Massachusetts Institute of Technology

University of Central Florida Research Foundation Inc

Lei Wei

John Dimitris Joannopoulos

Yoel Fink

Ayman F Abouraddy

Ofer Shapira

Alexander Stolyarov

Fabien Sorin

Guillaume Lestoquoy

Alexander Gumennik

Benjamin Jean-Baptiste Grena

A fiber is provided that has been thermally drawn from a fiber preform, having a longitudinal-axis length and including at least one core that has a longitudinal core axis parallel to the longitudinal axis and internally disposed to at least one outer fiber cladding material layer along the fiber length. The fiber is fed through a localized heating site having a heating site temperature, T, that is above a melting temperature of the fiber core, with a feed speed, &#x3c5;, that melts a portion of the fiber core at the heating site, causing molten droplets to pinch off of fiber core material, one droplet at a time, with a time period of molten droplet formation set by the fiber feed speed, &#x3c5;. The fiber is fed through the localized heating site to move the molten droplets out of the heating site and solidify the molten droplets into solid in-fiber particles.

Dynamic in-fiber particle production with precise dimensional control

The laser includes an optical fiber including a cavity containing a microfluidic gain medium bounded by a composite structure of alternating layers of high and low index materials forming an axially invariant, rotationally symmetric photonic bandgap cavity. The optical fiber also includes at least one microfluidic channel containing liquid crystal modulators in the fiber cladding extending in an axial direction and further includes a pair of electrodes flanking the microfluidic channel. An electrical potential across the pair of electrodes will rotate the liquid crystal molecules to rotate the linearly polarized state of light emitted from the cavity. An external linear polarizer is disposed around the fiber to modulate azimuthal laser intensity distribution.

Microfluidic radial fiber laser utilizing an external polarizer to modulate its azimuthal intensity distribution

Growing community of inventors

Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Lei Wei