We have developed a field-deployable vector magnetometer using a small rubidium vapor cell, which is capable of measuring the magnitude and direction of the earth's magnetic field with high accuracy and sensitivity. The magnetometer measures Larmor precession of rubidium atoms using the phenomenon, called synchronous coherent population trapping (SCPT). This gives the advantage of producing a high contrast and narrow linewidth resonance needed for measuring the magnetic field with high accuracy and sensitivity. The magnetometer exhibits sub-nT/√Hz sensitivities in measuring the field components along the three directions.
We present investigations of coherent population trapping (CPT) and Ramsey-CPT interrogations in laser-cooled 87Rb atoms towards the development of a cold atom-based clock.CPT and Ramsey-CPT interrogations are performed by turning off the magneto-optical trap (MOT) and allowing the atoms to freely expand. Ramsey-CPT interrogation is performed in the time-domain by delivering resonant Raman pulses to the atoms separated by a free evolution time which is determined by the atomic expansion time in our system. Our results show promise for improving the clock performance using this cold atom-based apparatus.
We investigate spectral response of synchronous coherent population trapping (SCPT) to demonstrate its suitability for remote magnetometry as well as for vector magnetic field measurements. Remote magnetometry is demonstrated using fluorescence measurements in a sodium cell. A magnetometer with real-time, single-shot vector magnetic measurement capability, is also demonstrated using the SCPT effect produced in a small rubidium cell and by combining our experimental apparatus with a feedback system.
We are investigating coherent population trapping (CPT) and Ramsey-CPT interrogations in a cold atom system where the atomic beam originates from a pushed two-dimensional magneto-optical trap (2D+-MOT). Our results show promise for improving the performance of atomic clock using a cold atomic beam apparatus.
We demonstrate a new mechanism, suitable for performing remote earth field measurement using synchronous modulation of two laser fields, which are two-photon resonant with the sodium atom’s hyperfine ground states. This mechanism relies on coherent population trapping (CPT), and thus, called the synchronous CPT scheme. We have measured the magnetic resonances in fluorescence from a sodium cell to demonstrate suitability of this scheme for remote magnetometry. A strong magnetic resonance with its dip corresponding to the Larmor frequency is produced in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. To estimate the optimal duty cycle of light modulation for attaining high performance, we measured the amplitudes and linewidths of the magnetic resonance as a function of the duty cycle, by keeping the peak intensity in CPT fields constant.
We report our investigations on the dependence of magnetic resonance spectrum on the light ellipticity and the polarization angle. A rubidium vapor cell with octade-cyltrichlorosilane (OTS) antirelaxation coating has been used in our experiment to produce narrow linewidth magnetic resonances. We show that excitation using elliptically polarized light can simultaneously produce the alignment and orientation resonances in a Bell-Bloom interaction geometry. We have developed a theoretical model to calculate the resonance spectrum using light with a varying degree of ellipticity. Amplitudes of the alignment and orientation resonances show a strong dependence on the light ellipticity. Our study shows that the duty cycle of light modulation can effectively control the amplitude variations of the alignment and orientation resonances with light ellipticity. We propose that the difference between the alignment and orientation resonance amplitudes can be used for in situ measurement of the light
Resonant excitation of an atomic medium with amplitude modulated (AM) light can produce synchronous optical pumping effects. Nonlinear magneto-optical rotation (NMOR) is produced with AM light when the optical pumping rate is synchronous with the Larmor frequency. Traditionally, magnetic field measurements have been performed using lock-in detection of the NMOR signal with the transmitted light. Instead of NMOR, we have studied intensity correlation between two orthogonally polarized components of the AM light passing through a rubidium vapor cell, for magnetic field measurements. We have used a pure 87Rb cell (1 cm in diameter and 2 cm in length) filled with Ne buffer gas for this study. Intensity correlation is performed by recording the intensity data from two fast photodetectors with a high bandwidth digitizer board. We have measured the dependence of the zero-delay intensity correlation on the magnetic field. We have also studied the dependence of the correlation width on the light intensity and cell temperature. Results obtained from the theoretical model are also compared with the experiment. The results suggest intensity correlation can be used as a viable technique for improving the performance of magnetic field measurements with AM light.
KEYWORDS: Sodium, Luminescence, Magnetism, Chemical species, Amplitude modulation, Mesosphere, Bragg cells, Optical pumping, Modulation, Signal to noise ratio
Measurement and monitoring of geomagnetic field in the mesosphere has many potential applications such as detection of oceanic currents, mapping of large-scale magnetic structures, and study of electric-current fluctuations in the ionosphere. Remote measurement of the geomagnetic field can be performed by optical pumping of sodium atoms in the mesosphere with an amplitude modulated (AM) light at the Larmor precession frequency, and observing the magnetic resonance in fluorescence at a ground station. In this context, we have conducted an experiment in the laboratory to demonstrate remote magnetic field measurement using fluorescence signal from a sodium cell. Sodium atoms in the cell are interrogated with AM light produced by an acousto-optic modulator (AOM), introduced in the beam path of a frequency-doubled amplified sodium laser made in our laboratory. Magnetic resonance observed in sodium cell fluorescence is studied as a function of varying magnetic field intensity. Characteristics of the magnetic resonance such as linewidth and contrast (or SNR), and their dependence on optical power density, AM duty cycle, B-field orientation and intensity are studied. Theoretical modeling and experimental measurements are also carried out to determine the sensitivity of the magnetometer for realizing remote magnetometry with mesospheric sodium atoms.
KEYWORDS: LIDAR, Sensors, Target detection, Electronics, Signal detection, Pulsed laser operation, Avalanche photodetectors, Temporal resolution, Laser systems engineering, Signal to noise ratio
The temporal resolution of a LADAR system is primarily decided by the pulse duration of the laser source, response time
of the detector and the resolution of the processing electronics. A combination of the timing jitter associated with these
components can deteriorate the system performance by reducing the range resolution of the complete system. The range
information in a LADAR system is obtained by measuring the time-of-flight using an electronic time-to-amplitude
converter or a multi-channel analyzer. In this paper, we discuss a multi-pulse detection scheme which can be utilized to
improve the range resolution of a LADAR system, and allow us to determine the target range with higher accuracy. We
present results showing improvement by a factor of three in the range resolution of the scanning LADAR system using
this scheme in our laboratory.
In this paper, we discuss the development and operation of a scanning LADAR system. This system currently generates intensity and range images of a target with high spatial resolution located at a distance 5–10 m away from the sensor. The scanning LADAR system is designed with a purpose to generate polarization images of the target by integrating an in-line Stokes polarimeter in the receiver arm of the system. In this context, we have also discussed the basic design of the polarimeter using a liquid crystal retarder, and characterized the performance of the polarimeter for determining the polarization state of reflected light in the LADAR receiver.
We report the design and implementation of a high-speed, automated laser radar (ladar) system with sensitivity enhanced by a polarimetric imaging technique. This ladar is able to analyze the Stokes vector of the reflected light from a target at video-rate. With a polarization state generator and a polarization state analyzer, the system is capable of performing a complete Mueller matrix imaging of the scene under observation. This polarization-sensitive ladar (pladar) is applied to various scenes and found to yield the ability to detect information that is indiscernible to a conventional, intensity-based ladar.
We describe the work that has gone into taking the sodium Laser Guide Star (LGS) program on the Palomar AO system
from a successful experiment to a facility instrument. In particular, we describe the operation of the system, the BTO
(beam transfer optics) system which controls the path of the laser in the dome, the aircraft safety systems and the optical
systems which allow us to take advantage of the unique properties of the macro/micro pulse laser. In addition we
present on sky performance results that demonstrate K-band Strehl ratios of up to 48%
We demonstrate a translation-invariant VanderLugt correlator (VLC) for a set of images stored via holographic angle multiplexing of volume gratings in a polymeric substrate. The images read out from the volume gratings are optically correlated in a translation-invariant manner with a dc-suppressed holographic filter. The quality and efficiency of this correlator are observed to be nearly as good as that of another VLC with images directly from a spatial light modulator used as inputs. This experiment is the first step toward realizing a novel optical image recognition system capable of identifying a query image through an exhaustive search in a large database of filter images stored in an ultrahigh capacity superparallel holographic random access memory (SPHRAM). In this system, the identification of the query image is to be performed with a translation invariant, real-time VLC or a joint transform correlator (JTC).
For practical pattern recognition and tracking systems, it is often useful to have a high-speed random access memory (RAM) that complements a holographic correlator. Recently, we have demonstrated a super-parallel holographic correlator, which uniquely identifies N images from a database using only O() number of detector elements. We show how this correlator architecture, operated in reverse, may be used to realize a super-parallel holographic random access memory. We present preliminary results, establishing the feasibility of the superparallel holographic random access memory, and show that essentially the same set of hardware can be operated either as the super-parallel holographic optical correlator or as a super-parallel holographic random access memory, with minor reorientation of some of the elements in real time. This hybrid device thus eliminates the need for a separate random access memory for a holographic correlator-based target recognition and tracking system.
For practical pattern recognition and tracking systems, it is often useful to have a high-speed random access memory (RAM), which complements a holographic correlator. Recently, we have demonstrated a super-parallel holographic optical correlator, which uniquely identifies N images from a database using only 2 number of detector elements. In this paper, we show how this correlator architecture, operated in reverse, may be used to realize a super-parallel holographic random access memory. We present preliminary results establishing the feasibility of the super-parallel holographic random access memory, and show that essentially the same set of hardware can be operated either as the super-parallel holographic optical correlator or as a super-parallel holographic random access memory, with a minor reorientation of some of the elements in real time. This hybrid device thus eliminates the need for a separate random access memory for a holographic correlator based target recognition and tracking system.
We present phase resolved digital signal processing techniques for Optical Coherence Tomography to correct for the non Gaussian shape of source spectra and for Group Delay Dispersion (GDD). A broadband source centered at 820 nm was synthesized by combining the spectra of two superluminescent diodes to improve axial image resolution in an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system. Spectral shaping was used to reduce the side lobes (ringing) in the axial point spread function due to the non-Gaussian shape of the spectra. Images of onion cells taken with each individual source and the combined sources, respectively, show the improved resolution and quality enhancement in a turbid biological sample. An OCT system operating at 1310 nm was used to demonstrate that the broadening effect of group delay dispersion (GDD) on the coherence function could be eliminated completely by introducing a quadratic phase shift in the Fourier domain of the interferometric signal. The technique is demonstrated by images of human skin grafts with group delay dispersion mismatch between sample and reference arm before and after digital processing.
A wavelet feature based generalized fringe adjusted joint transform correlator (FAJTC) has been proposed to improve the performance of FAJTC in the presence of noise in the object scene. A simple technique has been combined with the above approach for eliminating the zero-order and intra- class correlation signals from correlation output.
A wavelet feature-based generalized FAJTC has been proposed to improve the performance of fringe-adjusted type JTCs in the presence of noise in the input scene. Computer simulation results are produced for test images containing single as well as multiple targets and synthetic textured input scene noise. The results illustrate the effectiveness of wavelet processing in reducing the detrimental effect of noise and enhancing pattern discrimination ability of conventional generalized FAJTCs.
We have proposed the use of polychromatic light based photorefractive correlator for 3D motion measurement. The double exposures of speckle patterns can be recorded in a BaTiO3 crystal, thus providing a set of interference fringes due to the polychromaticity of the light source and the 3D displacement. Due to the fringes corresponding to the two illuminating wavelengths used in our experiment, a set of correlation output is generated which helps in a better averaging of the results of measurement. This technique further contributes to the enhancement of accuracy and range of displacement measurements.
A technique for realizing an all-optical non-zero order JTC has been proposed and investigated using computer simulation studies. A simple contrast reversal operation forms the basis of the proposed scheme. Effect of quantization and device nonlinearity has been studied to draw closer resemblance to a practical non-zero order image recognition system.
A simple space-variant correlation technique has been proposed using fractional correlation. Phase-only fractional correlation has been proposed for improved target discrimination and light efficiency. Design of fractional matched filters for space-variant detection of single and multiple objects has been discussed and demonstrated. The effect of object scale variation on the performance of fractional correlation has also been studied.
This paper reports the outcome of research studies carried out by us in the area of Optical Pattern Recognition. We describe experimental realization of two kinds of all-optical nonlinear photorefractive (PR) joint transform correlators. One method uses a controllable beam-fanning nonlinearity and the other uses an incoherent erasure beam in PR wave-mixing. An experimental technique has been demonstrated to achieve high pattern discrimination using a bank of wavelet filters. Correlation technique has further been extended to real-time object motion measurement.
An optical wavelet processor for image feature analysis has been proposed using a JTC geometry. Haar wavelets are used in this study. Computer simulation studies are carried out to illustrate the principe of the processor using standard binary and gray-scale test images. An encoding technique has been discussed for the optical realization of the processor.
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