We demonstrate, through numerical simulations, that an appropriately chosen nonuniformly polarized coherent optical field can have appreciably smaller scintillation than comparable beams of uniform polarization. This results from the fact that a nonuniformly polarized field acts as an effective two-mode partially coherent field. The results described here are of direct relevance to the developm...

In recent years, colloidal semiconductor nanorods have attracted great interest for polarized spontaneous emission. However, their polarized gain has not been possible to achieve so far. In this work we show the highly polarized stimulated emission from the densely packed ensembles of core-seeded nanorods in a cylindrical cavity. Here CdSe/CdS dot-in-rods were coated and aligned on the inner wa...

We present an optical system capable of generating stereoscopic images to track trapped particles in three dimensions. Two-dimensional particle tracking on each image yields three dimensional position information. Our approach allows the use of a high numerical aperture (NA=1.3) objective and large separation angle, such that particles can be tracked axially with resolution of 3 nm at 340 Hz. S...

An integrated microscope that combines different optical techniques for simultaneous imaging is demonstrated. The microscope enables spectral-domain optical coherence microscopy based on optical backscatter, and multiphoton microscopy for the detection of two-photon fluorescence and second harmonic generation signals. The unique configuration of this integrated microscope allows for the simulta...

Chiral fields, i. e., electromagnetic fields with nonvanishing optical chirality, can occur next to symmetric nanostructures without geometrical chirality illuminated with linearly polarized light at normal incidence. A simple dipole model is utilized to explain this behavior theoretically. Illuminated with circularly polarized light, the chiral near-fields are still dominated by the distributi...

An electron microprobe is an electron microscope designed for the non-destructive x-ray microanalysis and imaging of solid materials. It is essentially a hybrid instrument combining the capabilities of both the scanning electron microscope (SEM) and an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF), with the added features of fine-spot focusing (~ 1 micrometer), optical microscope imaging, and precision...

A large radius secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) has been used for in situ stable isotope analyses of geological samples at the scale of 1–10 mm. However, the original reflected light microscope of the CAMECA IMS 1280 SIMS had an optical resolution of 3.5 mm, which made it difficult to accurately position the analytical beam on the sample at the mm scale. We modified the optical microscope...

We demonstrate an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based on GaAs pumped with linearly polarized and circularly polarized light and show that the relative OPO thresholds agree with theoretical expectations. For the circularly polarized pump, the threshold was as low as for the [111]-linearly polarized pump case. The pump was also passed through a Lyot depolarizer to produce pseudo-depolarized...

During the past two decades, there have been tremendous developments in near-field imaging and local probing techniques. Examples are the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM), Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), Near-field Scanning Optical Microscope (NSOM), Photon Scanning Tunneling Microscope (PSTM), and Scanning Thermal Microscope (SThM).Results showed that the average reflectance for a dopant con...