physics simulated model considering light field modulation is established to reveal the evolution law of radial SSD during the laser layer-by-layer ablation process. Based on the simulation of different characteristic structural parameters, two evolution mechanisms of radial SSD are revealed, and the influence of characteristic structural parameters on SSD is also elaborated. By prefabricating the SSD by femtosecond laser, the measurements of SSD during CO 2 laser layer-by-layer ablation experiments are consistent with the simulated results, and three stages of SSD depth variation under two evolution processes are further proposed. The findings of this study provide theoretical guidance for effectively characterizing SSD based on laser layer-by-layer ablation strategies on fused silica optics.

Laser wireless power transmission (LWPT) systems have significant applications in the field of wireless energy transmission, including spacecraft sensor networks, satellite-to-satellite communication, and remote power supply. However, continuous laser exposure increases the temperature of the photovoltaic (PV) cells in the LWPT system, thus decreasing the electrical output performance. This work, which we believe is a new approach, is on the basis of a notch film designed by a combined merit function proposed to maintain the electrical output performance while under 1064-nm continuous laser irradiation. Moreover, the thermal stability of PV cells under laser irradiation was investigated, which revealed the recoverability of the open-circuit voltage (Voc) of the cells at different temperatures, and the thermal damage to cells was a gradual process. This process began with the vaporization of the encapsulation adhesive, followed by a decline in, but still recoverable and functional, electrical performance, and finally, the cell was completely damaged. The thermal stability of the PV cells coated with the notch film increased ten-fold compared to those without it. Furthermore, the correlation between the minimum Voc and maximum temperature of the cells with notch films of different performances was established. These investigations serve as references for further optimization of LWPT.

In the past 10 years, adaptive wavefront interferometry (AWI) has been employed for measuring freeform surface profiles. However, existing AWI techniques relying on stepwise and model-free stochastic optimizations have resulted in inefficient tests. To address these issues, deterministic adaptive wavefront interferometry (DAWI) is firstly introduced in this paper based on backpropagation (BP), which employs a loss function to simultaneously reconstruct and sparsify initial incomplete interferometric fringes until they are nulled. Each iteration of BP requires two phase shifts. Through simulations, we have verified that freeform wavefront error with a peak-to-valley (PV) of up to 168 λ can be fully compensated in tens of iterations using a 1024 × 1024 pixel area of a liquid-crystal spatial light modulator. In experiments, we accomplished a null test of a freeform surface with 80% missing interference fringes in 39 iterations, resulting in a surface profile error PV of 66.22 λ and measurement error better than λ/4. The DAWI has at least 20 times fewer iterations in fringe reconstruction than the 3-step AWI methods, and nearly an order of magnitude fewer iterations in the whole process, paving the way for significantly enhanced efficiency, generality and precision in freeform surface adaptive interferometry.