A novel hybrid fiber taper is proposed and demonstrated as the coupler in a microsphere laser system. The pump wave and the laser emission, respectively, are more efficiently coupled to and from the sphere modes with this taper structure. A 980-nm pumped erbium-ytterbium codoped phosphate microsphere laser is demonstrated in the 1550-nm band. As much as 112microW of single-frequency laser outpu...

BACKGROUND Cleaning and shaping of the pulp canal is one of the most important steps of endodontic therapy. Serious complications occur by the apical extrusion of bacteria during the instrumentation procedures. Both crown-down (CD) and full-length linear motion (FM) techniques are routinely used as a component of taper rotary instrument procedures for achievement of thorough cleaning and shapin...

For a fiber optical surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor a short part of its cladding should be removed to coat a thin layer of a metal. Usually this is problematic when an optical fiber with small core diameter is used. In this paper, a new method using µliter droplet of the HF acid for short fiber optical taper fabrication is reported. Using this method in a multi-mode optical fiber w...

In this paper, the mathematical model of the modified step-theory is derived based on the platform of two-dimensional photonic crystal structure that is infinitely long in third dimension. The mode coupling mechanism of photonic crystal tapers is theoretically studied using the modified step-theory. The model is verified by comparing the transmission spectrum obtained for the input/output defec...

OBJECTIVE To determine hearing recovery in patients with idiopathic sudden hearing loss treated with varying amounts of oral steroids. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING A retrospective chart review (n = 75) in a tertiary care clinic examined sudden hearing loss patients treated with 1 60-mg prednisone taper, 1 course of steroid less than a 60-mg taper, or any 2 courses of oral steroid. RESULTS Overa...

Taper corrosion of the head-neck junction is a potentially significant and devastating problem facing orthopedic surgeons. We present a case of a 53 year old male who presented for routine follow up for a left, large head, metal on metal total hip arthroplasty five years out. The patient was asymptomatic at the visit. X-rays at the time demonstrated a large amount of medial calcar osteolysis. S...

A small depression is created in a straight optical fiber taper to form a local probe suitable for studying closely spaced, planar microphotonic devices. The tension of the "dimpled" taper controls the probe-sample interaction length and the level of noise present during coupling measurements. Practical demonstrations with high-Q silicon microcavities include testing a dense array of undercut m...

We report on successful realization of a picosecond visible-continuum source embedding a single mode fiber taper. The output of ytterbium mode-locked fiber laser was frequency doubled in a periodically-polled lithium niobate (PPLN) crystal to produce green pump light. Spectral brightness of the white light generated in the tapered fiber was improved by limiting the broadening just to the visibl...

We have investigated both theoretically and experimentally the spectral behavior and the transmission and reflection performance of a photonic-crystal (PhC) mode converter upon an InP substrate. This taper exhibits 70% transmission efficiency on an 80-nm bandwidth when it couples a ridge access guide to a strongly confined single-missing-row PhC guide. Such a taper design included in a PhC bend...