Art and optics are inseparable. Though seemingly opposite disciplines, the combination of art and optics has significantly impacted both culture and science as they are now known. As history has run its course, in the sciences, arts, and their fruitful combinations, optical aberrations have proved to be a problematic hindrance to progress. In an effort to eradicate aberrations the simple beauty of these aberrational forms has been labeled as undesirable and discarded. Here, rather than approach aberrations as erroneous, these beautiful forms are elevated to be the photographic subject in a new body of work, On the Bright Side. Though many recording methods could be utilized, this work was composed on classic, medium-format, photographic film using white-light, Michelson interferometry. The resulting images are both a representation of the true light rays that interacted on the distorted mirror surfaces (data) and the artist’s compositional eye for what parts of the interferogram are chosen and displayed. A detailed description of the captivating interdisciplinary procedure is documented and presented alongside the final artwork, CCD digital reference images, and deformable mirror contour maps. This alluring marriage between the arts and sciences opens up a heretofore minimally explored aspect of the inextricable art-optics connection. It additionally provides a fascinating new conversation on the importance of light and optics in photographic composition.

In Michelson interferometry, many algorithms are used to detect the number of active laser sources at any given time. Conventional FFT-based non-parametric methods are widely used for this purpose. However, non-parametric methods are not the only possible option to distinguish the peaks in a spectrum, as these methods are not the most suitable methods for short data records and for closely spaced wavelengths. This thesis aims to provide solutions to these problems. It puts forward the use of parametric methods such as autoregressive methods and harmonic methods, and proposes two new algorithms to detect the closely spaced peaks for different scenarios of optical signals in wavemeters. Various parametric algorithms are studied, and their performances are compared with non-parametric algorithms for different criteria, e.g. absolute levels, frequency resolution, and accuracy of peak positions. Simulations are performed on synthetic signals produced from specifications provided by our sponsor, i.e., a wavemeter manufacturing company.

This dissertation presents a free-space, long-range, passive optical communication system that uses electrostatically modulated microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) structures coupled with a glass total internal reflection (TIR)-type corner cube retroreflector (CCR) as a non-emitting data transmitter. A CCR consists of three mirrors orthogonal to each other, so that the incident beam is reflected back to the incident beam, source. The operational concept is to have a MEMS modulator fusion with TIR CCR, such that the modulators are working periodically to disrupt the evanescent waves at the air interface of one of the three back glass faces of a TIR CCR. The MEMS chip has two primary components: (1) an array of movable light scattering silicon structures with nano roughness and (2) a glass lid with a transparent conductive indium tin oxide (ITO) film. The MEMS structures are bonded to a glass lid using flip-chip bonding. Once bonded, the MEMS structures can be modulated either toward or away from the glass lid, thus disrupting evanescent energy delivered from a probing laser beam. The MEMS structure is precisely bonded to the TIR CCR with an accuracy of 10-30 arc-seconds using a Michelson interferometry feedback system. This is a novel step by which an existing passive commercial CCR can be converted into a modulating active CCR. This CCR-MEMS unit acts as the key element of the transmitter. To illustrate the concept of a low-power, unattended, sensor-monitoring system, we developed a sensor board containing temperature, humidity, and magnetic sensors along with a microprocessor and other electronics. The sensor board and CCR board are packed together and act as the transmitter unit. We developed a benchtop system and an improved portable receiver system. The receiver system contains the laser (as source), a collimating lens (to collect retroreflected signal), an optical, narrow band pass filter, and a detector. The detector signal was amplified and filtered and sent either to the oscilloscope, a lock-in-amplifier, or a laptop to display the sensor data. Using the receiver system, a sensor-CCR-based transmitter unit, and receiver with 635 nm as source, we achieved retroreflective communication over a distance of 300 m.