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We realize a chip-based Brillouin microlaser with remarkable features of high power and low noise using a microtoroid resonator. Our Brillouin microlaser is able to output a power of up to 126 mW with a fundamental linewidth down to 245 mHz. Additionally, in the course of Brillouin lasing we observe an intriguing power saturation-like effect, which can be attributed to complex thermo-optic-effect-induced mode mismatch between the pump and Brillouin modes. To have a quantitative understanding of this phenomenon, we develop a model by simultaneously considering Brillouin lasing and the thermo-optic effect occurring in the microcavity. Of importance, our theoretical results match well with experimentally measured data.

Optical frequency combs (OFCs) are essential in precision metrology, spectroscopy, distance measurement, and optical communications. Significant advances have been made recently in achieving micro-OFC devices based on parametric frequency conversion or electro-optic phase modulation. Here, we demonstrate a new kind of microcomb using a cavity optomechanical system with giant oscillation amplitude. We observe both optical and microwave frequency combs in a microtoroid resonator, which feature a flat OFC with 938 comb lines and a repetition rate as low as 50.22 MHz, as well as a flat microwave frequency comb with 867 comb lines. To generate such giant oscillation amplitude, we excite an overcoupled optical mode with a large blue detuning that is assisted with the thermo-optic nonlinearity. A new type of nonlinear oscillation, induced by competition between the optomechanical oscillation and thermo-optic nonlinearity, is also observed.

We demonstrate a new, to the best of our knowledge, kind of self-pulsation in a microcavity Brillouin laser. This specific self-pulsation is generated by the interplay between the Brillouin lasing and the thermo-optic effect in an optical microcavity. Intriguingly, the self-pulsation behaviors are simultaneously present in both forward input pump and backward Brillouin lasing emission. By developing a coupled-mode theory, our numerical simulations display an excellent agreement with the experimental results.

By generating a Brillouin laser in an optical microresonator, we realize a soliton Kerr microcomb through exciting the Kerr frequency comb using the generated Brillouin laser in the same cavity. The intracavity Brillouin laser pumping scheme enables us to access the soliton states with a blue-detuned input pump. Because of the ultranarrow linewidth and the low-noise properties of the generated Brillouin laser, the observed soliton microcomb exhibits narrow-linewidth comb lines and stable repetition rate. Also, we demonstrate a low-noise microwave signal with phase noise of $\ensuremath{-}49\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{dBc}/\mathrm{Hz}$ at 10 Hz, $\ensuremath{-}130\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{dBc}/\mathrm{Hz}$ at 10 kHz, and $\ensuremath{-}149\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{dBc}/\mathrm{Hz}$ at 1 MHz offsets for a 10.43 GHz carrier with only a free-running input pump. The easy operation of the Brillouin-Kerr soliton microcomb with excellent performance makes our scheme promising for practical applications.

This chapter provides a list of product quality tests for topically applied drug products. The limitation in local pharmacokinetics (PK) knowledge and tools impedes the chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) development of locally acting dermal systems for both new and generic drugs. One can expect that CMC information to support such a product may be more than what is typically required for a simple solution/suspension/emulsion. With the availability of cleaner medical grade plastics and more sophisticated manufacturing equipment/process, the aforementioned CMC challenges have been overcome. Traditional dermatological product development was often empirical in CMC activities. CMC overlook is usually due to an ignorance of the clinical/regulatory implications of CMC elements. Early identification of critical product attributes and important manufacturing process parameters is essential to the eventual success in the development. A non-aqueous, volatile formulation was uncommon in the past due to challenges in manufacturing and handling as well as concerns related to safety and quality.

Nonlinear non-Hermitian systems with saturable nonlinearities give rise to versatile phenomena that have no counterparts in linear systems. Here, we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate saturable nonlinearity (saturable absorption and gain) of erbium ions doped in silica microcavities at different concentrations. Our results show that when the doped concentration is low, the single isolated model agrees well with the experimental results, and also can be used as a basic description of highly doped samples to analyze the saturable nonlinearity. Yet, for highly doped microcavities we find that the clustering effect shall be also taken into account in order to match experimental data and to achieve a reasonable agreement. To confirm our finding, we experimentally characterize the saturable nonlinearity for ion concentrations varying from $\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}1.0\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}$ to $5.0\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{19}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$. Our experiment shows excellent consistency with the theory, which in turn suggests other potential applications of the theory based on saturable nonlinearity, including optical bistability and nonlinear parity-time symmetry.

Background Functional and rapid enthesis regeneration remains a challenge after arthroscopic rotator cuff (RC) repair. Tissue-engineering a large-size biomimetic scaffold may be an adjuvant strategy to improve this clinical dilemma. Herein, we developed an optimized protocol to decellularize large-size enthesis as scaffolds for augmenting RC tear. Methods A novel vacuum aspiration system (VAS) was set up, which can provide a negative pressure to suck out cellular substances from tissue blocks without using chemical detergents. Large-size enthesis tissue specimens were harvested from canine infraspinatus tendon (IT) insertion, and then decellularized with an optimized protocol [freeze-thaw processing followed by nuclease digestion and phosphate buffer saline (PBS) rinsing in the custom-designed VAS], or a conventional protocol (freeze-thaw processing followed by nuclease digestion and PBS rinsing), thus fabricating two kinds of acellular enthesis matrix (AEM), namely C-AEM and O-AEM. After that, the C-AEM and O-AEM were comparatively evaluated from the aspect of their physicochemical and biological properties. Results Physiochemically, the O-AEM preserved the morphologies, ingredients, and tensile properties much better than the C-AEM. Biologically, in vitro studies demonstrated that both C-AEM and O-AEM show no cytotoxicity and low immunogenicity, which could promote stem cells attachment and proliferation. Interestingly, O-AEM showed better region-specific inducibility on the interacted stem cell down osteogenic, chondrogenic and tenogenic lineages compared with C-AEM. Additionally, using a canine IT repair model, the injured enthesis patched with O-AEM showed a significant improvement compared with the injured enthesis patched with C-AEM or direct suture histologically. Conclusions The proposed VAS may help us fabricate large-size AEM with good physicochemical and biological properties, and this AEM may have potential clinical applications in patching large/massive RC tear.

The application of coupled oxidation of NADPH to peroxide quantitation in non-ionic surfactant solutions is demonstrated using polysorbate 80 as the model surfactant. The linearity, precision, accuracy, and sensitivity of the method are discussed. The method has the following advantages over the traditional iodimetric method: (1) it is not affected by the non-ionic surfactant present in the solution; (2) it is reactive to less reactive hydroperoxides; (3) it is not light sensitive; and (4) it is carried out at near physiological pH in aqueous solutions. The method was employed to monitor the peroxide concentration of polysorbate 80 solutions stored under three different conditions. The effects of light and heat on peroxide concentration are more pronounced in more dilute solutions (0.1 and 1%). The peroxide concentration determined in the freshly prepared polysorbate 80 solution can be converted to the peroxide number of the raw material, which is not available from the supplier of polysorbate 80.

Classical nonlinear or quantum all-optical transistors are dependent on the value of input signal intensity or need extra co-propagating beams. In this paper, we present a kind of all-optical transistors constructed with parity-time (PT)-symmetric Y-junctions, which perform independently on the value of signal intensity in an unsaturated gain case and can also work after introducing saturated gain. Further, we show that control signal can switch the device from amplification of peaks in time to transformation of peaks to amplified troughs. By using these PT-symmetric Y-junctions with currently available materials and technologies, we can implement interesting logic functions such as NOT and XOR (exclusive OR) gates, implying potential applications of such structures in designing optical logic gates, optical switches, and signal transformations or amplifications.

In this paper, we present a kind of periodical ternary parity-time (PT) -symmetric multilayers to realize nearly 100% reflectance and transmittance simultaneously when light is incident from a certain direction. This extraordinary reflection and transmission is original from unidirectional Bragg reflection of PT-symmetric systems as the symmetry spontaneous breaking happens at PT thresholds. The extra energy involved in reflection and transmission lights is obtained from pumping light to the gain regions of the structure. Moreover, we find that our PT-symmetric structure shows direction dependent wavelength selectivity. When the illumination light is incident from two opposite directions into the multilayer structure, such extraordinary reflection and transmission appear at visible and near-infrared wavelengths, respectively. Such distinguishing properties may provide these structures with attractive applications as beam splitters, laser mirrors, narrow band filters, and multiband PT-symmetric optical devices.

We numerically observed plasmonic Zitterbewegung (ZB) in nanoscale binary metal waveguide arrays constructed by alternately filling two different dielectrics into adjacent guides. The positive- and negative-energy states of a relativistic electron, whose interference causes the ZB, are mimicked by surface plasmon polariton modes of the two bands of the guide array, respectively. Different from photonic ZB appearing in dielectric systems, we also found that SPP wave packets satisfy a negative-coupled Dirac equation; hence the beam center of SPP shows a shift direction opposite to photonic ZB.

We demonstrate a kind of ternary parity-time (PT)-symmetric complex waveguide arrays to observe nonreciprocal optical Bloch-Zener oscillations (OBZOs) at the PT thresholds. The waveguide arrays are periodically constructed with a unit of a dielectric waveguide sandwiched by a loss and a gain waveguides. The nonreciprocal optical Bloch-Zener oscillations are attributed to the unidirectional Bragg scattering behaviors of light in the systems, which can be controlled by the propagation constant mismatch between dielectric waveguides and loss or gain waveguides through independently tuning the propagation constants of the dielectric waveguides of the units.

Drug-cornea contact time is a critical issue in ocular drug delivery. Existing methods for its experimental determination are developed mainly for eye drops and ointments, and have not been reported for ophthalmic gels. The present study evaluated two tear film sampling techniques (capillary tubes and Schirmer strips) and one recovery technique (cotton swab) for their suitability for the determination of precorneal drug concentration as a function of time for ophthalmic gels. The study was conducted using the rabbit eye model, and the gel studied was a commercial polyacrylate-based gel containing pilocarpine HCl. The three techniques explored yield similar results with respect to drug-cornea contact time, about one hour for the gel studied. The strip method suffers from a gel-carry-over problem at the early time points; therefore it is not recommended for tear sampling until most of the gel is cleared from the cul-de-sac. Successful tear sampling was accomplished using capillary tubes. Drug concentration in the tear film as a function of time determined using this technique reveals not only the duration of contact between the drug and the cornea, but also demonstrates a nonuniform drug distribution in the tear film at the early time points (10 and 30 minutes). Finally the cotton swab technique is gentle, easy, and nondestructive. It recovers total drug remaining in the cul-de-sac but does not yield information for the tear film.