Optical Materials for Spectral Management

Optical Studies of Materials for Spectral Design

Optical material properties have been studied in a wide wavelength range. The aim is future use of spectral design for camouflage. The main characterization techniques used in this work are Reflection Spectroscopy, Scatterometry (BRDF) and Mueller Matrix Ellipsometry. Six camouflage evaluation criteria based on reflection, emissivity, polarization, gloss, dynamic coloring and broad band propert...

Spectral and Optical Properties of Correlated Materials

Materials for Optical Cryocoolers

Vibration free cooling of detectors to cryogenic temperatures is critical for many terrestrial, airborne, and space based instruments. Cooling of solids by anti Stokes fluorescence is an emerging refrigeration technology that is inherently vibration free and compact, and enables cooling of small loads to cryogenic temperatures. In this Highlight, advances in laser cooling of solids are discusse...

New materials for optical cooling

Well-characterized solid-state laser materials are evaluated for performance in optical refrigeration as well as radiation-balanced laser systems. New figures-of-merit are developed and applied to ytterbium-doped materials. Superior performance is predicted for high-cross-section tungstate materials. Photothermal deflection experiments on samples of Yb3+-doped KGd(WO4)2 confirm anti-Stokes fluo...

Management of Spectral Resources in Elastic Optical Networks

Recent developments in the area of mobile technologies, data center networks, cloud computing and social networks have triggered the growth of a wide range of network applications. The data rate of these applications also vary from a few megabits per second (Mbps) to several Gigabits per second (Gbps), thereby increasing the burden on the Internet. To support this growth in Internet data traffi...