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Graphical abstract, Highlights • Three CHM components with the potential against COVID-19 are identified using TCMSP. • SPR assay result shows good binding affinity of puerarin and quercetin to ACE2. • Puerarin and quercetin impairs the binding of viral S-protein to ACE2 receptor. • Quercetin can also directly bind to S-protein to exert an viral neutralizing effect. • Results from this study propose a prompt application of puerarin on COVID-19 patients., The outbreak of COVID-19 raises an urgent need for the therapeutics to contain the emerging pandemic. However, no effective treatment has been found for SARS-CoV-2 infection to date. Here, we identified puerarin (PubChem CID: 5281807), quercetin (PubChem CID: 5280343) and kaempferol (PubChem CID: 5280863) as potential compounds with binding activity to ACE2 by using Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform (TCMSP). Molecular docking analysis showed that puerarin and quercetin exhibit good binding affinity to ACE2, which was validated by surface plasmon resonance (SPR) assay. Furthermore, SPR-based competition assay revealed that puerarin and quercetin could significantly affect the binding of viral S-protein to ACE2 receptor. Notably, quercetin could also bind to the RBD domain of S-protein, suggesting not only a receptor blocking, but also a virus neutralizing effect of quercetin on SARS-CoV-2. The results from network pharmacology and bioinformatics analysis support a view that quercetin is involved in host immunomodulation, which further renders it a promising candidate against COVID-19. Moreover, given that puerarin is already an existing drug, results from this study not only provide insight into its action mechanism, but also propose a prompt application of it on COVID-19 patients for assessing its clinical feasibility.

Controllable creation of strain pattern in graphene's lattice is ideal for achieving intriguing pseudomagnetic field but remains challenging due to high in-plane stiffness of graphene. Using continuum theory and atomistic simulations, we show that carbon nanocones exhibit a peculiar electromechanical coupling that yields extreme pseudomagnetic fields by simple loads. Vertically pressing the nanocone by ∼2% creates well-defined strain pattern that leads electrons to behave as if under the influence of magnetic fields up to 600 Telsa. Moreover, the strain gradient can be tailored by varying the cone's geometry to achieve controlled distribution of pseudomagnetic fields over a large area. Since synthesis of nanocones of various materials has been mature, the proposed approach is further extendable to other two-dimensional materials towards their electronic modulation by inhomogeneous strain.

The nuclei and the formation mechanism of chiral carbon nanotubes, namely, single-, double-, and triple-walled carbon nanotubes are simulated by the first principle density functional theory. The formation mechanism from nuclei to corresponding infinitely long carbon nanotubes occurs spirally and via absorbing carbon atoms layer by layer. Carbon atoms at the open end are metastable state compared with ones in the tube wall or the closed end, which indicate the growth point of chiral carbon nanotubes is located at the open end. Growth of outer layer tubular clusters takes precedence over the inner layer in the process of forming multi-walled nuclear structures. Because of the ratio of carbon atoms at the open end to all carbon atoms decreases, the stability of the tubular clusters increases with their length. The infinitely long carbon nanotubes are obtained by executing periodic boundary conditions depend on corresponding nuclear structures.

Target-coordinate transformation in the lidar spot of the down-looking synthetic-aperture imaging lidar (SAIL) was performed, and the attitude errors were deduced in the process of imaging, according to the principle of the airborne down-looking SAIL. The influence of the attitude errors on the imaging quality was analyzed theoretically. A compensation method for the attitude errors was proposed and theoretically verified. An airborne down-looking SAIL experiment was performed and yielded the same results. A point-by-point error-compensation method for solving the azimuthal-direction space-dependent attitude errors was also proposed.

CUL4B ubiquitin ligase belongs to the cullin-RING ubiquitin ligase family. Although sharing many sequence and structural similarities, CUL4B plays distinct roles in spermatogenesis from its homologous protein CUL4A. We previously reported that genetic ablation of Cul4a in mice led to male infertility because of aberrant meiotic progression. In the present study, we generated Cul4b germ cell-specific conditional knock-out (Cul4bVasa),as well as Cul4b global knock-out (Cul4bSox2) mouse, to investigate its roles in spermatogenesis. Germ cell-specific deletion of Cul4b led to male infertility, despite normal testicular morphology and comparable numbers of spermatozoa. Notably, significantly impaired sperm mobility caused by reduced mitochondrial activity and glycolysis level were observed in the majority of the mutant spermatozoa, manifested by low, if any, sperm ATP production. Furthermore, Cul4bVasa spermatozoa exhibited defective arrangement of axonemal microtubules and flagella outer dense fibers. Our mass spectrometry analysis identified INSL6 as a novel CUL4B substrate in male germ cells, evidenced by its direct polyubiquination and degradation by CUL4B E3 ligase. Nevertheless, Cul4b global knock-out males lost their germ cells in an age-dependent manner, implying failure of maintaining the spermatogonial stem cell niche in somatic cells. Taken together, our results show that CUL4B is indispensable to spermatogenesis, and it functions cell autonomously in male germ cells to ensure spermatozoa motility, whereas it functions non-cell-autonomously in somatic cells to maintain spermatogonial stemness. Thus, CUL4B links two distinct spermatogenetic processes to a single E3 ligase, highlighting the significance of ubiquitin modification during spermatogenesis.

The phase coded (PC) waveform in synthetic aperture ladar (SAL) outperforms linear frequency modulated (LFM) signal in lower side lobe, shorter pulse duration and making the rigid control of the chirp starting point in every pulse unnecessary. Inherited from radar PC waveform and strip map SAL, the backscattered signal of a point target in PC SAL was listed and the two dimensional match filtering algorithm was introduced to focus a point image. As an inherent property of laser, linewidth is always detrimental to coherent ladar imaging. With the widely adopted laser linewidth model, the effect of laser linewidth on SAL image quality was theoretically analyzed and examined via Monte Carlo simulation. The research gives us a clear view of how to select linewidth parameters in the future PC SAL systems.

Two-dimensional (2D) step parallel confocal image processing algorithm for synthetic aperture imaging ladar (SAIL) is proposed. The feature of the algorithm is the collected data are confocal imaged in space domain by 2D Fourier transform. The collected data are first expressed by separation of variables and time-domain data are translated into a spatial coordinate expression suitable for space optical conversion, compensated with an azimuth quadratic phase and then imaged in space domain by 2D Fourier transform. Functions of the algorithm for SAIL with rectangular apertures is described and analyzed in terms of continuous variables and functions. Then the position of the imaging point is given. The technique is a new, one-step confocal imaging method for ladar echo signal. The confocal image processing is simplified and the imaging time is shortened. The requirement of a ladar image processing system is also reduced. It has a significant advantage in the data processing of synthetic-aperture ladar target echo confocal imaging.

Retinal neovascularization (RNV) is a common pathology of blinding proliferative retinopathies. The current treatments to RNV, however, are hindered by limited efficacy, side effects, and drug resistance. A naturally-occurring cytokine in retina that is amicable to immune system and possesses robust anti-neovascular function would facilitate to overcome the hurdles. In this study, retinas from a mouse model of oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) underwent a protein array to screen the naturally-occurring cytokines that may antagonize RNV. Among the 62 angiogenesis-associated cytokines, platelet factor 4 (Pf4) stood out with the most prominent upregulation and statistical significance. Moreover, an intravitreal injection of mouse Pf4 demonstrated dramatic anti-vaso-obliteration and anti-neovascularization effects dose dependently in the OIR model; whereas human PF4 inhibited the proliferation, migration, and tubulogenesis of monkey retinal vascular endothelial cells treated with VEGF and TNF-α. These previously undescribed angiostatic effects of PF4 in OIR retinas and retinal vascular endothelial cells support translation of this naturally-occurring chemokine into a therapeutic modality to RNV supplementary to the anti-VEGFs. Mechanistically, a phosphorylation array and western blots indicated that downregulation of proline-rich Akt substrate of 40 kDa (Pras40) and its phosphorylation were necessary for Pf4's anti-neovascular effects in the OIR retinas. Indeed, overexpression of the wildtype Pras40 and the mutant version with deficient phosphorylation abolished and mimicked the Pf4's angiostatic effects in the OIR retinas, respectively. The similar effects were also observed in vitro. This study, for the first time, links PF4's anti-RNV function to an intracellular signaling molecule PRAS40 and its phosphorylation.

Stable metal clusters with high coordination numbers (N > 12) are scarce. In this paper, series of seventeen-coordinate metal clusters M@Li17 (M = Ca, Sr, Ba, Sc, Y) are proposed, where the lithium atoms compose the outer cage and the hetero-atom is centered. The unique structure is located as a low energy isomer by particle swarm optimisation algorithm. With the geometric and electronic shell closures, the high stability of M@Li17 (M = Sc, Y) is predictable. For the 19-electron M@Li17 (M = Ca, Sr, Ba), the electronic configurations are 1S21P61D102Sα12Sβ0, which can obtain their stability by forming a low magnetic moment of 1 μB.

Temporally and spatially varying speckle effect arises as a consequence of the frequency modulation chirped laser signal employed in synthetic aperture imaging ladar (SAIL).A variety of reconstructed images degraded by laser speckle effect have been reported. In this paper, space–time speckle effects and their influence on imaging based on the SAIL system in a far-field diffraction region are systematically studied. The first half of this paper provides the theoretical analyses of the 2D data acquisition with speckle effect in SAIL. Numerical simulations of the temporally varying speckle pattern, the integrated speckle field over a receiving antenna and their influence to the image quality for SAIL are obtained in the remaining of the paper. Our results will be valuable for further studies on the suppression of speckle effect in SAILs.

An optical processor for synthetic-aperture imaging ladar (SAIL) utilizing one astigmatic lens is proposed. The processor comprises two structures of transmitting and reflecting. The imaging process is mathematically analyzed using the unified data-collection equation of side-looking and down-looking SAILs. Results show that the astigmatic lens can be replaced with a cylindrical lens on certain conditions. To verify this concept, laboratory experiment is conducted, the imaging result of data collected from one SAIL demonstrator is given.

Conjugate Dammann grating based coherent beam combing technique is an efficient way of combining phase-locked laser array into one high-power high beam-quality laser output. In this paper, this technique is applied to the combination of two-dimensional phase-locked array of solid state laser beams. Square apertures that could increase the areal fill factor of 21.5% are adopted. Numerical and experimental simulations of the combinations of 4×4 and 5×5 2D coherent laser arrays are carried out. The influences of manufacturing and positioning errors of the conjugate Dammann gratings to the beam combining efficiency are also discussed in detail.

Process of acquirement and locking-up of compound axis system in inter-satellite laser communication has been studied. The effect of different condition parameters on the process of acquirement and locking-up have also been researched and simulated. Simulation results show that when the system with appropriate bandwidth has been adopted, both fine pointing system and coarse pointing system can satisfy three requirements of step response, stability criterion and dwell time and then finish the acquirement and locking-up of beacon laser beam. The simulation results provide the suited condition parameters for both fine pointing system and coarse pointing system, which is very helpful to the subsequent point and tracking processes.

The different radial support ways for a rotation prism are presented to evaluate the strains and stresses induced by the gravity action and the thermal effects. Due to the large-aperture, non-uniform quality distribution and especially rotation from 0° to 360°, neither the multi-point support way nor the full surface-contact support can well meet the assembly requirements. The paper proposes a novel project of an adjustable partial surface-contact support way to solve this support problem. The maximum strain and stress under this support way both are less than the tolerance limit of the strength assurance regardless of the prism rotating to any position. Meanwhile, the thermally-induced structural analysis is performed to predict some specific work cases, which is much valuable for the improvement of the assembly design.

A new technique for high resolution active laser imaging of space objects is demonstrated. The technique, referred as Fresnel telescopy, is a variant of Fourier telescopy, which additionally uses Fresnel zone plates to scan objects. The design scheme of a compact schematic of transmitting and receiving system for Fresnel telescopy is proposed. We provide simulations results for imaging of a photograph of satellite to illustrate and clarify the proposed idea. The technique is found to have substantial practical value and offers significant practical benefit for high resolution imaging of objects in the field of military applications.

Satellite laser communication involves communications between GEO satellites and LEO satellites. The optical link can be built by the accurate pointing and tracking, which often employs the combination effect of coarse pointing assembly and fine pointing assembly. In order to achieve this goal with double rotated wedged-plate lenses and fast steering mirror that perform the scanning function of the coarse pointing assembly and the fine pointing assembly, mathematic model of transfer function of control loop is obtained by analyzing the total control loop for such complex axis. One can also get the optimized programs between coarse and fine pointing assembly.

The laser-induced domain nucleation effect in 3 mol% hafnium-doped lithium niobate crystal is investigated. The two-dimensional and three-dimensional phase distributions during laser-induced domain nucleation are reconstructed by digital holographic interferometry. The in-situ phase mapping of continuous domain pattern formation during laser-induced domain nucleation is shown. The photovoltaic field along the − z direction is thought to be an important mechanism for the laser-induced preferential domain nucleation. The photovoltaic current density dependence on the light intensity is described. Based on the experimental results, a qualitative model of the laser-induced domain nucleation in lithium niobate crystal is presented.

In order to solve the nonlinear contact problem with the friction action in the mirror assembly, the modeling analysis is carried out by the MPC method of shell-to-solid coupling. Considering the friction factor existing in the contact region, the deformation and stress of the strap obviously changes from fixed region, transition region to contact region, which further produces a serious edge effect around the mirror and leads to the uneven stress distribution. The results show the maximal deformation of the assembly is 9.98 μm and the maximal stress is 10.5 MPa, which has much tolerance to the precision requirement of structure and the admissible stress of material; the influence of heat effect on the surface deformations of mirror is proved to be far greater than that of only gravity load. The advantages of the contact model built by the MPC method are more close to the actual working conditions and more accurate analysis results can be obtained.

The nonlinear chirp of a tunable laser generates the phase errors and damages the range resolution in synthetic aperture imaging ladar (SAIL). In the compensation algorithms establishing matched and nonmatched reference paths, the phase errors were compensated in a whole echo pulse. In this paper a compensation algorithm of nonlinear chirp by scan filtering is proposed. The heterodyne signals of different echoes from all target points in a footprint are scan filtered from one whole heterodyne signal of one whole echo pulse in the spectrum. The phase errors of these heterodyne signals are measured by phase-shifting algorithm in reference path and compensated separately. Then all the compensated signals are combined back into a whole heterodyne pulse and compressed in range. After all heterodyne pulses are compressed in range, the azimuth compensation is followed. The mathematical flow of this compensation algorithm is established. The simulation of the airborne SAIL model validates the feasibility, and the bandwidth of range compression decreases obviously. The effects of nonlinear chirp and the pass bandwidth of the scan filter are analyzed and discussed finally.

A laser collimator is necessary for testing and verification of the pointing, acquisition and tracking (PAT) performance of inter-satellite laser communication terminals on the ground. The laser collimator must have a large clear aperture to fit the PAT performance testing system. The PAT subsystem has a large field of view for the acquisition and a high angular accuracy for the fine tracking. To resolve the conflict between large field of view and fine angular resolution, a large-aperture double-focus laser collimator is proposed and its optical design and mechanical structure are described. The collimator mainly consists of a primary lens, a reflector, a beam-splitting plate, a secondary lens, two compensating lenses, two imaging sensors and a laser. The primary lens directly forms the long focal length arm of the collimator. The combination of the primary lens and the secondary lens form the short focal length arm of the collimator. The collimator has an angular resolution

In range-resolved reflective tomography laser radar imaging system, for accurate image reconstruction, all projections must be aligned to the center of target rotation. Due to the unknown location of the axis of rotation and random target translation, the center of target rotation in each projection cannot be measured accurately and images reconstructed based on range-resolved projections without registration would be dislocated. Here, we apply a feature tracking method to align projections data for tomographic reconstruction in laboratory-scale laser radar imaging. The target was placed on a spin table with an unknown and fixed axis, and the oscillatory motion of the target translation was simulated by a second order inertia filter to accord with the real satellites vibrations. The experimental simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method to improve images reconstruction equality. The application of this method to actual radar imaging in remote distance was discussed and the differences were compared with the lab setups.

In this paper, the ultraviolet (UV) photorefraction effect of lithium niobate doubly doped with Ce and Mn has been investigated. It is found the diffraction efficiency shows oscillating behavior under UV-light-recording. A model based on electrons and holes as the dominant carriers is proposed to study the oscillatory behavior of the diffraction efficiency. On the basis of the material equations and the coupled-wave equations, we found that the oscillatory behavior is due to the oscillation of the relative spatial phase shift Φ. And the electron–hole competition may cause the oscillation of the relative spatial phase shift. This oscillation behavior is different from that caused by very high-strength space electric field. UV recording can suppress the beam-fanning perfectly, and the most important is the high sensitivity.

The Jamin shearing interferometer is very useful in wavefront testing, especially for the low coherent light. Based on this interferometer, a polarization phase-shifting Jamin shearing interferometer is proposed to improve the performance. In the interferometer, two interference beams are linearly polarized and a polarization phase shifter is applied to realize the phase shifting. Different types of configurations of the interferometer are given. With phase-shifting interferograms, the precision of the interferometer can be improved. The interferometer is kept as an equal optical path system and its shearing amount remains changeable with simple structure and easy operation. In experiments, phase-shifting interferograms are obtained by rotating the analyzer. The usefulness of the interferometer is verified.

A method of on-ground simulation of optical links for free-space communications by Fourier-transform, image magnification and wavefront sampling with limited apertures was proposed. An optical simulator for free-space laser links was designed, which has the range of equivalent links distances from 160,000 km to 25 km. It can be used for the evaluation of communication performances of optical links in space, particularly for measuring the bit error rate under a constant transmission distance or for testing the equivalent transmission distance under a constant bit error rate. System analysis indicates that the wavefront aberrations of Fourier-transform lens have the main influence on the measurement results. But these effects can be corrected only if the RMS value of wavefront aberrations of Fourier-transform lens on the work aperture is known. Simulation experiment further shows that this method will be feasible by providing excellent optical devices and fine calibration accuracy and by overcoming the environmental disturbances.

We design a fringe-variable Jamin interferometer to detect the reversed domain of a ferroelectric crystal in real time. In contrast to the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, this setup is compact and tunable in fringe frequency. In experiments, we use it to detect the partly reversed domains of Stoichiometric LiTaO 3 (SLT). Selecting the proper fringe cycle, we can estimate the average phase shift between the original and reversed domains through eyeballing. Furthermore, in the interferogram processing, we use the FFT methods to reconstruct the phase according to the original fringe and deformed fringe, and obtain the phase variance at the domain wall. The results show that the average phase variance at the domain wall is in good agreement with the theoretical value.

Coded aperture imaging (CAI) has evolved as a standard technique for imaging high-energy photon sources and has found numerous applications. Coded aperture arrays (CAAs) are the most important devices in the applications of CAI. In recent years, many approaches were presented to design optimum or near-optimum CAAs. Uniformly redundant arrays (URAs) are the most successful CAAs for their cyclic autocorrelation consisting of a sequence of delta functions on a flat sidelobe, which can easily be subtracted when the object has been reconstructed. Unfortunately, the existing methods can only be used to design URAs with limited number of array sizes and fixed autocorrelative sidelobe-to-peak ratio. In this paper, we presented a method to design more flexible URAs by means of a global optimization algorithm named DIRECT. By our approaches, we obtain various types of URAs including the filled URAs which can be constructed by existing methods and the sparse URAs which have never been constructed and mentioned by existing papers as far as we know.

The near-infrared nonvolatile holographic recording has been realized in a doubly doped LiNbO3:Fe:Rh crystal by the traditional two-center holographic recording scheme, for the first time. The recording performance of this crystal has been investigated by recording with 633 nm red light, 752 nm red light and 799 nm near-infrared light and sensitizing with 405 nm purple light. The experimental results show that, co-doped with Fe and Rh, the near-infrared absorption and the photovoltaic coefficient of shallow trap Fe are enhanced in this LiNbO3:Fe:Rh crystal, compared with other doubly doped LiNbO3 crystals Such as LiNbO3:Fe:Mn. It is also found that the sensitizing light intensity affects the near-infrared recording sensitivity in a different way than two-center holographic recording with shorter wavelength, and the origin of experimental results is analyzed. (C) 2007 Elsevier GrnbH. All rights reserved.

Coupling a single-mode laser diode with 200 mW to a single-mode fiber (SMF) through an orthonormal aspherical cylindrical lens and a GRIN lens for the intersatellite optical communication system is proposed and demonstrated. We experimentally studied how the coupling efficiency changes with the SMF's position displacement and axial angle variation, and obtained 80 mW output power at the end of the SMF, which shows that the coupling units have satisfied the designed request.

Far-field spot compression without energy loss in main lob is of great significance to wireless laser communication. In this letter, we propose two schemes to obtain far-field spot compression without energy loss in main lob. One scheme is based on the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. Using SA algorithm, we design the phase profile of the diffractive phase element (DPE). Using the designed DPE, far-field spot compression without energy loss in main lob is achieved. The other scheme is based on YG algorithm. By means of YG algorithm, we appropriately designed the DPE in the emitting plane. Using the DPE, far-field spot compression without energy loss in main lob is obtained.

An FFT-based two-step phase-shifting (TPS) algorithm is described in detail and implemented by use of experimental interferograms. This algorithm has been proposed to solve the TPS problem with random phase shift except pi. By comparison with the visibility-function-based TPS algorithm, it proves that the FFT-based algorithm has obvious advantages in phase extracting. Meanwhile, we present a pi-phase-shift supplement to the TPS algorithm, which combines the two interferograms and demodulates the phase map by locating the extrema of the combined fringes after removing the respective backgrounds. So combining this method and FFT-based one, one could really implement the TPS with random phase shift. Whereafter, we systematically compare the TPS with single-interferogram analysis algorithm and conventional three-step phase-shifting one. The results demonstrate that the FFT-based TPS algorithm has a satisfactory accuracy. At last, based on the polarizing interferometry, a schematic setup of two-channel TPS interferometer with random phase shift is suggested to implement the simultaneous collection of interferograms. (c) 2007 Elsevier GrnbH. All rights reserved.

An optical communication scheme of 2-D pattern transfer based on imaging optics for submarine laser uplink communication (SLUC) is suggested. Unlike the methods aiming at avoiding neighboring crosstalk used in traditional multi-channel optical beam transferring, we make full use of the overlapping of each spreading beam other than controlling divergence effect of each beam to avoid interference noise. The apparent parameters have been introduced to simplify theoretical analysis of optical pattern transfer problem involving underwater condition, with the help of which the complex beam propagation inside two kinds of mediums can be easily reduced to brief beam transfer only inside air medium. In this paper, optical transmission path and receiver terminal optics geometry have been described in detail. The link range equation and system uplink performance analysis have also been given. At last, results of a proof-of-concept experiment indicate good feasibility of the proposed SLUC model.

Spatial coherence properties of beam produced by Gaussian Schell-model source when the beam is propagating through atmosphere have been analyzed in terms of position vectors. New expressions for cross-spectral density of optical field and spectral degree of coherence as well as radiant intensity have been developed. Numerical results illustrated in this paper indicate the coherence degradation suffered from atmospheric turbulence and their directional dependence. (C) 2007 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

The paper comprehensively analyzes the distortions of a circular wedge prism with 400 mm diameter in a scanner by method of optical-mechanical-thermal integrating analysis. The structure and intensity of the prism assembly is verified and checked, and the surface deformations of the prism under gravity load, as well as the thermo-elastic distortions of the prism, are analyzed in detail and evaluated, which is finally contrasted with the measured values of Zygo Mark interferometer. The results show: the maximal distortion of the prism assembly is 10 nm magnitude and the maximal stress is 0.441 Mpa, which has much tolerance to the precision requirement of structure and the admissible stress of material; the influence of heat effect on the surface deformations of prism is proved to be far greater than the influence of gravity load, so some strict temperature-controlled measures are to be considered when the scanner is used. (c) 2006 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

We report an organic/inorganic polymer composite based on the chemically hybridized photoconductor CdS-PVK nanocomposite doped with a new second-order optically nonlinear chromophore 1-n-butoxy-2-methyl-(4-p-nitrophenylazo)benzene (BMNPAB) and plasticizer 9-ethyl-carbazole (ECZ) to manifest a photorefractive (PR) effect. A detailed description of the synthesis and characterization of BMNPAB is presented. The poled film including PVK-10-CdS nanocomposite and BMNPAB exhibits a high second harmonic generation (SHG) coefficient of 31 pm/V The photoconductivity of PVK-CdS nanocomposite also was studied here. Two-beam coupling experiment clearly indicated an asymmetric optical energy exchange between two beams on the polymer composite at zero electrical field, and the two-beam coupling gain of 50.0 cm(-1) and diffraction efficiencv of 4.2% were obtained at 647.1 nm wavelength. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The numerical simulation of the wavefronts diffracted by apertures with circular symmetry is realized by a numerical method. It is based on the angular spectrum of plane waves, which ignored the vector nature of light. The on-axial irradiance distributions of plane wavefront and Gauss wavefront diffracted by the circular aperture have been calculated along the propagation direction. Comparisons of the simulation results with the analytical results and the experimental results tell us that it is a feasible method to calculate the diffraction of apertures.

When noises considerations are made, nonredundant arrays (NRAs) are endowed with many advantages which other arrays e.g., uniformly redundant arrays (URAs) do not possess in applications of coded aperture imaging. However, lower aperture opening ratio limits the applications of NRA in practice. In this paper, we present a computer searching method based on a global optimization algorithm named DIRECT to design NRAs. Compared with the existing NRAs e.g., Golay's NRAs, which are well known and widely used in various applications, NRAs found by our method have higher aperture opening ratio and auto correlation compression ratio. These advantages make our aperture arrays be very useful for practical applications especially for which of aperture size are limited. Here, we also present some aperture arrays we found. These aperture arrays have an interesting property that they belong to both NRA and URA. (C) 2006 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Anisotropic diffraction of uniform plane wave by finite-sized volume holographic grating in photorefractive crystals is considered. It is found that the anisotropic diffraction can take place when some special conditions are satisfied. The diffracted image is obtained in experiment for the anisotropic Bragg diffraction in Fe:LiNbO 3 crystals. A coupled wave analysis is presented to study the properties of anisotropic diffraction. An analytical integral solution for the amplitudes of the diffracted beams is submitted. A trade off between high diffraction efficiency and the deterioration of reconstruction fidelity is analyzed. Numerical evaluations also show that the finite-sized anisotropic volume grating exhibits strong angular and wavelength selectivity. All the results are useful for the optimizing design of VHOE based on finite-sized volume grating structures.

The anisotropic Bragg diffraction of the volume holographic gratings in photorefractive crystals are investigated based on the model of anisotropic coupled-wave theory. The effect of the initial intensity ratio and the recording angles of the two recording waves on the anisotropic Bragg diffraction properties is discussed. It is shown that both the ratio of the initial intensity and the incident angles of the recording waves are selective action for the anisotropic Bragg diffraction efficiency of the volume holographic gratings, while these two recording conditions are not selective action for the isotropic Bragg diffraction. Furthermore, the Bragg phase matching condition of anisotropic diffraction is analyzed when the recording angles change.

Hexagonal array is a basic structure widely exists in nature and adopted by optoclectronic device. A phase plate based on the fractional Talbot effect that converts a single expanded laser beam into a regular hexagonal array of uniformly illuminated apertures with virtually 100% efficiency is presented. The uniform hexagonal array illumination with a fill factor of 1/12 is demonstrated by the computer simulation. (C) 2006 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

A cascaded Fresnel digital hologram (CFDH) is proposed, together with its mathematical derivation. Its application to watermarking has been demonstrated by a simulation procedure, in which the watermark image to be hidden is encoded into the phase of the host image. The watermark image can be deciphered by the CFDH setup, the reconstructed image shows good quality and the error is almost closed to zeros. Compared with previous technique, this is a lensless architecture, which minimizes the hardware requirement.

In this paper, we propose a novel three-dimensional imaging method by which the object is captured by a coded cameras array (CCA) and computationally reconstructed as a series of longitudinal layered surface images of the object. The distribution of cameras in array, named code pattern, is crucial for reconstructed images fidelity when the correlation decoding is used. We use DIRECT global optimization algorithm to design the code patterns that possess proper imaging property. We have conducted primary experiments to verify and test the performance of the proposed method with a simple discontinuous object and a small-scale CCA including nine cameras. After certain procedures such as capturing, photograph integrating, computational reconstructing and filtering, etc., we obtain reconstructed longitudinal layered surface images of the object with higher signal-to-noise ratio. The results of experiments show that the proposed method is feasible. It is a promising method to be used in fields such as remote sensing, machine vision, etc.

The Mask Cut unwrapping algorithm, a cross between Goldstein's Branch Cut and quality-guided path following algorithm, is generally successful at unwrapping phase; but if no good quality map, wrong placement of branch cuts or bad phase-unwrapping path, it will fail to confine the errors to the low-quality regions and lead to the failure of phase unwrapping. To overcome these drawbacks, we propose a new reliability function (i.e. quality map) based on the fringe modulation (the visibility of the fringes) and second-order phase difference, and improve the reliability-guided phase-unwrapping algorithm. Considering the residues, we use the reliability information to guide the placement of branch cuts and to optimize the phase-unwrapping path. The simulated and experimental data both demonstrate the validity of the new reliability-guided phase-unwrapping method.

We study the change in the degree of coherence of partially coherent electromagnetic beam (so called electromagnetic Gaussian Schell-model beam). It is shown analytically that with a fixed set of source parameters and under a particular atmospheric turbulence model, an electromagnetic Gaussian Schell-model beam propagating through atmospheric turbulence reaches its maximum value of coherence after the beam propagates a particular distance, and the effective width of the spectral degree of coherence also has its maximum value. This phenomenon is independent of the used turbulence model. The results are illustrated by numerical curves. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We propose a novel communication technique which utilizes a set of mutually distinguishable optical patterns instead of convergent facula to transmit information. The communication capacity is increased by exploiting the optical spatial bandwidth resources. An optimum detector for this communication is proposed based on maximum-likelihood decision. The fundamental rule of designing signal spatial pattern is formulated from analysis of the probability of error decision. Finally, we present a typical electro-optical system scheme of the proposed communication.

We design three-zone annular filters to be applied to optical storage system. The designed filters extend the depth of focus and realize transverse superresolution simultaneously, which will improve the performance of optical storage system greatly. And we propose two feasible schemes to improve imaging resolution of three-dimensional imaging system. One scheme depends on a complex filter formed by cascading of a three-zone phase filter and a three-zone amplitude filter. The complex filter converge the optimized transverse superresolution and the optimized axial superresolution of two different filters onto a single filter. It can improve the three-dimensional imaging performances greatly. Another scheme depends on a single three-zone complex filter. We propose a three-zone complex filter with phase shift 0.8π, which presents bigger design margin, better imaging quality and stronger three-dimensional superresolution capability.

By sensitizing with 514 nm green light, 488 nm blue light and 390 nm ultraviolet light, respectively, recording with 633 nm red light, effect of wavelength of sensitizing light on holographic storage properties in LiNbO3:Fe:Ni crystal is investigated in detail. It is shown that by shortening the wavelength of sensitizing light gradually, nonvolatile holographic recording properties of oxidized LiNbO3:Fe:Ni crystal is optimized gradually, 390 nm ultraviolet light is the best as the sensitizing light. Considering the absorption of sensitizing light, to obtain the best performance in two-center holographic recording we must choose a sensitizing wavelength that is long enough to prevent unwanted absorptions (band-to-band, etc.) and short enough to result in efficient sensitization from the deep traps. So in practice a trade-off is always needed. Explanation is presented theoretically. (c) 2005 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Based on electro-optic switch effect in crystal, a novel laser ranging method is proposed. CW-laser emitted by laser transmitter propagates forward to the measured target, after being reflected by the target, and then goes back to the transmitter. Close to the transmitter, a special mono-block LiNbO3 crystal is added into the round-trip light beams. High-voltage pulses with the sharp enough changes in rising edges are loaded on the crystal. Based on electro-optic effect, double refraction and internal double reflection effect in crystal, the crystal cuts off the round-trip light beams, and reflects a light pulse cut out by the crystal to a detector aside from the original beam path. The pulse width T is the period that laser propagates forward and back between the crystal and the target. The feasibility of the new idea is proved by our experiments and a brand-new way for the laser ranging is provided. (c) 2005 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

The electro-optic effect in uniaxial crystals for light propagating near the optic axis with any polarization has been analyzed. The passive and the electrically induced birefringences and the rotation of polarization direction in crystals have been calculated, and the conoscopic interference figures under orthogonal polariscopes for different polarizer directions have been plotted. The extinction areas caused by the rotation of polarization direction in crystals change with the polarizer direction, but the two heads of the induced optical axes do not vary, which are always on the induced principal axis with bigger refractive index. The directions of polariscopes are always extinction, and the +/- 45 degrees directions with polarizer are always complete transmission. The conoscopic interference figures for LiNbO3 crystals have been demonstrated experimentally by rotating polariscopes directions, which accord with the theoretically calculating plots. (c) 2006 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

We have studied the anisotropic diffraction properties of the stratified volume holographic gratings recorded in photorefractive media using the anisotropic coupled wave theory. It is shown that the diffraction efficiency of such system exhibit the uniform periodic Bragg selectivity properties. In addition the dependence of the stratified volume holographic optical elements (SVHOEs) diffraction properties on the buffer-layer thickness, grating-layer thickness, number of modulation layers, and total thickness of system are discussed in detail.

We have investigated ultraviolet (UV) photorefractive effect of lithium niobate doubly doped with Ce and Cu. It is found the diffraction efficiency shows oscillating behavior Under UV-1ight-recording. A model in which electrons and holes can be excited from impurity centers in the UV region is proposed to study the oscillatory behavior of the diffraction efficiency. Oil the basis of the material equations and the coupled-wave equations, we found that the oscillatory behavior is due to the oscillation of the relative spatial phase shift Phi. And the electron-hole competition may cause the oscillation of the relative spatial phase shift. A switch point from electron grating to hole grating is chosen to realize nonvolatile readout by a red light with high sensitivity (0.4 cm/J). (c) 2005 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.