Soliton-effect compression of picosecond pulses on a photonic chip.

We report soliton-effect pulse compression of low energy (∼25), picosecond pulses on a photonic chip. An ultra-low-loss, dispersion-engineered 40-cm-long waveguide is used to compress 1.2-ps pulses by a factor of 18, which represents, to our knowledge, the largest compression factor yet experimentally demonstrated on-chip.

Performance scaling of a 10-GHz solid-state laser enabling self-referenced CEO frequency detection without amplification.

A simple and compact straight-cavity laser oscillator incorporating a cascaded quadratic nonlinear crystal and a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) can deliver stable femtosecond modelocking at high pulse repetition rates >10 GHz. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the influence of intracavity dispersion, pump brightness, and cavity design on modelocking with high repetition rates, and use the resulting insights to demonstrate a 10.4-GHz straight-cavity SESAM-modelocked Yb:CALGO laser delivering 108-fs pulses with 812 mW of average output power.

Chip-based frequency comb sources for optical coherence tomography.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a powerful interferometric imaging technique widely used in medical fields such as ophthalmology, cardiology and dermatology. Superluminescent diodes (SLDs) are widely used as light sources in OCT. Recently integrated chip-based frequency combs have been demonstrated in numerous platforms and the possibility of using these broadband chip-scale combs for OCT has been raised extensively over the past few years.

Carrier envelope offset detection via simultaneous supercontinuum and second-harmonic generation in a silicon nitride waveguide.

We demonstrate a chip-scale f-2f interferometer for carrier-envelope-offset frequency (f) detection. This is enabled by simultaneously producing octave-spanning coherent supercontinuum generation and second-harmonic generation in a single dispersion-engineered silicon nitride waveguide. We measure the f beatnote of an 80 MHz modelocked pump source with a signal-to-noise ratio of 25 dB.

Counter-rotating cavity solitons in a silicon nitride microresonator.

We demonstrate the generation of counter-rotating cavity solitons in a silicon nitride microresonator using a fixed, single-frequency laser. We demonstrate a dual three-soliton state with a difference in the repetition rates of the soliton trains that can be tuned by varying the ratio of pump powers in the two directions. Such a system enables a highly compact, tunable dual comb source that can be used for applications such as spectroscopy and distance ranging.

Gigahertz frequency comb offset stabilization based on supercontinuum generation in silicon nitride waveguides.

Silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides represent a novel photonic platform that is ideally suited for energy efficient and ultrabroadband nonlinear interactions from the visible to the mid-infrared. Chip-based supercontinuum generation in SiN offers a path towards a fully-integrated and highly compact comb source for sensing and time-and-frequency metrology applications. We demonstrate the first successful frequency comb offset stabilization that utilizes a SiN waveguide for octave-spanning supercontinuum generation and achieve the lowest integrated residual phase noise of any diode-pumped gigahertz laser comb to date.

Thermally controlled comb generation and soliton modelocking in microresonators.

We report, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of thermally controlled soliton mode-locked frequency comb generation in microresonators. By controlling the electric current through heaters integrated with silicon nitride microresonators, we demonstrate a systematic and repeatable pathway to single- and multi-soliton mode-locked states without adjusting the pump laser wavelength. Such an approach could greatly simplify the generation of mode-locked frequency combs and facilitate applications such as chip-based dual-comb spectroscopy.

Dual-comb modelocked lasers: semiconductor saturable absorber mirror decouples noise stabilization.

In this paper we present the stabilization of the pulse repetition rate of dual-comb lasers using an intracavity semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) for passive modelocking and an intracavity birefringent crystal for polarization-duplexing to obtain simultaneous emission of two modelocked beams from the same linear cavity sharing all components. Initially surprising was the observation that the cavity length adjustments to stabilize one polarization did not significantly affect the pulse repetition rate of the other. We gained insight in the underlying physics using both a semiconductor and Nd:YAG laser gain material with the conclusion that the pulse arrival timing jitter of the two beams is decoupled by the uncorrelated time delay from the saturated SESAM and becomes locked with sufficient but not too much pulse overlap.

Octave-spanning coherent supercontinuum generation in a silicon nitride waveguide.

We demonstrate the generation of a supercontinuum spanning more than 1.4 octaves in a silicon nitride waveguide using sub-100-fs pulses at 1 μm generated by either a 53-MHz, diode-pumped ytterbium (Yb) fiber laser or a 1-GHz, Yb:CaAlGdO(4) (Yb:CALGO) laser. Our numerical simulations show that the broadband supercontinuum is fully coherent, and a spectral interference measurement is used to verify that the supercontinuum generated with the Yb:CALGO laser possesses a high degree of coherence over the majority of its spectral bandwidth.

Frequency comb offset dynamics of SESAM modelocked thin disk lasers.

We present a detailed study of the carrier-envelope offset (CEO) frequency dynamics of SESAM modelocked thin disk lasers (TDLs) pumped by kW-class highly transverse multimode pump diodes with a typical M(2) value of 200-300, and give guidelines for future frequency stabilization of multi-100-W oscillators. We demonstrate CEO frequency detection with > 30 dB signal-to-noise ratio with a resolution bandwidth of 100 kHz from a SESAM modelocked Yb:YAG TDL delivering 140 W average output power with 748-fs pulses at 7-MHz pulse repetition rate. We compare with a low-power CEO frequency stabilized Yb:CALGO TDL delivering 2.

All-optical Q-switching limiter for high-power gigahertz modelocked diode-pumped solid-state lasers.

Passively modelocked diode-pumped solid-state lasers (DPSSLs) with pulse repetition rates in the gigahertz regime suffer from an increased tendency for Q-switching instabilities. Low saturation fluence intracavity saturable absorbers - such as the semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs) - can solve this problem up to a certain average output power limited by the onset of SESAM damage. Here we present a passive stabilization mechanism, an all-optical Q-switching limiter, to reduce the impact of Q-switching instabilities and increase the potential output power of SESAM modelocked lasers in the gigahertz regime.

Dual-comb modelocked laser.

In this paper we present the first semiconductor disk laser (SDL) emitting simultaneously two collinearly overlapping cross-polarized gigahertz modelocked pulse trains with different pulse repetition rates. Using only a simple photo detector and a microwave spectrum analyzer directly down-converts the frequency comb difference from the optical to the microwave frequency domain. With this setup, the relative carrier-envelope-offset (CEO) frequency can be accessed directly without an f-to2f interferometer.

Gigahertz frequency comb from a diode-pumped solid-state laser.

We present the first stabilization of the frequency comb offset from a diode-pumped gigahertz solid-state laser oscillator. No additional external amplification and/or compression of the output pulses is required. The laser is reliably modelocked using a SESAM and is based on a diode-pumped Yb:CALGO gain crystal.

Annotated chemical patent corpus: a gold standard for text mining.

Exploring the chemical and biological space covered by patent applications is crucial in early-stage medicinal chemistry activities. Patent analysis can provide understanding of compound prior art, novelty checking, validation of biological assays, and identification of new starting points for chemical exploration. Extracting chemical and biological entities from patents through manual extraction by expert curators can take substantial amount of time and resources.

Gigahertz self-referenceable frequency comb from a semiconductor disk laser.

We present a 1.75-GHz self-referenceable frequency comb from a vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) passively modelocked with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). The VECSEL delivers 231-fs pulses with an average power of 100 mW and is optimized for stable and reliable operation.

High peak power gigahertz Yb:CALGO laser.

We present a high-power gigahertz SESAM modelocked Yb:CALGO laser with sub-60-fs pulses. The laser delivers an average output power of 2.95 W at a pulse repetition rate of 1.

Phase-stabilization of the carrier-envelope-offset frequency of a SESAM modelocked thin disk laser.

We phase-stabilized the carrier-envelope-offset (CEO) frequency of a SESAM modelocked Yb:CaGdAlO₄ (CALGO) thin disk laser (TDL) generating 90-fs pulses at a center wavelength of 1051.6 nm and a repetition rate of 65 MHz. By launching only 2% of its output power into a photonic crystal fiber, we generated a coherent octave-spanning supercontinuum spectrum.

A gigahertz multimode-diode-pumped Yb:KGW enables a strong frequency comb offset beat signal.

A high-power gigahertz SESAM modelocked Yb:KGW laser is pumped with a commercial multimode diode laser and enables a strong frequency comb offset beat signal without additional amplification or pulse compression. The ultrafast Yb:KGW solid-state laser oscillator generates 125-fs pulses at an average power of 3.4 W and a repetition rate of 1.

SVM Based Descriptor Selection and Classification of Neurodegenerative Disease Drugs for Pharmacological Modeling.

Systems pharmacological modeling of drug mode of action for the next generation of multitarget drugs may open new routes for drug design and discovery. Computational methods are widely used in this context amongst which support vector machines (SVM) have proven successful in addressing the challenge of classifying drugs with similar features. We have applied a variety of such SVM-based approaches, namely SVM-based recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE).

Femtosecond diode-pumped solid-state laser with a repetition rate of 4.8 GHz.

We report on a diode-pumped Yb:KGW (ytterbium-doped potassium gadolinium tungstate) laser with a repetition rate of 4.8 GHz and a pulse duration of 396 fs. Stable fundamental modelocking is achieved with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM).

Reaction-driven de novo design, synthesis and testing of potential type II kinase inhibitors.

Background: De novo design of drug-like compounds with a desired pharmacological activity profile has become feasible through innovative computer algorithms. Fragment-based design and simulated chemical reactions allow for the rapid generation of candidate compounds as blueprints for organic synthesis.

Methods: We used a combination of complementary virtual-screening tools for the analysis of de novo designed compounds that were generated with the aim to inhibit inactive polo-like kinase 1 (Plk1), a target for the development of cancer therapeutics.

Pharmacophore alignment search tool: influence of the third dimension on text-based similarity searching.

Previously (Hähnke et al., J Comput Chem 2010, 31, 2810) we introduced the concept of nonlinear dimensionality reduction for canonization of two-dimensional layouts of molecular graphs as foundation for text-based similarity searching using our Pharmacophore Alignment Search Tool (PhAST), a ligand-based virtual screening method. Here we apply these methods to three-dimensional molecular conformations and investigate the impact of these additional degrees of freedom on virtual screening performance and assess differences in ranking behavior.