Search Results
Multi-watt, multi-octave, mid-infrared femtosecond source
2018, Seidel, Marcus, Xiao, Xiao, Hussain, Syed A., Arisholm, Gunnar, Hartung, Alexander, Zawilski, Kevin T., Schunemann, Peter G., Habel, Florian, Trubetskov, Michael, Pervak, Vladimir, Pronin, Oleg, Krausz, Ferenc
Spectroscopy in the wavelength range from 2 to 11 μm (900 to 5000 cm−1) implies a multitude of applications in fundamental physics, chemistry, as well as environmental and life sciences. The related vibrational transitions, which all infrared-active small molecules, the most common functional groups, as well as biomolecules like proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates exhibit, reveal information about molecular structure and composition. However, light sources and detectors in the mid-infrared have been inferior to those in the visible or near-infrared, in terms of power, bandwidth, and sensitivity, severely limiting the performance of infrared experimental techniques. This article demonstrates the generation of femtosecond radiation with up to 5 W at 4.1 μm and 1.3 W at 8.5 μm, corresponding to an order-of-magnitude average power increase for ultrafast light sources operating at wavelengths longer than 5 μm. The presented concept is based on power-scalable near-infrared lasers emitting at a wavelength near 1 μm, which pump optical parametric amplifiers. In addition, both wavelength tunability and supercontinuum generation are reported, resulting in spectral coverage from 1.6 to 10.2 μm with power densities exceeding state-of-the-art synchrotron sources over the entire range. The flexible frequency conversion scheme is highly attractive for both up-conversion and frequency comb spectroscopy, as well as for a variety of time-domain applications.Spectroscopy in the wavelength range from 2 to 11 μm (900 to 5000 cm−1) implies a multitude of applications in fundamental physics, chemistry, as well as environmental and life sciences. The related vibrational transitions, which all infrared-active small molecules, the most common functional groups, as well as biomolecules like proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates exhibit, reveal information about molecular structure and composition. However, light sources and detectors in the mid-infrared have been inferior to those in the visible or near-infrared, in terms of power, bandwidth, and sensitivity, severely limiting the performance of infrared experimental techniques. This article demonstrates the generation of femtosecond radiation with up to 5 W at 4.1 μm and 1.3 W at 8.5 μm, corresponding to an order-of-magnitude average power increase for ultrafast light sources operating at wavelengths longer than 5 μm. The presented concept is based on power-scalable near-infrared lasers emitting at a wavelength near 1 μm, which pump optical parametric amplifiers. In addition, both wavelength tunability and supercontinuum generation are reported, resulting in spectral coverage from 1.6 to 10.2 μm with power densities exceeding state-of-the-art synchrotron sources over the entire range. The flexible frequency conversion scheme is highly attractive for both up-conversion and frequency comb spectroscopy, as well as for a variety of time-domain applications.
High-bit rate ultra-compact light routing with mode-selective on-chip nanoantennas
2017, Guo, Rui, Decker, Manuel, Setzpfandt, Frank, Gai, Xin, Choi, Duk-Yong, Kiselev, Roman, Chipouline, Arkadi, Staude, Isabelle, Pertsch, Thomas, Neshev, Dragomir N.
Optical nanoantennas provide a promising pathway toward advanced manipulation of light waves, such as directional scattering, polarization conversion, and fluorescence enhancement. Although these functionalities were mainly studied for nanoantennas in free space or on homogeneous substrates, their integration with optical waveguides offers an important “wired” connection to other functional optical components. Taking advantage of the nanoantenna’s versatility and unrivaled compactness, their imprinting onto optical waveguides would enable a marked enhancement of design freedom and integration density for optical on-chip devices. Several examples of this concept have been demonstrated recently. However, the important question of whether nanoantennas can fulfill functionalities for high-bit rate signal transmission without degradation, which is the core purpose of many integrated optical applications, has not yet been experimentally investigated. We introduce and investigate directional, polarization-selective, and mode-selective on-chip nanoantennas integrated with a silicon rib waveguide. We demonstrate that these nanoantennas can separate optical signals with different polarizations by coupling the different polarizations of light vertically to different waveguide modes propagating into opposite directions. As the central result of this work, we show the suitability of this concept for the control of optical signals with ASK (amplitude-shift keying) NRZ (nonreturn to zero) modulation [10 Gigabit/s (Gb/s)] without significant bit error rate impairments. Our results demonstrate that waveguide-integrated nanoantennas have the potential to be used as ultra-compact polarization-demultiplexing on-chip devices for high–bit rate telecommunication applications.
HIV-1 Gag specifically restricts PI(4,5)P2 and cholesterol mobility in living cells creating a nanodomain platform for virus assembly
2019, Favard, C., Chojnacki, Jakub, Merida, P., Yandrapalli, N., Mak, J., Eggeling, Christian, Muriaux, D.
HIV-1 Gag protein assembles at the plasma membrane of infected cells for viral particle formation. Gag targets lipids, mainly PI(4,5)P2, at the inner leaflet of this membrane. Here, we address the question whether Gag is able to trap specifically PI(4,5)P2 or other lipids during HIV-1 assembly in the host CD4+ T lymphocytes. Lipid dynamics within and away from HIV-1 assembly sites were determined using super-resolution microscopy coupled with scanning fluorescence correlation spectroscopy in living cells. Analysis of HIV-1–infected cells revealed that, upon assembly, HIV-1 is able to specifically trap PI(4,5)P2 and cholesterol, but not phosphatidylethanolamine or sphingomyelin. Furthermore, our data showed that Gag is the main driving force to restrict the mobility of PI(4,5)P2 and cholesterol at the cell plasma membrane. This is the first direct evidence highlighting that HIV-1 creates its own specific lipid environment by selectively recruiting PI(4,5)P2 and cholesterol as a membrane nanoplatform for virus assembly.