Direct measurement of optical phase is used in a high-density optical disk reader. The increased density is achieved by introducing multiple pit depths to replace the single pit depths of a traditional compact disk. Having four independent pit depths can double the storage capacity of a disk. The multi-level pits are read by direct measurement of the phase difference between two laser spots focused onto the disk surface. Extraction of phase information utilizes the equations of phase shifting interferometry with four shifted fringe patterns created simultaneously by a compact optical head. The system speed is therefore limited by the readout electronics instead of by slow mechanical phase shifters. The resulting system can identify four independent levels as well as the direction of transition from one level to another. The system also has low sensitivity to vibrations and to changes in the fringe contrast and beam intensity.

Compared to the much more common photonic crystals that are used to manipulate light, phononic crystals (PnCs) with inclusions in a lattice can be used to manipulate sound. While trying to propagate in a periodically structured media, acoustic waves may experience geometries in which propagation forward is totally forbidden. Furthermore, defects in the periodicity can be used to confine acoustic waves to follow complicated routes on a wavelength scale. Using advanced fabrication methods, we aim to implement these structures to control surface acoustic wave (SAW) propagation on the piezoelectric surface and eventually interact SAWs with quantum structures. To investigate the interaction of SAWs with periodic elastic structures, SAW interdigital transducers (IDTs) and PnC fabrication procedures were developed. GaAs is chosen as a piezoelectric substrate for SAWs propagation. Lift-off photolithography processes were used to fabricate IDTs with finger widths as low as 1.5 micron. PnCs are periodic structures of shallow air holes created in GaAs substrate by means of a wet-etching process. The PnCs are square lattices with lattice constants of 8 and 4 micron. To predict the behavior of a SAW when interacting with the PnC structures, an FDTD simulator was used to calculate the band structures and SAW wave displacement on the crystal surface. The bandgap (BG) predicted for the 8 micron crystal ranges from 180 MHz to 220 MHz. Simulations show a shift in the BG position for 4 micron crystals ranging from 391 to 439 MHz. Two main waveguide geometries were considered in this work: a simple line waveguide and a funneling entrance line waveguide. Simulations indicated an increase in acoustic power density for the funneling waveguides. Fabricated device evaluated with electrical measurements. In addition, a scanning Sagnac interferometer is used to map the energy density of the SAWs. The Sagnac interferometer is designed to measure the outward displacement of a surface due to the SAW. Interferometric measurements confirmed waveguiding in the modified funnel entrance waveguide embedded in the 4 micron PnC. However, they also revealed strong dissipation of the SAW in the waveguide due to the non-vertical sidewalls resulting from the wet-etch process. / Thesis (Master, Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy) -- Queen's University, 2013-11-29 15:53:46.369

In the temporal study of faint, extended sources at high resolving power, Spatial Heterodyne Spectrometer (SHS) can offer significant advantages about conventional dispersive grating spectrometers. We describe here a four-year continuous progress in Mt. Hamilton, Lick Observatory, toward development of a prototype reflective Spacial Heterodyne Spectrometer, Khayyam, instrument-telescope configuration to combine all of the capabilities necessary to obtain high resolving power visible band spectra of diffuse targets from small aperture on-axis telescopes where significant observing time can be obtained. We will discuss the design considerations going into this new system, installation, testing of the interferometer-telescope combination, the technical challenges and procedures moving forward.

The application of auto focus, using an optical beam deflection technique, to existing live cell interferometry measurements was developed and examined. The benefit to relevant experiments, currently being performed, is shown as well as its performance across various magnifications. Enough information is given so that the system can be reproduced to fit any end users needs.

The cornea is the anterior most surface of the eye and plays a critical role in vision. A thin fluid layer, the tear film, coats the outer surface of the cornea and serves to protect, nourish, and lubricate the cornea. At the same time, the tear film is responsible for creating a smooth continuous surface, where the majority of refraction takes place in the eye. A significant component of vision quality is determined by the shape of the cornea and stability of the tear film. A dual interferometer system for measuring the dynamic corneal topography is designed, built, verified, and qualified by testing on human subjects. The system consists of two coaligned simultaneous phase-shifting polarization-splitting Twyman-Green interferometers. The primary interferometer measures the surface of the tear film while the secondary interferometer tracks the absolute position of the cornea, which provides enough information to reconstruct the absolute shape of the cornea. The results are high-resolution and high-accuracy surface topography measurements of the in vivo tear film and cornea that are captured at standard camera frame rates. (C) 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Modern large telescopes such as TAO, LSST, TMT and EELT require 0.9m-4m monolithic convex secondary mirrors. The fabrication and testing of these large convex secondary mirrors of astronomical telescopes is getting challenging as the aperture of the mirror is getting bigger. The biggest challenge to fabricate these large convex aspheric mirrors is to measure the surface figure to a few nanometers, while maintaining the testing and fabrication cycle to be efficient to minimize the downtime. For the last a couple of decades there was huge advancement in the metrology and fabrication of large aspheric secondary mirrors. College of Optical Sciences in the University Arizona developed a full fabrication and metrology process with extremely high accuracy and efficiency for manufacturing the large convex secondary mirrors. In this paper modern metrology systems including Swing-Arm Optical Coordinate Measuring System (SOCMM) which is comparable to Interferometry and a Sub-aperture stitching interferometry scalable to a several meters have been presented. Also a Computer Controlled Fabrication Process which produces extremely fine surface figure and finish has been demonstrated. These most recent development has been applied to the fabrication and testing of 0.9m aspheric convex secondary mirror for the Tokyo Atacama Observatory's 6.5m telescope and the result has been presented.

Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (formerly known as Advanced Technology Solar Telescope) will be the largest optical solar telescope ever built to provide greatly improved image, spatial and spectral resolution and to collect sufficient light flux of Sun. To meet the requirements of the telescope the design adopted a 4m aperture off-axis parabolic primary mirror with challenging specifications of the surface quality including the surface figure, irregularity and BRDF. The mirror has been completed at the College of Optical Sciences in the University of Arizona and it meets every aspect of requirement with margin. In fact this mirror may be the smoothest large mirror ever made. This paper presents the detail fabrication process and metrology applied to the mirror from the grinding to finish, that include extremely stable hydraulic support, IR and Visible deflectometry, Interferometry and Computer Controlled fabrication process developed at the University of Arizona.

The growing field of high-order aspheric and freeform optical fabrication has inspired the creation of optical surfaces and systems which are difficult to align. Advances in optical alignment technology are critical to fabricating and integrating aspheric components in advanced optical systems. This dissertation explores the field of optical alignment with a computer-generated hologram (CGH) used as a reference. A CGH is a diffractive optic which may be used to create a desired phase profile across a beam of light, project irradiance patterns, or serve as a mask for an incident beam. The alignment methods presented in this dissertation are concerned with the use of a CGH to create reference phase profiles, or "wavefronts" , in a beam. In one application a set of axisymmetric CGH references are co-aligned. Each CGH has also been aligned to an aspheric mirror so the co-alignment of the CGH references is also a co-alignment of the aspheric mirrors. Another application is concerned with aligning an interferometer to test an aspheric mirror surface. The interferometer measures a "null" interference pattern when its wavefront accommodates a known surface profile. In this alignment application the CGH creates wavefronts which accommodate a known set of small spherical reference features at the test surface. An interference null from all the "phase fiducial" reference features indicates an aligned projection of the CGH. The CGH co-alignment method is implemented on a 4-mirror prime focus corrector known as the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Wide Field Corrector (HET WFC). It is shown that this method was very successful for centration alignment of some mirrors, whereas mechanical stability was the hardware limitation for other degrees of freedom. The additional alignment methods used in this project are described in detail and the expected alignment of the HET WFC is reported.The fabrication, characterization and application of spherical phase fiducials is demonstrated in a CGH-corrected Fizeau test prototype. It is shown that these reference features achieve <±1.5µm transverse alignment precision. A pair of phase fiducials is also applied to constrain the clocking and magnification of a projected wavefront. Fabrication and coordinate measurement of the features present the dominant challenges in these demonstrations.

The goal of the research was to develop best practices for image signal processing method for InSAS systems for bathymetric height determination. Improvements over existing techniques comes from the fusion of Chirp-Scaling a phase preserving beamforming techniques to form a SAS image, an interferometric Vernier method to unwrap the phase; and confirming the direction of arrival with the MUltiple SIgnal Channel (MUSIC) estimation technique. The fusion of Chirp-Scaling, Vernier, and MUSIC lead to the stability in the bathymetric height measurement, and improvements in resolution. This method is computationally faster, and used less memory then existing techniques.

Two-phase heat transfer techniques such a boiling make use of the high latent heat of fluids to enable dissipation of higher heat fluxes from surfaces compared to conventional single-phase cooling methods. To meet the increasing heat flux dissipation requirements of high-power electronic devices, modifications to the surface properties and roughness are often considered as a means to enhance two-phase heat transfer processes. Although surface roughness of varying length scales has been observed experimentally to enhance boiling heat transfer performance, the physical mechanisms that govern this improvement are not widely accepted. Correlations can be developed to map the behavior of specific surface structure geometries, but a broader investigation of the fundamental forces affecting evaporation at the three-phase contact line, which is critically important to the two-phase heat transfer process, may provide more widely applicable insights. In this thesis, an experimental setup was developed to investigate the effect of small scale surface roughness, with feature sizes below 1 micron, on the liquid film profile of a meniscus formed on a surface. This physical film profile can provide insight into how the surface roughness affects disjoining pressure, an important force that affects the phase change heat transfer process at the contact line. Using an interferometry technique to measure the liquid film profile for a model system of octane on silicon substrate with varying roughness, the change in disjoining pressure in the liquid film was observed. We found that the strength of disjoining pressure in the liquid film increases with increasing surface roughness feature depth.<br>