Notes

Management of dental biofilms by simply nisin supply in mastic microdevices.
Graphene-based terahertz (THz) metasurfaces have the advantages of ultra-small thickness, electrical tunability, and fast tuning speed. However, many such structures suffer low efficiency, especially for transmissive devices. Here we propose a hybrid structure for focusing THz waves with tunability and enhanced focusing efficiency, which is composed of a graphene-loaded metallic metasurface sandwiched by two mutually orthogonal gratings. Experimental results show that due to the multi-reflection between the metasurface layer and the grating layer, the focusing efficiency is enhanced by 1.8 times, and the focal length of the metalens is increased by 0.61 mm when the applied gate voltage on the graphene is increased from 0 V to 1.4 V. We hope the proposed structure may open a new avenue for reconfigurable THz metasurfaces with high efficiencies.We theoretically investigate the frustrated double ionization (FDI) of Ar atoms with counter-rotating two-color circular (CRTC) laser fields using the three-dimensional (3D) classical ensemble method. Our results show that the FDI probability depends upon the intensity ratio of the CRTC laser fields. The FDI event accompanied with the recollision excitation with subsequent ionization is prevalent and three pathways exist in FDI processes driven by CRTC laser fields. The momentum distribution of a recaptured electron at the ionization time after recollision indicates that the momentum being close to the vector potential is a necessary condition for FDI events to occur. In addition, the recaptured electron most probably transitions to a Rydberg state of which the quantum number is ten in the CRTC fields.The field of soft robotics has been significantly advanced with the recent developments of pneumatic techniques, soft materials, and high-precision motion control. While comprehensive motions can be achieved by sophisticated soft robots, multiple coordinated pneumatic controls are usually required to achieve even the simplest motions. Furthermore, most soft robotics are lacking the ability to sense the environment and provide feedback to the pneumatic control system. In this work, we design a twining plant inspired soft-robotic spiral gripper that requires only one single pneumatic control to perform the twining motion and to firmly hold onto a target object. The soft-robotic spiral gripper has an embedded high-birefringence fiber optic twisting sensor to provide critical information, including twining angle, presence of external perturbation, and physical parameter of the target object. Furthermore, finite element analyses (FEA) in parametric studies of the spiral gripper are performed for module design optimization. The unique single pneumatic channel design enables easy manipulation of the soft spiral gripper with a maximum of 540° twining angle and allows a firm grip of a target object as small as 1-mm in diameter. The embedded fiber optic sensor provides useful information of the target object as well as the twining angle of the soft robotic spiral gripper with high twining angle sensitivity of 0.03nm. The unique fiber-optic sensor embedded single-channel pneumatic spiral gripper that is made from non-toxic silicone rubber allows parallel and soft gripping of elongated objects located in a confined area, which is an essential building block for twining and twisting motions in soft robot.Single-photon lidar (SPL) is a promising technology for depth measurement at long range or from weak reflectors because of the sensitivity to extremely low light levels. However, constraints on the timing resolution of existing arrays of single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) detectors limit the precision of resulting depth estimates. In this work, we describe an implementation of subtractively-dithered SPL that can recover high-resolution depth estimates despite the coarse resolution of the detector. Subtractively-dithered measurement is achieved by adding programmable delays into the photon timing circuitry that introduce relative time shifts between the illumination and detection that are shorter than the time bin duration. Careful modeling of the temporal instrument response function leads to an estimator that outperforms the sample mean and results in depth estimates with up to 13 times lower root mean-squared error than if dither were not used. The simple implementation and estimation suggest that globally dithered SPAD arrays could be used for high spatial- and temporal-resolution depth sensing.Recently, investigation of metasurfaces has been extended to wave control through exploiting nonlinearity. Among all of the ways to achieve tunable metasurfaces with multiplexed performances, nonlinearity is one of the promising choices. Although several proposals have been reported to obtain nonlinear architectures at visible frequencies, the area of incorporating nonlinearity in form of passive-designing at microwave metasurfaces is open for investigation. In this paper, a passive wideband nonlinear metasurface is manifested, which is composed of embedded L-shape and Γ -shape meta-atoms with PIN-diode elements. The proposed self-biased nonlinear metasurface has two operational states at low power intensities, it acts as a Quarter Wave Plate (QWP) in the frequency range from 13.24 GHz to 16.38 GHz with an Axial Ratio (AR) of over 21.2%. In contrast, at high power intensities, by using the polarization conversion property of the proposed PIN-diode based meta-atoms, the metasurface can act as a digital metasurface. It means that by arranging the meta-atoms with a certain coding pattern, the metasurface can manipulate the scattered beams and synthesize well-known patterns such as diffusion-like and chessboard patterns at an ultra-wide frequency range from 8.12 GHz to 19.27 GHz (BW=81.4%). Full-wave and nonlinear simulations are carried out to justify the performance of the wideband nonlinear metasurface. We expect the proposed self-biased nonlinear metasurface at microwave frequencies reveals excellent opportunities to design limiter metasurfaces and compact reconfigurable imaging systems.Microwave frequency combs (MFCs) with flexible tunability and prominent phase noise performance are of importance to many applications, including consumer electronic product, fundamental research and military defence. It is difficult for traditional electronic signal sources to meet the imperative demand in terms of high frequency scale, due to a challenging problem of deteriorating phase noise performance with increasing frequency. Photonics-assisted methods have capacity of implementing the generation of microwave signals with high frequency and low phase noise. Here we report a novel photonics-assisted MFC generation method utilizing an optoelectronic feedback loop with a Vernier configuration. The proposed MFC generation system features self-sustained oscillation, inherent multiple-mode oscillation and low phase noise level. In the proof-of-principle experiment, the MFC generation system based on a dual-path Vernier optoelectronic feedback loop is demonstrated, and the comb spacing tuning from 3.072 to 4.710 GHz and the single sideband phase noise of -99.60 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset from the carrier are achieved.Two-channel coherent perfect absorption (CPA) enables absorption modulation as well as perfect absorption in a very simple way. However, because of its narrow and discrete operable wavelength range, the CPA has been limited to specific applications. In this work, we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate broadband single-channel CPA operable from the visible to near-infrared wavelengths, using an ultrathin absorbing material on a pseudo perfect magnetic mirror. Our simple yet effective method can be applied to various applications such as solar cells, thermophotovoltaics, and stealth technology.This work compares the random time-varying crosstalk in homogeneous multi-core fibers measured using different types of light sources with linewidths ranging from 100 Hz to 2.5 MHz. We show that the frequency stability of the light source plays a significant role on the quality of short-term average crosstalk measurements with no observable impact from laser linewidth. We also compare the use of filtered amplified spontaneous emission noise and coherent light sources for crosstalk measurements. The former are shown to enable average crosstalk measurements in short time periods. In contrast, measurements using coherent light sources require long measurement periods to reach similar results.A novel optical reverse mapping (ORM) method and an ORM criterion are proposed to evaluate the relevance between the directional backlight (DB) 3D light-field display system aberration and the crosstalk. Based on the ORM criterion, the space-division-multiplexed catadioptric integrated backlight (SCIB) and symmetrical triplet-compound lenticular array (triplet LA) are designed. The SCIB is composed of hybrid Fresnel integrated backlight unit (hybrid Fresnel unit) and space-division-multiplexed microprism unit (microprism unit). The hybrid Fresnel unit is used to provide the directional light, and the divergence angle is 2.4-degrees. The average uniformity of 83.02% is achieved. The microprism unit is used to modulate the directional light distribution into three predetermined directions to establish a 90-degree viewing area. Combined with SCIB, the triplet LA is used to suppress the aberrations and reduce the crosstalk. In the experiment, a DB 3D light-field display system based on SCIB and triplet LA is set up. The displayed light-field 3D image can be observed in a 90-degree viewing angle. Compared to the conventional DB 3D display system, the light-field 3D image is aberration-suppressed, and the SSIM values are improved from 0.8462 to 0.9618. Meanwhile, the crosstalk measurement results show that the average crosstalk is 3.49%. The minimum crosstalk is 2.31% and the maximum crosstalk is 4.52%. The crosstalk values in 90-degree are lower than 5%.A novel security-enhanced scheme combining improved deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) encoding encryption at the bit-level with matrix scrambling at the symbol-level is proposed in OFDM-PON for the first time in this paper. In our proposed scheme, firstly each subcarrier is encrypted by improved DNA encoding encryption, which includes the functioning of key base series and the cross interchange. And the selected encoding rules, decoding rules, key base series, operating principles and the positions of cross interchange are dynamically changing, which enhances the robustness against malicious attacks by illegal attackers. Epalrestat concentration Then during the matrix scrambling process, the non-equal-length quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) matrix is divided into several squares of equal length according to an optimum method. At the same time, the times of matrix scrambling can be determined randomly. With the multi-fold encryption of the proposed scheme, the achieved key space can reach up to 10154, which can sufficiently ensure the physical layer security. Experimental verification of the proposed security-enhanced strategy was demonstrated in an 8 Gb/s 16QAM orthogonal frequency division multiplexing passive optical network (OFDM-PON) system over 25-km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF). The experimental results prove that the two-level coordinated encryption at the bit-level and symbol-level using chaos and encryption can effectively protect data from violent attacks, differential attacks, etc.
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