Volume Holographic Data Storage Systems (HDSS) has been of interest for almost seven decades, and are now considered as a viable option for Write Once Read Many (WORM) cold data storage applications. Thanks to the Bragg selectivity of thick volume holograms, HDSS stores several hundreds of holograms on top of each other, called multiplexed data pages, by which data recording density can be substantially increased compared to surface recordings. On the other hand, signal intensity upon reconstruction of such multiplexed data pages inversely scales with number of multiplexing squared. Therefore, longer detection time and/or a high power laser along with a large dynamic range material is needed to make HDSS a truly viable "fast and high density" option for WORM applications. Historically, the trade-off between data density and data rate is well recognized. The challenge has been partially solved by continuous efforts such as improvement of materials, optical architectures, opto-mechanical systems and signal processing [1,2]. In this dissertation, we provide an additional pathway for HDSS to further increase both data density and transfer rates which is Cavities Enhancement Techniques for HDSS, to overcome the fundamental tradeoff. Key ideas are: recycling light with cavity to enhance data rate, and increasing number of multiplexing by combining cavity-eigenmode multiplexing, a subset of orthogonal phasecode multiplexing, with angular multiplexing. Based on this idea, we design and demonstrate Cavity-enhanced HDSS in such a way that we increase data rate and/or data density by at least factor of 2 while taking advantage of previous improvements as they are, or only with the minimum amount of modifications. In Section 1, we review history of HDSS and summarize the latest research results of HDSS and requirements on modern optical data storage systems as they relate to our solutions. In Section 2, theory of volume holography is reviewed by emphasizing understanding of angular and orthogonal phase code multiplexing. In Section 3 the theory of cavity enhanced reference arms is presented. We discuss how cavities provide a coherent boost to the beam power, which can be used in recording to alleviate source power requirements and/or increase the data recording rate and demonstrate the enhancement experimentally. Beyond basic enhancement, cavities also enable orthogonal phase code multiplexing via cavity eigenmodes. In Section 4, we experimentally demonstrate angular and orthogonal phase code hybrid multiplexing to overcome the limitation of the maximum number of multiplexing imposed by the geometrical constraints of angular multiplexing. In Section 5, novel aspects of the research are discussed in conjunction with the application of the technology for commercial use. Conclusions and future research direction are addressed in Section 6.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Chemistry / Stefan H. Bossmann / The photochromic spirodihydroindolizine/betaine (DHI/B) system has been reinvestigated applying picosecond, microsecond, stationary absorption measurements, and NMR-kinetics. The first surprise was that the electronic structure of the betaines is quite different than commonly assumed. The photochemical ring-opening of DHIs to betaines is a conrotatory 1,5 electrocyclic reaction, as picosecond absorption spectroscopy confirms. The (disrotatory) thermal ring-closing occurs from the cisoid betaine. The lifetime of the transoid betaine is 60 s at 300 K, whereas the lifetime of the cisoid isomer is of the order of 250 microseconds. According to these results, the electrocyclic back reaction of the betaines to the DHI is NOT rate determining, as previously thought, but the cisoid-transoid-isomerization of the betaine. Although the presence of a second nitrogen atom increases the photostability of the spirodihydroindolizine-pyridazine/betaine-system remarkably, the photochemical reaction mechanism appears to be exactly the same for spirodihydroindolizine-pyridazine/betaine-system. A nondestructive photoswitch or an information recording systems has been explored using styryl-quinolyldihydroindolizines. Both isomers DHI and betaine are fluorescent. When the blue betaine is stabilized in a thin polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) matrix, it is stable for several hours even in room temperature and very stable at 77K. Although irradiation of visible light = 532 nm allows the photo-induced reaction of the Betaine back to the DHI, a nondestructive read-out can be performed at λ = 645 nm upon excitation with λ = 580 nm. Image recording (write) and read-out, as well as information storage (at 77K) have been demonstrated. Charged and maleimide-functionalized DHI/B systems have beed synthesized for use as photochemical gates of the mycobacterial channel porin MspA. Positively charged and maleimide functionalized DHI groups that were attached to the DHI/B-system permit the binding of the photoswitch to selective positions in the channel proteins due to the presence of a cysteine moiety. An inexpensive new method for the large scale synthesis of coelenterazine is developed. A modified Negishi coupling reaction is used to make pyrazine intermediates from aminopyrazine as an economical starting material. This method permits the use of up to 1g coelenterazine per kg body weight and day, which turns the renilla transfected stem cells into powerful light sources.

Secure communication is a topic of great importance. The goal of our research reported here is to develop a scheme of secure communication system using coherence modulation at the photon counting level. When operated at the photon counting level, coherence modulation can provide quantifiably secure binary transmission between two entities, security being based on the nonclonability of photons. The objectives of the research are as follows: Show that interferometer-based coherence modulation can provide physics guaranteed secure binary transmission where each bit is associated with a countable number of photons. Review the operation of conventional high-light-level coherence modulation communication and then show, by means of example, that through the reduction of light intensities to photon-counting levels the system can be made secure. Analyze a particular attack on the system to demonstrate the quantifiability of the scheme’s security. Implement a version of the BB84 quantum key distribution protocol by slightly modifying our scheme in order to achieve a greater security. Identify a variety of issues related to hardware and the challenges of implementing our scheme in the real world. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Wang, Xu. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

Chow Chi Wai. / "July 2004." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

"January 2004." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

In construction sites, tracking project-related entities such as construction equipment, materials, and personnel provides useful information for productivity measurement, progress monitoring, on-site safety enhancement, and activity sequence analysis. Radio frequency technologies such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Ultra Wide Band (UWB) are commonly used for this purpose. However, on large-scale congested sites, deploying, maintaining and removing such systems can be costly and time-consuming because radio frequency technologies require tagging each entity to track. In addition, privacy issues can arise from tagging construction workers, which often limits the usability of these technologies on construction sites. A vision-based approach that can track moving objects in camera views can resolve these problems. The purpose of this research is to investigate the vision-based tracking system that holds promise to overcome the limitations of existing radio frequency technologies for large-scale, congested sites. The proposed method use videos from static cameras. Stereo camera system is employed for tracking of construction entities in 3D. Once the cameras are fixed on the site, intrinsic and extrinsic camera parameters are discovered through camera calibration. The method automatically detects and tracks interested objects such as workers and equipment in each camera view, which generates 2D pixel coordinates of tracked objects. The 2D pixel coordinates are converted to 3D real-world coordinates based on calibration. The method proposed in this research was implemented in .NET Framework 4.0 environment, and tested on the real videos of construction sites. The test results indicated that the methods could locate construction entities with accuracy comparable to GPS.

High quality nanophotonic structures fabricated on silicon nitride substrates and operating in the visible range of the spectrum are investigated. As most biological sensing applications, such as Raman and fluorescence sensing, require visible light pumping and analysis, extending the nanophotonics concepts to the visible range is essential. Traditionally, CMOS compatible processes are used to make compact silicon nanophotonics structures. While the high index contrast of silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers offer a high integration capability, the high absorption loss of silicon renders it unusable in the visible range. In this research high quality factor microdisk and photonic crystal resonators and high resolution arrayed waveguide grating and superprism spectrometers are fabricated and characterized in the visible range and integrated with fluidic structures and their application in biosensing and athermal operations is investigated.

Modern rendering systems require fast and efficient acceleration structures in order to compute visibility in real time. I present several novel data structures and algorithms for computing visibility with high performance. In particular, I present two algorithms for improving heuristic based acceleration structure build. These algorithms, when used in a demand driven way, have been shown to improve build performance by up to two orders of magnitude. Additionally, I introduce ray tracing in perspective transformed space. I demonstrate that ray tracing in this space can significantly improve visibility performance for near-common origin rays such as eye and shadow rays. I use these data structures and algorithms to support a key hypothesis of this dissertation: “There is no silver bullet for solving the visibility problem; many different acceleration structures will be required to achieve the highest performance.” Specialized acceleration structures provide significantly better performance than generic ones and building many specialized structures requires high performance build techniques. Additionally, I present an optimization-based taxonomy for classifying acceleration structures and algorithms in order to identify which optimizations provide the largest improvement in performance. This taxonomy also provides context for the algorithms I present. Finally, I present several novel cost metrics (and a correction to an existing cost metric) to improve visibility performance when using metric based acceleration structures. / text

published_or_final_version / Computer Science and Information Systems / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy