Newly designed multilayer thin film mirror for dispersion compensation in Ti:sapphire femtosecond lasers

There are two different effects to generate group delay dispersion by multilayer thin film mirrors: chirper effect and Gires-Tournois effect. Both effects are employed to introduce desired dispersion in the designed mirror. Thus the designed mirror provides large dispersion throughout broad waveband. Such mirror can be used for dispersion compensation in Ti:sapphire femtosecond lasers. Most group delay dispersion of a 5-mm Ti:sapphire crystal can be compensated perfectly with only four bounces of the designed mirror.

Negative dispersion mirrors in Ta2O5/: SiO2 for femtosecond Ti : Sapphire lasers by using gires-tournois interferometers

We design and experimentally demonstrate some negative dispersion mirrors with optimized Gires-Tournois interferometers. The mirror structure is composed of 38 alternating Ta2O5 and SiO2 layers and could be regarded as two sections: high-reflectivity section consisting of a series of quarter-wavelength optical thickness stacks and negative-dispersion section consisting of only 13 layers. The designed mirrors exhibit the expected performance. These mirrors were fabricated by using ion beam sputtering. By adopting such mirrors, dispersion of a mode-locked femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser has been compensated for mostly. With two series of the mirrors, 32 fs and 15 fs pulses have been obtained respectively.

Influence of Humidity on Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors

We demonstrate the influence of the relative humidity (RH) on the wavelength of fiber Bragg grating sensors (FBGS), performing tests with five FBGS at different humidity and temperature conditions. These tests were performed in a climate chamber whose RH changes according to a scheduled profile from 30% to 90%, in steps of 10%. These profiles were repeated for a wide range of temperatures from 10 degrees C to 70 degrees C, in steps of 10 degrees C. Two different types of instrumentation methods have been tested, spot welding and epoxy bonding, in two different materials, steel and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP). We discuss the results for each type of sensor and instrumentation method by analyzing the linearity of the Bragg wavelength with RH and temperature.

Optimization study of the structural HACFRA composition (Self Compacting Concrete Steel Fiber Reinforced)

The interest of HACFRA (self compacting concrete reinforced with steel fibers), is the combination of the residual strength increase and cracking decrease compared to plain concrete by the introduction of steel fibers in the mass with the advantages of the self-compacting. The paper presents an analysis of the influence of different components of the HACRFA and provides their selection, refered to the granular skeleton and to different steel fiber types and amount, in order to obtain an optimization of its features and structural behavior.