Polarization, defined as the ideological distance between the Democrat and Republican parties in Congress, has increased dramatically in Congress since the 1970s. Research on polarization in the U.S. Congress primarily focuses on the sources of this increase. Relatively little work has been done on the consequences of polarization for Congress? relationship with the president and the passage of legislation. This dissertation corrects this omission by examining the influence of polarization on several key aspects of the legislative process. It examines the impact of polarization on the interaction between Congress and the president, including the president?s strategy in supporting or opposing legislation and the success the president has on bills when he takes a position. It also examines the effect polarization has on the overall passage of legislation. An empirical examination was undertaken using significant bills in Congress over a sixty year time period (1947-2006). The results indicate that the effects of polarization on the legislative process are contingent upon the presence of divided government, defined as times when the president and a majority of members of Congress are from different parties, and the chamber of Congress under examination. As polarization increases, the president is more likely to support legislation and be successful when his party controls Congress, but he opposes more legislation and is less successful as polarization increases under divided government. Legislative gridlock, the inability of Congress to pass important or innovative legislation, tends to decrease in both the House and Senate as polarization increases under unified government. However, as polarization increases under divided government the overall passage of bills into law decreases. The dissertation also offers an improved method for modeling the impact of divided government on gridlock. Prior studies model divided government without regard for whether the president takes a position on a given bill. This study shows that when the president takes a position on a bill under divided government the probability it passes decreases, but the probability of passage increases when the president does not take a position. This finding implies that previous research may underestimate the true effects of divided government on gridlock.

Recent days, antennas play an important role in wireless communication system. Microstrip patch antennas are well known to have positive features for cost-effective, low profile and broadband. This type of antenna can be used in wide range of applications such as in wireless communications, radar systems, and satellites. Inhibiting characteristics of single patch antenna with low gain and narrow band leads to the research area to have array configuration. Beam steering antennas are the ideal solution for various systems such as traffic control and collision avoidance radar systems. The goal of this work is to design and implement a dual-linear polarization stacked microstrip patch phased array antenna. Single stacked microstrip patch antenna fed by microstrip line was designed to have approximately 3 GHz bandwidth in X-band with another ground plane to form a stripline-fed. Stripline-fed design protects feed lines from any outside effects. The array configuration was adapted to design in order to accomplish beam scan angle of /- 30 degrees by /- 15 degrees. Binomial power distribution of 3x2 array structure was used in order to reduce grating lobes, and changing length of feed lines was implemented for phase shifting. Bowtie cross shape aperture and dual-offset microstrip feedline was used to feed radiating patches. For the feed network, T-split power divider was implemented and optimized to achieve low loss. The length of microstrip line was adjusted to meet desired phase shift that in wideband application, the length of the line had to be long enough to have similar wavelength response over broad frequency range. The antenna array was designed using standard equations and simulated by electromagnetic analysis software called Zealand's IE3D which is method-of-moments based simulator. The resulting measured impedance bandwidth and gain of both microstrip and stripline-fed single antenna are 43 percent and 5 to 10 dBi with low cross polarizations for all frequencies. The array antenna was measured to have 29 to 60 percent impedance bandwidths depending on the different types of beam scan angles. The gain of the array antenna is 8 to 13 dBi, and the beams are directed as required with /- 3 degrees beam scan angle tolerance. The array antenna had a small offset as compared with simulated results because of the fabrication process such as alignment, distorted feed lines while etching, and etc, but the bandwidths and array patterns were acceptable.

The coherence of a semiconductor laser subjected to a coherent optical feedback of greater than -30 dB will collapse, causing the laser¡¦s performance in many applications to be severely degraded. This research investigated the feasibility of suppression the coherence collapse with orthogonal-polarization optical feedback. In the experiments, we first studied the characteristics of coherence collapse state of semiconductor laser. Under an operational condition of 63.9 mA, 21.9¢J and -11 dB of coherent optical feedback, a Hitachi HLP 7806G semiconductor laser would be conducted from its solitary single-mode state into a multimode oscillation state with a very broad linewidth. At the same time, the relative intensity noise measured from the RF spectrum analyzer drastically raised about 15 dB. When a -16 dB and a -23 dB orthogonal-polarization optical feedback were fed back into the laser¡¦s cavity. The coherence collapse could be effectively suppressed, while the laser was conducted back to its solitary single-mode state stably. This result will greatly increase the application of the laser. Some experiments were also reported to explore the interaction between the laser and the orthogonal-polarization feedback light.

We mainly studied the characterization of GaN/AlGaN heterostructures which were grown by molecular beam epitaxy. For reduced lattice mismatch, we inserted AlN as buffer layer. We varied the parameters of buffer layer, such as the ratio of nitrogen and aluminum and the thickness. By the analysis of X-ray diffraction, we could determine the state of mismatch. For the thickness of buffer layer, lattice mismatch is most serious at 20 minute growth. Under the observation of field emission scan electron microscopy and reflection high energy electron diffraction, we found N/Al=40 is N-face and N/Al=26 is Ga-face. For the thickness of buffer layer, the samples of 1-minute and 5-minute growth had the optimal Ga-face. For the investigation of photoluminescence, we could obtain the energy gap of AlGaN is 3.42ev. Furthermore, the doping silicon was used to vary carrier concentration, and we could show that a good Hall mobility was achieved at the doping temperature 1250¢J. We also could show good Hall mobility at 1 minute growth and 5 minute growth (N/Al=26). We tried to find the best parameters for the growth of GaN/AlGaN heterostructures.

The wurtzite GaN has either Ga or N polarity. The direction of polarization, hence it¡¦s associated polarization-induced electric fields (Fp), is determined by the polarity of the sample. In the present work, we prepared both N-face polarity and n-type doping of GaN with thicknesses are 1.1£gm and 70nm. Photoreflectacne (PR) and contactless electroreflectance (CER) were used in combination to study the nature of the surface band bending which was found to be determined by the type of doping for the thick sample and by the polarity for the polarity for the thin sample. This is in agreement with a theoretical calculation by Poisson-Schrödinger solver. Hence, CER can determine the polarity of GaN film as long as the sample is thin enough of the Fp to become dominant in the surface region.

The way in which the myocardium responds to its mechanical environment must be understood in order to develop reasonable treatments for congestive heart failure. The first step toward this understanding is to characterize and quantify the cardiac microstructure in healthy and diseased hearts. Myocardium has a laminar architecture made up of myolaminae, which are sheets of myocytes surrounded by a collagen weave. By enhancing the contrast between the myocytes and the surrounding collagen, the myocardium can be investigated and its laminar structure can be quantified. Many of the techniques that have been used to view the microstructure of the heart require the use of toxic or caustic chemicals for fixation or staining. An efficient imaging method that uses polarization microscopy and enhances the contrast between the collagen and myocytes while minimizing the use of harmful chemicals was developed in this research. Collagen is birefringent; therefore its visibility should be enhanced through polarization microscopy and image processing. The sheet angles were viewed directly by cutting slices of a rat septum perpendicular to the fiber angle. Images of different polarization combinations were taken and a region of interest was selected on the sample. Image processing techniques were used to reduce the intensity variation on the images and account for the variable gain of the camera. The contrast between the collagen and myocytes was enhanced by comparing adjusted images to the background and looking at a single image this comparison produced. Although the contrast was enhanced, the embedding media reduced the collagen signal and the enhancement was not as striking as expected.

An adding-doubling method is employed to calculate the reflected Stokes parameters for cirrus cloud layers composed of different habits and effective sizes. The elements of the Mueller matrix are determined from the reflected Stokes parameters by considering four different incident polarization states. The sensitivity of these elements is observed by comparing different ice crystal habits, effective sizes, and optical depth. The Mueller elements are strongly dependent on habit. The three habits, aggregate, bullet rosette, and plate, are observed and the M12/M11,M43/M11 and M44/M11 elements are discussed. The wavelength used is 0.532µm, which is the lidar wavelength used on the CALIPSO satellite. The linear depolarization ratio is also discussed. The method of subtracting the two depolarization ratios, is noted as another way to possibly better distinguish ice crystal habits. The sensitivity of the Mueller matrix to effective size is also observed. For three size distributions, the Mueller elements indicate no strong dependence. This may be due to the assumption of randomly oriented ice. Also, using an absorbing wavelength might provide dependence. Finally, the Mueller elements are dependent on optical depth. For a greater optical depth, the strength of reflection increases while the polarization decreases. As the optical depth increases, any peak-like features become non-existent.

In recent years there has been a growing demand for reduced mass, small launch volume, and, at the same time, high-gain large-aperture antenna systems in modern space-borne applications. This dissertation introduces new techniques for dual-band reflectarray antennas to meet these requirements. A series of developments is presented to show the dual-band capability of the reflectarray. A novel microstrip ring structure has been developed to achieve circular polarization (CP). A C/Ka dual-band front-fed reflectarray antenna has been designed to demonstrate the dual-band circular polarized operation. The proposed ring structure provides many advantages of compact size, more freedom in the selection of element spacing, less blockage between circuit layers, and broader CP bandwidth as compared to the patches. An X/Ka dual-band offset-fed reflectarray is made of thin membranes, with their thickness equal to 0.0508 mm in both layers. Several degrading effects of thin substrates are discussed. To overcome these problems, a new configuration is developed by inserting empty spaces of the proper thickness below both the X and Ka band membranes. More than 50 % efficiencies are achieved at both frequency ranges, and the proposed scheme is expected to be a good candidate to meet the demand for future inflatable antenna systems. An X/Ka dual-band microstrip reflectarray with circular polarization has also been constructed using thin membranes and a Cassegrain offset-fed configuration. It is believed that this is the first Cassegrain reflectarray ever developed. This antenna has a 0.75-meter-diameter aperture and uses a metallic sub-reflector and angular-rotated annular ring elements. It achieved a measured 3 dB gain bandwidth of 700 MHz at Xband and 1.5 GHz at Ka-band, as well as a CP bandwidth (3 dB axial ratio) of more than 700 MHz at X-band and more than 2 GHz at Ka-band. The measured peak efficiencies are 49.8 % at X-band and 48. 2 % at Ka-band. In summary, this dissertation presents a series of new research developments to support the dual-band operation of the reflectarray antenna. The results of this work are currently being implemented onto a 3-meter reflectarray with inflatable structures at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and are planned for other applications such as an 8-meter inflatable reflectarray in the near future.

Programmable two-port polarization independent electro-optically wavelength tunable filters based on asymmetric Mach-Zehnder structure in LiNbO3 substrate have been developed for 1.55 µm application. The operation principle is based on Mach-Zehnder interference and TE↔TM polarization conversion. Fabrication parameters for channel waveguides, polarization converters and bandpass filters have been optimized. Straight channel waveguides 7 µm in width were produced by diffusing 1116 Å thick Ti into LiNbO3 substrate at 1035°C for 10 hours. Single mode guiding has been realized for both TE and TM polarization. Insertion loss of 2.9 dB for TE polarization input and 3.3 dB for TM polarization input were achieved on a 46 mm long sample. Single sideband programmable polarization mode converters were produced with 16 electrode sets, each containing 64 grating periods. Programmability was achieved by applying spatially periodic weighted independent voltages to interdigital electrode sets, and controlled electronically via a personal computer through a digital-to-analog converter array chip. Maximum conversion efficiency of more than 99% was realized for both TM→TE and TE→TM, and was observed at 1530.48 nm. Two-port polarization independent electro-optically tunable wavelength filters were produced based on the results obtained above. The 3 dB bandwidth is 1.1 nm and the nearest side lobes to the main transmission are down by about 9 dB for uniform coupling. Side lobes are reduced to about 20 dB below peak transmission after apodization, and the 3 dB bandwidths increased to ~ 1.3 nm as a result. Seven channels (channel -4, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 and +4) were selectable by programming the voltages on each electrode set. Channel spacing is 1.1~1.2 nm. The tuning ranges from 1524.04 to 1533.56 nm. Fiber-to-fiber insertion loss of the filter at center frequency is 4.3 dB for TE input and 4.2 dB for TM input. The polarization dependent loss is < 0.5 dB for all selectable channels. The temporal response to a 21 V step change in applied voltages was measured to be 586 ns for the 10%-90% rise time and 2.308 µs for the 90%-10% fall time. This research work provides a convenient scheme for making programmable two-port tunable bandpass filters and ROADMs.

In this thesis, we investigate the optical properties of m-plane InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well grown by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy. The optical spectroscopies we employed are photoluminescence (PL), polarized PL, power-dependent PL, photoluminescence excitation (PLE), polarized PLE, and Raman scattering. From the blue shift of E2 mode in Raman spectrum, we find that the epitaxial layers are under compressive stress. The PL spectrum at 10 K is dominated by the emission band peaked at 433 nm. We found the optical emission possesses the polarization anisotropy. The degree of polarization is about 80% at room temperature. It is found that the degree of polarization decreases with increasing temperature, which may be explained by carrier population effect. In addition, two major contributions to the PLE spectrum detected for the emission band have identified. Finally, the absence of quantum confined Stark effect is confirmed by power-dependent PL measurements.