Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are thought to be produced by short-lived, supercritical accretion onto a newborn compact object. Some process is believed tap energy from the object, or disc, powering launch of relativistic jet. For first time, we can construct independent estimates GRB jet and mass in disc its central engine; this thanks gravitational wave observations GW170817 binary neutron star mer...

The first observation of parametric down-conversion in silicon is reported. Conversion from 1542.3nm to 1328.8nm is achieved using a CW pump laser at 1427 nm. The conversion occurs via Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS) in which two pump photons and one Stokes photon couple through a zone-center optical phonon to an anti-Stokes photon. The maximum measured Stokes/anti-Stokes power con...

The conversion efficiency of an optical parametric oscillator is reduced by energy consumption during build-up of signal and idler intensities and due to back-conversion effects. By tailoring the pump pulse temporal shape, we are able to improve the conversion efficiency by minimizing build-up time and back-conversion. Simulations predict a significant improvement in 1064 nm to 4000 nm idler co...

In this work, we derive general conditions to achieve high efficiency cascaded third harmonic generation and three photon parametric down conversion in Kerr nonlinear resonant cavities. We employ the general yet rapid temporal coupled-mode method, previously shown to accurately predict electromagnetic conversion processes in the time domain. In our study, we find that high-efficiency cascaded t...