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1. Ultrafast Laser Microlaryngeal Surgery for In Vivo Subepithelial Void Creation in Canine Vocal Folds

   https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.30713  

   Andrus, Liam ; Camli, Berk ; Mau, Ted ; Ben‐Yakar, Adela ( April 2023 , The Laryngoscope)

   Tightly‐focused ultrafast laser pulses (pulse widths of 100 fs–10 ps) provide high peak intensities to produce a spatially confined tissue ablation effect. The creation of sub‐epithelial voids within scarred vocal folds (VFs) via ultrafast laser ablation may help to localize injectable biomaterials to treat VF scarring. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of this technique in an animal model using a custom‐designed endolaryngeal laser surgery probe.

   Unilateral VF mucosal injuries were created in two canines. Four months later, ultrashort laser pulses (5 ps pulses at 500 kHz) were delivered via the custom laser probe to create sub‐epithelial voids of ~3 × 3‐mm²in both healthy and scarred VFs. PEG‐rhodamine was injected into these voids. Ex vivo optical imaging and histology were used to assess void morphology and biomaterial localization.

   Large sub‐epithelial voids were observed in both healthy and scarred VFs immediately following in vivo laser treatment. Two‐photon imaging and histology confirmed ~3‐mm wide subsurface voids in healthy and scarred VFs of canine #2. Biomaterial localization within a void created in the scarred VF of canine #2 was confirmed with fluorescence imaging but was not visualized during follow‐up two‐photon imaging. As an alternative, the biomaterial was injected into the excised VF and could be observed to localize within the void.

   We demonstrated sub‐epithelial void formation and the ability to inject biomaterials into voids in a chronic VF scarring model. This proof‐of‐concept study provides preliminary evidence towards the clinical feasibility of such an approach to treating VF scarring using injectable biomaterials.

   N/ALaryngoscope, 133:3042–3048, 2023

    

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2. Time-magnified photon counting with 550-fs resolution

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.420816  

   Li, Bowen ; Bartos, Jan ; Xie, Yijun ; Huang, Shu-Wei ( August 2021 , Optica)

   Time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) is an enabling technology for applications such as low-light fluorescence lifetime microscopy and photon counting time-of-flight (ToF) 3D imaging. However, state-of-the-art TCSPC single-photon timing resolution (SPTR) is limited to 3–100 ps by single-photon detectors. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a time-magnified TCSPC (TM-TCSPC) that achieves an ultrashort SPTR of 550 fs with an off-the-shelf single-photon detector. The TM-TCSPC can resolve ultrashort pulses with a 130-fs pulse width difference at a 22-fs accuracy. When applied to photon counting ToF 3D imaging, the TM-TCSPC greatly suppresses the range walk error that limits all photon counting ToF 3D imaging systems by 99.2% and thus provides high depth accuracy and precision of 26 µm and 3 µm, respectively.

    

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3. Asymmetries in ionization of atomic superposition states by ultrashort laser pulses

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73196-9  

   Venzke, J. ; Becker, A. ; Jaron-Becker, A. ( December 2020 , Scientific Reports)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Progress in ultrafast science allows for probing quantum superposition states with ultrashort laser pulses in the new regime where several linear and nonlinear ionization pathways compete. Interferences of pathways can be observed in the photoelectron angular distribution and in the past they have been analyzed for atoms and molecules in a single quantum state via anisotropy and asymmetry parameters. Those conventional parameters, however, do not provide comprehensive tools for probing superposition states in the emerging research area of bright and ultrashort light sources, such as free-electron lasers and high-order harmonic generation. We propose a new set of generalized asymmetry parameters which are sensitive to interference effects in the photoionization and the interplay of competing pathways as the laser pulse duration is shortened and the laser intensity is increased. The relevance of the parameters is demonstrated using results of state-of-the-art numerical solutions of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for ionization of helium atom and neon atom. 

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4. Efficient simulation of ultrafast quantum nonlinear optics with matrix product states

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.423044  

   Yanagimoto, Ryotatsu ; Ng, Edwin ; Wright, Logan G. ; Onodera, Tatsuhiro ; Mabuchi, Hideo ( October 2021 , Optica)

   Ultrashort pulses propagating in nonlinear nanophotonic waveguides can simultaneously leverage both temporal and spatial field confinement, promising a route towards single-photon nonlinearities in an all-photonic platform. In this multimode quantum regime, however, faithful numerical simulations of pulse dynamics naïvely require a representation of the state in an exponentially large Hilbert space. Here, we employ a time-domain, matrix product state (MPS) representation to enable efficient simulations by exploiting the entanglement structure of the system. To extract physical insight from these simulations, we develop an algorithm to unravel the MPS quantum state into constituent temporal supermodes, enabling, e.g., access to the phase-space portraits of arbitrary pulse waveforms. As a demonstration, we perform exact numerical simulations of a Kerr soliton in the quantum regime. We observe the development of non-classical Wigner-function negativity in the solitonic mode as well as quantum corrections to the semiclassical dynamics of the pulse. A similar analysis of${\mathrm{\chi <\#comment/>}}^{(2)}$simultons reveals a unique entanglement structure between the fundamental and second harmonics. Our approach is also readily compatible with quantum trajectory theory, allowing full quantum treatment of propagation loss and decoherence. We expect this work to establish the MPS technique as part of a unified engineering framework for the emerging field of broadband quantum photonics.

    

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5. Temporal trapping: a route to strong coupling and deterministic optical quantum computation

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.473276  

   Yanagimoto, Ryotatsu ; Ng, Edwin ; Jankowski, Marc ; Mabuchi, Hideo ; Hamerly, Ryan ( November 2022 , Optica)

   The realization of deterministic photon–photon gates is a central goal in optical quantum computation and engineering. A longstanding challenge is that optical nonlinearities in scalable, room-temperature material platforms are too weak to achieve the required strong coupling, due to the critical loss-confinement trade-off in existing photonic structures. In this work, we introduce a spatio-temporal confinement method, dispersion-engineered temporal trapping, to circumvent the trade-off, enabling a route to all-optical strong coupling. Temporal confinement is imposed by an auxiliary trap pulse via cross-phase modulation, which, combined with the spatial confinement of a waveguide, creates a “flying cavity” that enhances the nonlinear interaction strength by at least an order of magnitude. Numerical simulations confirm that temporal trapping confines the multimode nonlinear dynamics to a single-mode subspace, enabling high-fidelity deterministic quantum gate operations. With realistic dispersion engineering and loss figures, we show that temporally trapped ultrashort pulses could achieve strong coupling on near-term nonlinear nanophotonic platforms. Our results highlight the potential of ultrafast nonlinear optics to become the first scalable, high-bandwidth, and room-temperature platform that achieves strong coupling, opening a path to quantum computing, simulation, and light sources.

    

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