We present a theoretical study of the induced transient birefringence of a low density homogeneous molecular gas in a resonant pump–probe experiment. The molecular coherent state induced by the resonant pump field is described by second-order perturbation theory. The induced birefringence can be detected by a delayed probe pulse propagating through the molecular medium after illumination by the...

We demonstrate a novel Er3+-doped fibre laser operating in orthogonally polarized dual-frequency modes and its application to electric current sensing with frequency read-out. A Faraday rotating mirror and spatial hole burning effects in a gain medium and in a saturable absorber are utilized to control the lasing mode and polarization. The polarization mode beat frequency changes linearly in re...

Two fundamental laser physics phenomena--dissipative soliton and polarisation of light are recently merged to the concept of vector dissipative soliton (VDS), viz. train of short pulses with specific state of polarisation (SOP) and shape defined by an interplay between anisotropy, gain/loss, dispersion, and nonlinearity. Emergence of VDSs is both of the fundamental scientific interest and is al...

Linear dichroism and birefringence artifacts are a major source of concern in transient circular dichroism measurements. They mainly arise from interaction of an imperfectly circular polarized probe beam with a nonisotropic sample. We present in this article a procedure to generate mid-IR pulses of highly symmetric left and right handed circular or elliptical polarization states for transient V...

Imaging polarimetry was used to examine different components of neovascular membranes in age-related macular degeneration. Retinal images were acquired with a scanning laser polarimeter. An innovative pseudocolor scale, based on cardinal directions of color, displayed two types of image information: relative phases and magnitudes of birefringence. Membranes had relative phase changes that did n...

Stable polarization-locked temporal vector solitons are found in a saturable absorber mode-locked fiber laser with weak cavity birefringence. The system is theoretically modeled with two coupled complex Ginzburg– Landau equations that include fiber birefringence, spectral filtering, saturable gain, and slow saturable absorption. The solutions to this system are similar to those for elliptically...

The measurement of vacuum polarisation effects, in particular vacuum birefringence, using combined optical and X-ray laser pulses are now actively pursued. Here we briefly examine the feasibility of two alternative set-ups. The first utilises an alternative target, namely a converging dipole pulse, and the second uses an alternative probe, namely the synchrotron-like emission from highly energe...