The purpose of this thesis is to develop a low-cost, high power laser diode/fiber illumination system and to design the driver electronics of the spatial light modulator (SLM) for holographic, three dimensional (3D) imaging. A miniaturized laser diode/fiber/polarizing illumination system capable of 15mW of output at a wavelength of 690nm is designed, fabricated, and tested. The size limitations of various commercially available SLM drivers are described and the design to overcome them is suggested. The design describes in detail the timing considerations of the hardware interface and the psuedocode of the software interface between the host computer and the SLM. Experiments carried out to study the spatial uniformity of the SLM and the distortion due to the beam splitter on the structured output from the LIM are explained. / Master of Science

Design and analysis of a system consisting of a variable-speed synchronous generator that supplies an active dc load (inverter) through a three-phase diode rectifier requires adequate modeling in both time and frequency domain. In particular, the system's control-loops, responsible for stability and proper impedance matching between generator and load, are difficult to design without an accurate small-signal model. A particularity of the described system is strong non-ideal operation of the diode rectifier, a consequence of the large value of generator's synchronous impedance. This non-ideal behavior influences both steady state and transient performance. This thesis presents a new, average model of the system. The average model accounts, in a detailed manner, for dynamics of generator and load, and for effects of the non-ideal operation of diode rectifier. The model is non-linear, but time continuous, and can be used for large- and small-signal analysis. The developed model was verified on a 150 kW generator set with inverter output, whose dc-link voltage control-loop design was successfully carried out based on the average model. / Master of Science

Yes / A compact planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) with a tuneable frequency response is presented. Tuning of the resonant frequency is realized by loading a varactor on an embedded slot of the proposed antenna structure without further optimizing other antenna geometry parameters. The antenna exhibits a wide frequency range from 1570 to 2600 MHz with a good impedance matching (S11 ≤ -10dB) covering the GPS, PCS, DCS, UMTS, WLAN and LTE systems. To validate the theoretical model and design concept, the antenna prototype was fabricated and measured. The compact size of the antenna is 15mm × 8mm × 3mm, which makes this antenna a good candidate for mobile handset and wireless communication applications.

Nous étudions l’influence d’une rétroaction optique à conjugaison de phase dans une diode laser. Ce type de rétroaction a été peu étudié et nous montrons ici qu’il donne des résultats intéressants, permettant de débloquer du contenu à haute fréquence. Cela pourrait mener à de meilleures performances dans des systèmes de génération de nombres aléatoires utilisant du chaos optique. / We study the influence of phase-conjugate feedback in a laser diode. This type of feedback has not been studied a lot and yet we show here that it can give interesting results. It unlocks oscillations at high frequencies. This could lead to an improvement in the performance of random number generators based on optical chaos.

Ces dernières années les semi-conducteurs à base de InGaN sont devenus attractifs pour des applications d'éclairage. Les sources blanches à base de LED sont de plus en plus utilisées en raison de leur petite taille, leur longue durée de vie et leur faible consommation d'énergie. Malheureusement les LED utilisées dans ces dispositifs subissent une perte de rendement quantique externe quand leur courant d'alimentation augmente. Ceci se traduit par un décalage du maximum d'émission ainsi qu'un élargissement spectral. Ces variations d'émission impactent la conversion de lumière bleue en lumière blanche, ce qui diminue l'efficacité du procédé. Une méthode alternative pour obtenir de la lumière blanche en travaillant à forte puissance serait l'utilisation de diodes laser (DL) à la place des LED. Contrairement aux LED, elles sont moins affectées par les pertes d'efficacité. La puissance lumineuse et le rendement quantique externe des diodes laser augmentent linéairement avec le courant d'alimentation, ce qui maintient la stabilité de la lumière blanche produite. / In past few years InGaN-based semiconductors have attracted much more attention for application in solid-state lighting sources. Recently, their usage is constantly increasing on worldwide market. High-brightness white LEDs have been used due to their size, long life and energy saving. However, LEDs used in light sources suffer from a loss in external quantum efficiency as an operating current increases. This loss may lead to a shift in peak emission wavelength and broadening of emission spectrum. Laser diodes, in contrary to LEDs, do not suffer this loss. The output power increases linearly with injection current. Moreover, they can reach higher luminosity, for the same power, than LEDs. Additionally, laser-based devices can be operated in reflection mode, allowing for the phosphor to be placed on a reflection substrate that may also act as a heat sink to effectively dissipate heat away from the phosphor.

<p>The energy dependent response of silicon diodes in photon beams is a known problem. A new approach to solve this problem is by correcting the response, a response model was suggested by Yin et al. (2002, 2004), and later refined by Eklund and Ahnesjö (2009). In this work a prototype software was developed to calculate correction factors for arbitrary measurement points in MLC shaped fields using fluence pencil beam kernels to calculate the spectra used by the model of Eklund and Ahnesjö (2009). This work investigate this approach for large field sizes. It was found that the relative dose measurements of the corrected unshielded diode agreed with ionization chamber measurements within 1% at the central axis. Measurements made off axis (square and irregular fields) agreed within 2%, better results were achieved within the fields when the off axis beam softening were taken into consideration. This work has also shown that this new approach is an alternitive to shielded diodes and that corrected diodes will in some cases provide more reliable results.</p>

A huge number of applications require coherent radiation in the visible spectral range. Since diode lasers are very compact and efficient light sources, there exists a great interest to cover these applications with diode laser emission. Despite modern band gap engineering not all wavelengths can be accessed with diode laser radiation. Especially in the visible spectral range between 480 nm and 630 nm no emission from diode lasers is available, yet. Nonlinear frequency conversion of near-infrared radiation is a common way to generate coherent emission in the visible spectral range. However, radiation with extraordinary spatial temporal and spectral quality is required to pump frequency conversion. Broad area (BA) diode lasers are reliable high power light sources in the near-infrared spectral range. They belong to the most efficient coherent light sources with electro-optical efficiencies of more than 70%. Standard BA lasers are not suitable as pump lasers for frequency conversion because of their poor beam quality and spectral properties. For this purpose, tapered lasers and diode lasers with Bragg gratings are utilized. However, these new diode laser structures demand for additional manufacturing and assembling steps that makes their processing challenging and expensive. An alternative to BA diode lasers is the stripe-array architecture. The emitting area of a stripe-array diode laser is comparable to a BA device and the manufacturing of these arrays requires only one additional process step. Such a stripe-array consists of several narrow striped emitters realized with close proximity. Due to the overlap of the fields of neighboring emitters or the presence of leaky waves, a strong coupling between the emitters exists. As a consequence, the emission of such an array is characterized by a so called supermode. However, for the free running stripe-array mode competition between several supermodes occurs because of the lack of wavelength stabilization. This leads to power fluctuations, spectral instabilities and poor beam quality. Thus, it was necessary to study the emission properties of those stripe-arrays to find new concepts to realize an external synchronization of the emitters. The aim was to achieve stable longitudinal and transversal single mode operation with high output powers giving a brightness sufficient for efficient nonlinear frequency conversion. For this purpose a comprehensive analysis of the stripe-array devices was done here. The physical effects that are the origin of the emission characteristics were investigated theoretically and experimentally. In this context numerical models could be verified and extended. A good agreement between simulation and experiment was observed. One way to stabilize a specific supermode of an array is to operate it in an external cavity. Based on mathematical simulations and experimental work, it was possible to design novel external cavities to select a specific supermode and stabilize all emitters of the array at the same wavelength. This resulted in stable emission with 1 W output power, a narrow bandwidth in the range of 2 MHz and a very good beam quality with M²<1.5. This is a new level of brightness and brilliance compared to other BA and stripe-array diode laser systems. The emission from this external cavity diode laser (ECDL) satisfied the requirements for nonlinear frequency conversion. Furthermore, a huge improvement to existing concepts was made. In the next step newly available periodically poled crystals were used for second harmonic generation (SHG) in single pass setups. With the stripe-array ECDL as pump source, more than 140 mW of coherent radiation at 488 nm could be generated with a very high opto-optical conversion efficiency. The generated blue light had very good transversal and longitudinal properties and could be used to generate biphotons by parametric down-conversion. This was feasible because of the improvement made with the infrared stripe-array diode lasers due to the development of new physical concepts. / Für eine Vielzahl von interessanten Anwendungen z.B. in den Lebenswissenschaften werden kohärente Strahlquellen im sichtbaren Spektralbereich benötigt. Diese Strahlquellen sollen sich durch eine hohe Effizienz (d.h. Sparsamkeit), Mobilität und eine hohe Güte des emittierten Lichtes auszeichnen. Im Idealfall passt die Lichtquelle in die Hosentasche und kann mit herkömmlichen Batterien betrieben werden. Diodenlaser sind solche kleinen und sehr effizienten Strahlquellen. Sie sind heutzutage allgegenwärtig, begegnen uns in CD-Playern, Laserdruckern oder an Supermarktkassen im täglichen Leben. Diodenlaser zeichnen sich durch ihren extrem hohen Wirkungsgrad aus, da hier elektrischer Strom direkt in Licht umgewandelt wird. Jedoch können bisher noch nicht alle Wellenlängen im sichtbaren Bereich mit diesen Lasern realisiert werden. Eine Möglichkeit, diesen Wellenlängenbereich über einen Umweg zu erreichen, ist Frequenzkonversion von infrarotem in sichtbares Licht mit sogenannten nichtlinearen optischen Kristallen. Dies ist im Prinzip auch mit Diodenlasern möglich, konnte bisher jedoch nur sehr ineffizient oder mit erheblichem Aufwand umgesetzt werden. Allerdings kann mit Hilfe von externen Resonatoren die Emission solcher Standard-Laserdioden maßgeblich beeinflusst und die Qualität des Lichtes erheblich verbessert werden. Hier setzt die Zielsetzung dieser Arbeit an: Das Licht von infraroten Hochleistungslaserdioden, sogenannten „Streifen-Arrays“, sollte durch einen externen Resonator stabilisiert und für die Frequenzverdopplung erschlossen werden. Diese Arrays bestehen aus mehreren dicht nebeneinander angeordneten Einzelemittern und zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dass eine Kopplung dieser Emitter von außen möglich ist. Im ersten Schritt sollte eine solche Synchronisation der Emitter erreicht werden. In einem zweiten Schritt soll das von außen beeinflusste Licht des Arrays mit einer hohen Effizienz in sichtbares (blaues) Licht konvertiert werden um den Wirkungsgrad der Diodenlaser voll auszunutzen. Dafür war es notwendig die Physik der Streifen-Arrays sorgfältig zu untersuchen. Es mussten Methoden entwickelt werden, durch die eine gezielte Beeinflussung der Emitter möglich ist, damit es zu einer globalen Kopplung und Synchronisation der Array Emitter kommt. Dafür wurden mit Hilfe von mathematischen Modellierungen und Experimenten verschiedene Resonatorkonzepte entwickelt und realisiert. Schlussendlich war es möglich, die Emissionseigenschaften der Arrays um mehrere Größenordnungen zu verbessern und sehr effizient kohärentes blaues Licht sehr hoher Güte zu erzeugen. In einem weiteren Experiment ist es zusätzlich gelungen nichtklassisches Licht bzw. Paarphotonen zu generieren, die ebenfalls interessant für die Lebenswissenschaften sind.

The energy dependent response of silicon diodes in photon beams is a known problem. A new approach to solve this problem is by correcting the response, a response model was suggested by Yin et al. (2002, 2004), and later refined by Eklund and Ahnesjö (2009). In this work a prototype software was developed to calculate correction factors for arbitrary measurement points in MLC shaped fields using fluence pencil beam kernels to calculate the spectra used by the model of Eklund and Ahnesjö (2009). This work investigate this approach for large field sizes. It was found that the relative dose measurements of the corrected unshielded diode agreed with ionization chamber measurements within 1% at the central axis. Measurements made off axis (square and irregular fields) agreed within 2%, better results were achieved within the fields when the off axis beam softening were taken into consideration. This work has also shown that this new approach is an alternitive to shielded diodes and that corrected diodes will in some cases provide more reliable results.

This thesis presents the design and implementation of a millimeter-wave Gunn diode oscillator operating at 35 GHz (Ka (R) 26.5-40 GHz Band). The aim of the study is to produce a high frequency, high power signal from a negative resistance device situated in a waveguide cavity by applying a direct current bias. First the physics of Gunn diodes is studied and the requirements that Gunn diode operates within the negative differential resistance region is obtained. Then the best design configuration is selected. The design of the oscillator includes the design of the waveguide housing, diode mounting and the bias insertion network. Some simulation tools are used to predict, approximately, the behaviour of the oscillator and the bias coupling circuit. For tuning purposes, a sliding backshort and a triplescrew- tuner system is used. For different bias values and different positions of the tuning elements oscillations are observed. A much more stable and higher magnitude oscillations were obtained with the inclusion of &ldquo / resonant disc&rdquo / placed on top of the diode. 15 dBm power was measured at a frequency of 28 GHz. Laboratory measurements have been carried out to determine the oscillator frequency, power output and stability for different bias conditions.

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit Hochleistungsdioden aus den Halbleitermaterialen Silizium und Siliziumkarbid. Analysiert werden die statischen und dynamischen Schalteigenschaften. Bei den SiC-Bauelementen handelt es sich um unipolare Schottky-Dioden und bei den Silizium-Dioden um bipolare pin-Dioden. Bei den SiC-Schottky-Dioden liegt der Schwerpunkt auf der Analyse des statischen Durchbruchverhaltens von Randstrukturen und auf der Untersuchung der Selbsterwärmung bei Einzel- und Mehrpulsbelastung. Bei den bipolaren Silizium-Dioden wird das Durchbruchverhalten bei niedrigen und hohen Stromdichten untersucht. Aus den Sperrcharakteristiken, die positiv und negativ differentielle Widerstandsäste aufweisen, lassen sich Schlussfolgerungen auf das dynamische Verhalten ziehen. Das Abschaltverhalten (reverse recovery) der mit Plasma überschwemmten Bauelemente wird zuerst im Hinblick auf den Einfluss von Strukturparametern untersucht, um die prinzipiellen Einflussgrößen zu erläutern. Dann folgen die Ergebnisse zur Filamentbildung, die bei den hohen Belastungen der Bauelemente während des Kommutierungsprozesses auftreten können. Die auftretenden Filamentstrukturen werden analysiert und - soweit möglich - Einflussgrößen herausgearbeitet. Schließlich wird noch auf den Einfluss von Randstrukturen auf das Filamentierungsverhalten, die als Inhomogenität in jedem Bauelement vorhanden sind, eingegangen.