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- ItemEnhancing laser beam performance by interfering intense laser beamlets([London] : Nature Publishing Group UK, 2019) Morace, A.; Iwata, N.; Sentoku, Y.; Mima, K.; Arikawa, Y.; Yogo, A.; Andreev, A.; Tosaki, S.; Vaisseau, X.; Abe, Y.; Kojima, S.; Sakata, S.; Hata, M.; Lee, S.; Matsuo, K.; Kamitsukasa, N.; Norimatsu, T.; Kawanaka, J.; Tokita, S.; Miyanaga, N.; Shiraga, H.; Sakawa, Y.; Nakai, M.; Nishimura, H.; Azechi, H.; Fujioka, S.; Kodama, R.Increasing the laser energy absorption into energetic particle beams represents a longstanding quest in intense laser-plasma physics. During the interaction with matter, part of the laser energy is converted into relativistic electron beams, which are the origin of secondary sources of energetic ions, γ-rays and neutrons. Here we experimentally demonstrate that using multiple coherent laser beamlets spatially and temporally overlapped, thus producing an interference pattern in the laser focus, significantly improves the laser energy conversion efficiency into hot electrons, compared to one beam with the same energy and nominal intensity as the four beamlets combined. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations support the experimental results, suggesting that beamlet interference pattern induces a periodical shaping of the critical density, ultimately playing a key-role in enhancing the laser-to-electron energy conversion efficiency. This method is rather insensitive to laser pulse contrast and duration, making this approach robust and suitable to many existing facilities.
- ItemA versatile and customizable low-cost 3D-printed open standard for microscopic imaging([London] : Nature Publishing Group UK, 2020) Diederich, Benedict; Lachmann, René; Carlstedt, Swen; Marsikova, Barbora; Wang, Haoran; Uwurukundo, Xavier; Mosig, Alexander S.; Heintzmann, RainerModern microscopes used for biological imaging often present themselves as black boxes whose precise operating principle remains unknown, and whose optical resolution and price seem to be in inverse proportion to each other. With UC2 (You. See. Too.) we present a low-cost, 3D-printed, open-source, modular microscopy toolbox and demonstrate its versatility by realizing a complete microscope development cycle from concept to experimental phase. The self-contained incubator-enclosed brightfield microscope monitors monocyte to macrophage cell differentiation for seven days at cellular resolution level (e.g. 2 μm). Furthermore, by including very few additional components, the geometry is transferred into a 400 Euro light sheet fluorescence microscope for volumetric observations of a transgenic Zebrafish expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP). With this, we aim to establish an open standard in optics to facilitate interfacing with various complementary platforms. By making the content and comprehensive documentation publicly available, the systems presented here lend themselves to easy and straightforward replications, modifications, and extensions.
- ItemNonlinear Structured Illumination Using a Fluorescent Protein Activating at the Readout Wavelength(San Francisco, California, US : PLOS, 2016) Lu-Walther, Hui-Wen; Hou, Wenya; Kielhorn, Martin; Arai, Yoshiyuki; Nagai, Takeharu; Kessels, Michael M.; Qualmann, Britta; Heintzmann, RainerStructured illumination microscopy (SIM) is a wide-field technique in fluorescence microscopy that provides fast data acquisition and two-fold resolution improvement beyond the Abbe limit. We observed a further resolution improvement using the nonlinear emission response of a fluorescent protein. We demonstrated a two-beam nonlinear structured illumination microscope by introducing only a minor change into the system used for linear SIM (LSIM). To achieve the required nonlinear dependence in nonlinear SIM (NL-SIM) we exploited the photoswitching of the recently introduced fluorophore Kohinoor. It is particularly suitable due to its positive contrast photoswitching characteristics. Contrary to other reversibly photoswitchable fluorescent proteins which only have high photostability in living cells, Kohinoor additionally showed little degradation in fixed cells over many switching cycles.