Recording and identifying faint objects through atmospheric scattering media by an optical system are fundamentally interesting and technologically important. We introduce a comprehensive model that incorporates contributions from target characteristics, atmospheric effects, imaging systems, digital processing, and visual perception to assess the ultimate perceptible limit of geometrical imaging, specifically the angular resolution at the boundary of visible distance. The model allows us to reevaluate the effectiveness of conventional imaging recording, processing, and perception and to analyze the limiting factors that constrain image recognition capabilities in atmospheric media. The simulations were compared with the experimental results measured in a fog chamber and outdoor settings. The results reveal good general agreement between analysis and experiment, pointing out the way to harnessing the physical limit for optical imaging in scattering media. An immediate application of the study is the extension of the image range by an amount of 1.2 times with noise reduction via multiframe averaging, hence greatly enhancing the capability of optical imaging in the atmosphere.
Scattered light imaging through complex turbid media has significant applications in biomedical and optical research. For the past decade, various approaches have been proposed for rapidly reconstructing full-color, depth-extended images by introducing point spread functions (PSFs). However, because most of these methods consider memory effects (MEs), the PSFs have angular shift invariance over certain ranges of angles. This assumption is valid for only thin turbid media and hinders broader applications of these technologies in thick media. Furthermore, the time-variant characteristics of scattering media determine that the PSF acquisition and image reconstruction times must be less than the speckle decorrelation time, which is usually difficult to achieve. We demonstrate that image reconstruction methods can be applied to time-variant thick turbid media. Using the time-variant characteristics, the PSFs in dynamic turbid media within certain time intervals are recorded, and ergodic scattering regimes are achieved and combined as ensemble point spread functions (ePSFs). The ePSF traverses shift-invariant regions in the turbid media and retrieves objects beyond the ME. Furthermore, our theory and experimental results verify that our approach is applicable to thick turbid media with thickness of 1 cm at visible incident wavelengths.
Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLC) has the advantage of large nonlinearity and fast response. This brings great convenience to its applications in ultrafast nonlinear photonic. Here, several kinds of nonlinear phenomenon and applications are reported, such as optical soliton, modulation instability, optical diode effect and pulse compression of cascade CLC samples.
Liquid crystals materials have the advantage of having a large nonlinear coefficient, but the response time is slow, normally up to several minisecond. This makes it is hard to apply in ultra fast optical devices. Recently, fentosecond (fs) nonlinear effect in choleteric liquid crystals is reported, nonlinear coefficient in the scale of 10−12 cm2∕W is achieved. Base on this effect, in this work, fentosecond pulse compression technique in a miniature choleteric liquid crystal is demonstrated1,2.
Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLC) is a kind of 1-dimensional phontonic structure with helical periodic. In a 10 μm thick CLC, femtosecond pulse with 100 fs is compressed to about 50 fs. CLC sample in planar texture with 500μm thick cell gap is further fabricated. In this sample, femtosecond pulse with 847 fs can be compressed to 286 fs.
Due to the strong dispersion at the edge of photonic band gap, femtosecond pulse stretching and compensation can be achieve. In this experiment, laser pulse with duration 90 fs is stretched to above 2 picosecond in the first CLC sample and re-compressed to 120 fs in the second sample. Such technique might be applied in chirp pulse amplification.
In conclusion, we report ultra fast nonlinear effect in cholesteric liquid crystals. Due to the strong dispersion and nonlinearity of CLC, femtosecond pulse manipulating devices can be achieved in the scale of micrometer.
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