Jordi tiana-alsina

University of Barcelona | UB

The use of laser light for illumination produces speckles that degrade image quality, and different strategies have been developed to mitigate speckle. Optical feedback can reduce the amount of speckle, since it can decrease the coherence of the laser by inducing multi-mode, broad-band emission. However, the effect of optical feedback depends on th...

State-of-the-art super-resolution microscopy techniques, including Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED), Reversible Saturable Optical Fluorescence Transitions (RESOLFT), and Switching Laser Mode (SLAM) microscopies, implement Laguerre-Gaussian beams, also known as vortex or doughnut beams to capture fluorescence information within a sub-wavelength...

Semiconductor lasers with optical feedback are stochastic nonlinear systems that can display complex dynamics and abrupt changes when their operation conditions change. Even very small changes can lead to large variations in the spatial and spectral properties of the laser emission. This makes a semiconductor laser with feedback an ideal system for...

We present an experimental study of the effect of continuous-wave optical injection (OI) from a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) on the timing jitter of a gain-switched discrete-mode semiconductor laser (DML). Timing jitter was analyzed over a wide range of temperatures of the DML, which allowed tuning the detuning between the lasers...

Several types of super-resolution microscopy, such as Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED), Reversible Saturable Optical Fluorescence Transitions (RESOLFT) or Switching Laser Mode (SLAM) microscopies, employ Laguerre-Gaussian beams (also called vortex or doughnut beams) to obtain fluorescence information within a sub-wavelength region of the specim...

Synchronization phenomena is ubiquitous in nature, and in spite of having been studied for decades, it still attracts a lot of attention as is still challenging to detect and quantify, directly from the analysis of noisy signals. Semiconductor lasers are ideal for performing experiments because they are stochastic, nonlinear, and inexpensive and di...

Optical feedback can reduce the linewidth of a semiconductor laser by several orders of magnitude, but it can also cause line broadening. Although these effects on the temporal coherence of the laser are well known, a good understanding of the effects of feedback on the spatial coherence is still lacking. Here we present an experimental technique t...

Semiconductor lasers are very sensitive to optical feedback. Although it is well known that coherent feedback lowers the threshold of the laser, the characteristics of the transition from low-coherence radiation—dominated by spontaneous emission—below threshold to high-coherence radiation—dominated by stimulated emission—above threshold have not ye...

Time crystal oscillations in interacting, periodically driven many-particle systems are highly regular oscillations that persist for long periods of time, are robust to perturbations, and whose frequency differs from the frequency of the driving signal. Making use of underlying similarities of spatially-extended systems and time-delayed systems (TD...

We study experimentally and numerically the dynamics of a semiconductor laser near threshold, subject to optical feedback and sinusoidal current modulation. The laser operates in the low frequency fluctuation (LFF) regime where, without modulation, the intensity shows sudden spikes at irregular times. Under particular modulation conditions the spik...

We study the output of a semiconductor laser with optical feedback operated in the low-frequency fluctuations (LFFs) regime and subject to weak sinusoidal current modulation. In the LFF regime, the laser intensity exhibits abrupt drops, after which it recovers gradually. Without modulation, the drops occur at irregular times, while, with weak modul...

The dynamics of semiconductor lasers with optical feedback and current modulation has been extensively studied, and it is, by now, well known that the interplay of modulation and feedback can produce a rich variety of nonlinear phenomena. Near threshold, in the so-called low frequency fluctuations regime, the intensity emitted by the laser, without...

This work proposes a new wave-period estimation (L-dB) method based on the power-spectral-density (PSD) estimation of pitch and roll motional time series of a Doppler wind lidar buoy under the assumption of small angles (±22 deg) and slow yaw drifts (1 min), and the neglection of translational motion. We revisit the buoy’s simplified two-degrees-of...

We use statistical tools to characterize the response of an excitable system to periodic perturbations. The system is an optically injected semiconductor laser under pulsed perturbations of the phase of the injected field. We characterize the laser response by counting the number of pulses emitted by the laser, within a time interval, Δ T, that sta...

We use statistical tools to characterize the response of an excitable system to periodic perturbations. The system is an optically injected semiconductor laser under pulsed perturbations of the phase of the injected field. We characterize the laser response by counting the number of pulses emitted by the laser, within a time interval, $\Delta$T , t...

Speckle is a wave interference phenomenon that has been studied in various fields, including optics, hydrodynamics and acoustics. Speckle patterns contain spectral information of the interfering waves, and of the scattering medium that generates the pattern. Here we study experimentally the speckle patterns generated by the light emitted by two typ...

Speckle is a wave interference phenomenon that has been studied in various fields, including optics, hydrodynamics, and acoustics. Speckle patterns contain spectral information of the interfering waves and of the scattering medium that generates the pattern. Here, we study experimentally the speckle patterns generated by the light emitted by two ty...

Optical remote sensors are nowadays ubiquitously used, thanks to unprecedented advances in the last decade in photonics, machine learning and signal processing tools. In this work we study experimentally the remote recovery of audio signals from the silent videos of the movement of optical speckle patterns. This technique can be used even when in b...

Neuromorphic photonics is a new paradigm for ultra-fast neuro-inspired optical computing that can revolutionize information processing and artificial intelligence systems. To implement practical photonic neural networks is crucial to identify low-cost energy-efficient laser systems that can mimic neuronal activity. Here we study experimentally the...

Speckle patterns produced by coherent waves interfering with each other are undesirable in many imaging applications (for example, in laser projection systems) but on the other hand, they contain useful information that can be exploited (for example, for blood flow analysis or reconstruction of the object that generates the speckle). It is therefor...

Controlling an stochastic nonlinear system with a small amplitude signal is a fundamental problem with many practical applications. Quantifying locking is challenging, and current methods, such as spectral or correlation analysis, do not provide a precise measure of the degree of locking. Here we study locking in an experimental system, consisting...

This work presents a new methodology to estimate the motion-induced standard deviation and related turbulence intensity on the retrieved horizontal wind speed by means of the velocity-azimuth-display algorithm applied to the conical scanning pattern of a floating Doppler lidar. The method considers a ZephIR™300 continuous-wave focusable Doppler lid...

The entrainment (or locking) phenomenon, by which an oscillator adapts its natural rhythm to an external periodic signal, is well-known in physics, chemistry, biology, etc.; however, controlling an stochastic nonlinear system with a small-amplitude signal is a challenging task, and systems that allow for low-cost experiments are scarce. Here we use...

The entrainment phenomenon, by which an oscillator adjusts its natural rhythm to an external periodic signal, has been observed in many natural systems. Recently, attention has focused on which are the optimal conditions for achieving entrainment. Here we use a semiconductor laser with optical feedback, operating in the low-frequency fluctuations (...

We use a semiconductor laser with optical feedback in the LFF regime to study entrainment experimentally. In spite of the fact that the modulation is of small amplitude, wide regions of high-quality entrainment are found.

Semiconductor lasers with time-delayed optical feedback display a wide range of dynamical regimes, which have found various practical applications. They also provide excellent testbeds for data analysis tools for characterizing complex signals. Recently, several of us have analyzed experimental intensity time-traces and quantitatively identified th...

This work provides a signal-processing and statistical-error analysis methodology to assess key performance indicators for a floating Doppler wind lidar. The study introduces the raw-to-clean data processing chain, error assessment indicators and key performance indicators, as well as two filtering methods at post-processing level to alleviate the...

Identifying transitions to complex dynamical regimes is a fundamental open problem with many practical applications. Semi- conductor lasers with optical feedback are excellent testbeds for studying such transitions, as they can generate a rich variety of output signals. Here we apply three analysis tools to quantify various aspects of the dynamical...

It is known that the retrieval of aerosol extinction and backscatter coefficients from lidar data acquired through so-called total-power channels – intended to measure the backscattered power irrespective of the polarization – can be adversely affected by varying depolarization effects produced by the aerosol under measurement. This effect can be p...

Air quality forecast systems need reliable and accurate representations of the planetary boundary layer (PBL) to perform well. An important question is how accurately numerical weather prediction models can reproduce conditions in diverse synoptic flow types. Here, observations from the summer 2014 HygrA-CD (Hygroscopic Aerosols to Cloud Droplets)...

We evaluate planetary boundary-layer (PBL) parametrizations in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) numerical model, with three connected objectives: first, for a 16-year period, we use a cluster analysis algorithm of three-day back-trajectories to determine general synoptic flow patterns over Barcelona, Spain arriving at heights of 0.5, 1.5,...

This paper departs from a preliminary near-shore measurement test campaign hold at El Pont del Petroli (PdP), Barcelona (Spain) where measurements from a Doppler wind-lidar buoy (the ”floating” lidar) are cross-examined against an on-shore reference lidar. From this framework the methodological analysis to intercompare two such lidars in terms of t...

This paper addresses a cardanic frame as mechanical-compensation device for a Doppler-wind lidar installed on a floating sea buoy as the “moving” lidar. From the methodological point of view, the horizontal wind speed (HWS) measured by both a reference lidar (i.e., “fixed”) and a floating lidar (i.e., “moving”) with and without a cardarnic frame is...

An adaptive solution based on an extended Kalman filter (EKF) is proposed to estimate the atmospheric boundarylayer height (ABLH) from frequency-modulated continuous-wave S-band weather-radar returns. The EKF estimator departs from previous works, in which the transition interface between the mixing layer (ML) and the free troposphere (FT) is model...

The HygrA-CD (From Hygroscopic Aerosols to Cloud Droplets) experimental campaign took place from mid-May to mid-June 2014 over the complex, urban terrain of the Greater Athens Area (GAA). Three typical atmospheric flow types were observed during the 39-day campaign: urban/continental, Etesians, and Saharan dust, which represented 41.7 %, 36.1 %, an...

This contribution evaluates an approach using an extended Kalman filter (EKF) to estimate the planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) from lidar measurements obtained in the framework of the European Aerosol Research LIdar NETwork (EARLINET) at 12 UTC ± 30-min for a 7-year period (2007-2013) under different synoptic flows over the complex geographic...

Optical excitable devices that mimic neuronal behavior can be building-blocks of novel, brain-inspired information processing systems. A relevant issue is to understand how such systems represent, via correlated spikes, the information of a weak external input. Semiconductor lasers with optical feedback operating in the low frequency fluctuations r...

A solution based on a Kalman filter to trace the evolution of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) sensed by a ground-based elastic-backscatter tropospheric lidar is presented. An erf-like profile is used to model the mixing-layer top and the entrainment-zone thickness. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) enables to retrieve and track the ABL paramete...

We describe a method to infer signatures of determinism and stochasticity in the sequence of apparently random intensity dropouts emitted by a semiconductor laser with optical feedback. The method uses ordinal time-series analysis to classify experimental data of inter-dropout-intervals (IDIs) in two categories that display statistically significan...

We study correlations of intervals between pulses in an excitable system, using a semiconductor laser with optical feedback as an experimental model system. First we show, by means of a combination of experimental observations and theoretical analysis, that for an intermediate range of the laser's pump current the interspike intervals are positivel...

This paper presents parameter design methodology and related optomechanical engineering of a 905-nm diode-laser biaxial, eye-safe lidar ceilometer prototype for cloud-height monitoring. Starting with a brief review of the state-of-the-art ceilometer technology, acceptable parameter ranges are identified for the key system parts. Parameter tuning is...

We show experimentally that two semiconductor lasers mutually coupled via a passive relay fiber loop exhibit chaos synchronization at zero lag, and study how this synchronized regime is lost as the lasers' pump currents are increased. We characterize the synchronization properties of the system with high temporal resolution in two different chaotic...

We study experimentally the synchronization dynamics of two semiconductor lasers coupled unidirectionally via two different delayed paths. The emitter laser operates in a chaotic regime characterized by low-frequency fluctuations due to optical feedback and induces a synchronized dynamical activity in the receiver laser, which operates in the conti...

We introduce a method, based on symbolic analysis, to characterize the temporal correlations of the spiking activity exhibited by excitable systems. The technique is applied to the experimentally observed dynamics of a semiconductor laser with optical feedback operating in the low-frequency fluctuations regime, where the laser intensity displays ir...

El comportamiento extrinseco de las ceramicas PZT, relacionado con el movimiento de las paredes de los dominios, comporta efectos no lineales grandes. Esta correspondencia entre efectos extrinsecos y no linealidades puede ser utilizada para caracterizar las ceramicas con el fin de optimizar sus propiedades piezoelectricas. El objetivo de este traba...

A new measurement method has been developed in order to analyse the non-linear behaviour of piezoelectric ceramics. Based on Berlincourt-type method, the applied stress is so high that non linear effects can be produced. Its response is analysed not only in terms of the stress amplitude but also in terms of the instantaneous value. The treatment is...

We implement an experimental scheme of two bidirectionally coupled semiconductor lasers with an equidistant passive relay (semitransparent mirror) to achieve zero-lag synchronization. The stability properties of this zero-lag solution have been studied, in particular, the presence of noise induced desynchronizations, a behaviour called bubbling.

The research Group on Nonlinear Dynamics, Nonlinear Optics and Lasers (DONLL) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, at the Campus de Terrassa, works on different subjects in the following fields: linear and nonlinear light propagation in micro- and nano-structured (spatially modulated) materials; nonlinear dynamics in lasers (in particular i...

We present experimental and numerical results exploring the effects of frequency detuning and pump mismatch on the synchronization of two delay-coupled semiconductor lasers. In particular, we characterize and analyze their influence on bubbling events.

Low-frequency fluctuations (LFFs) represent a dynamical instability that occurs in semiconductor lasers when they are operated near the lasing threshold and subject to moderate optical feedback. LFFs consist of sudden power dropouts followed by gradual, stepwise recoveries. We analyze experimental time series of intensity dropouts and quantify the...

We quantify the level of stochasticity in the dynamics of two mutually coupled semiconductor lasers. Specifically, we concentrate on a regime in which the lasers synchronize their dynamics with a non-zero lag time, and the leader and laggard roles alternate irregularly between the lasers. We analyse this switching dynamics in terms of the number of...

Semiconductor lasers exhibit a wide range of dynamical behaviors such as low frequency fluctuations, coherence collapse, chaos induced by injection, etc. Coupled semiconductor lasers are excellent devices to study the mechanisms leading to chaos synchronization.This paper presents experimentally and numerically the existence of lag alternance in tw...