Publications by authors named "Alex Kaplan"

Article Synopsis
  • - Cysteine is crucial for making glutathione, which protects plants from stress, and methionine, important for cell growth and protein synthesis.
  • - Under oxidative stress, glutathione competes with methionine for cysteine, with elevated oxidized glutathione (GSSG) levels suppressing methionine production by accelerating the breakdown of a key enzyme involved in its synthesis.
  • - This study uncovers a feedback loop where glutathione promotes cysteine’s use for stress protection at the expense of methionine production, revealing a complex relationship affecting plant growth and nutritional quality under stress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this paper, we report an advance in increasing core size of effective single-mode chirally-coupled-core (CCC) Ge-doped and Yb-doped double-clad fibers into 55 µm to 60 µm range, and experimentally demonstrate their robust single-mode performance. Theoretical and numerical description of CCC fibers structures with multiple side cores and polygon-shaped central core is consistent with experimental results. Detailed experimental characterization of 55 µm-core CCC fibers based on spatially and spectrally resolved broadband measurements (S(2) technique) shows that modal performance of these large core fibers well exceeds that of standard 20 μm core step-index large mode area fibers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We present an optical mode solver for a whispering gallery resonator coupled to an adjacent arbitrary shaped nano-particle that breaks the axial symmetry of the resonator. Such a hybrid resonator-nanoparticle is similar to what was recently used for bio-detection and for field enhancement. We demonstrate our solver by parametrically studying a toroid-nanoplasmonic device and get the optimal nano-plasmonic size for maximal enhancement.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In addition to colorant-based pigmentation, structure is a major contributor to a material's color. In nature, structural color is often caused by the interaction of light with dielectric structures whose dimensions are on the order of visible-light wavelengths. Different optical interactions including multilayer interference, light scattering, the photonic crystal effect, and combinations thereof give rise to selective transmission or reflection of particular light wavelengths, which leads to the generation of structural color.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF