Polarization-Insensitive Lithium Niobate-on-Insulator Interferometer.

The key components of a polarization-independent electro-optic (EO) interferometer, including the beam splitter, mode converter, and directional coupler, are designed based on a lithium niobate (LN) platform on an integrated insulator to ensure high extinction ratios. By elaborately designing the geometric structure of the multimode interference (MMI) coupler, beam splitting of equal proportions and directional coupling of higher-order modes are realized. The most prominent characteristic of the proposed interferometer is polarization insensitivity, which is realized by converting TM polarization into TE polarization using a mode converter, providing conditions for the study of light with different polarizations.

Multi-aperture imaging with Fermat spiral sub-aperture arrangement.

Multi-aperture optical telescopes have been extensively studied owing to their high resolution, low cost, and light weight. The next generation of optical telescopes is predicted to be equipped with dozens or even hundreds of segmented lenses; therefore, it is necessary to optimize the arrangement of the lens array. This paper proposes a new structure called the Fermat spiral array (FSA) to replace the conventional hexagonal or ring array for the sub-aperture arrangement of a multi-aperture imaging system.

Beam-quality improvement with a bio-inspired sunflower array for coherent beam combining.

The beam quality of coherent beam combing (CBC) is significantly affected by the beam array schemes, which are regular hexagon arrays in most research. Here, we propose a bio-inspired Fermat spiral array (FSA) for large-array CBC, for the first time to our knowledge. The far-field distribution and beam quality of CBC with various designed FSAs was investigated numerically and experimentally; the simulated and experimental results agreed with each other.

Memantine ameliorates pulmonary inflammation in a mice model of COPD induced by cigarette smoke combined with LPS.

An enhanced chronic inflammatory response in the airways has been regarded as a critical characteristic of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Memantine, an N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors antagonist, has been reported to alleviate lung inflammation. In this study, we investigated the effect and mechanism of memantine on the COPD model induced by cigarette smoke (CS) combined with LPS.