Richard James Lewis

Traditional practical work for higher education in STEM subjects is under pressure from rising student numbers and adesired increase in active learning. Investing in more buildings and staff is financially challenging, while stretching existing resources affects outcomes, health, and participation. A more pragmatic approach is to embrace a less instrumentalist view of practical work in physical spaces and instead adopt a critical post-humanist approach which mixes both humanity and technology to achieve a sum greater than the parts, not bound by the limits of either. We share the experiences of leading UK exponents of non-traditional laboratories in the four main categories of simulation, virtual laboratories, real-asynchronous, and real-synchronous activities, as well as experts in scaling digital education initiatives for university-wide adoption. We foreshadow opportunities, challenges and potential solutions to increasing the opportunity for active learning by students studying at traditional campuses, via the complementary addition of non-traditional practical work.

A fully fiberized, single-polarization, gain-switched diode-seeded fiber master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system is demonstrated delivering 28 ps pulses at variable repetition frequencies ranging from 53 MHz up to 858 MHz. An average signal output power of 200 W was achieved with good OSNR for all operating frequencies. A maximum pulse energy of 3.23 μJ at a repetition frequency of 53 MHz was achieved, corresponding to a pulse peak power of 107 kW. The extraction of higher pulse energy was limited primarily by the onset of nonlinear effects such as SRS which lead to compromised pulse quality at higher peak powers.

We report on the development of a high-resolution (<; 1 GHz at 1.0 THz), broadly-tunable (~0.5 - 3.0 THz) fiber MOPA-based terahertz spectrometer system. The flexibility and performance of this system will be demonstrated with gaseous (water vapor) and aqueous (water and solvated protein) samples with a view towards selectively and non-destructively probing functionally significant large-scale protein motions.

An integrated concept for post-acquisition spectrum analysis was developed for in-line (real-time) and off-line applications that preserves absolute spectral quantification; after the initializing parameter setup, only minimal user intervention is required. This spectral evaluation suite is composed of a sequence of tasks specifically addressing cosmic ray removal, background subtraction, and peak analysis and fitting, together with the treatment of two-dimensional charge-coupled device array data. One may use any of the individual steps on their own, or may exclude steps from the chain if so desired. For the background treatment, the canonical rolling-circle filter (RCF) algorithm was adopted, but it was coupled with a Savitzky–Golay filtering step on the locus-array generated from a single RCF pass. This novel only-two-parameter procedure vastly improves on the RCF's deficiency to overestimate the baseline level in spectra with broad peak features. The peak analysis routine developed here is an only-two-parameter (amplitude and position) fitting algorithm that relies on numerical line shape profiles rather than on analytical functions. The overall analysis chain was programmed in National Instrument's LabVIEW; this software allows for easy incorporation of this spectrum analysis suite into any LabVIEW-managed instrument control, data-acquisition environment, or both. The strength of the individual tasks and the integrated program sequence are demonstrated for the analysis of a wide range of (although not necessarily limited to) Raman spectra of varying complexity and exhibiting nonanalytical line profiles. In comparison to other analysis algorithms and functions, our new approach for background subtraction, peak analysis, and fitting returned vastly improved quantitative results, even for “hidden” details in the spectra, in particular, for nonanalytical line profiles. All software is available for download.

The Raman depolarization ratios for individual Q₁(J”) branch lines of all diatomic hydrogen isotopologues – H₂, HD, D₂, HT, DT, and T₂ – were measured, for all rotational levels with population larger than 1/100 relative to the Boltzmann maximum at room temperature. For these measurements, the experimental setup normally used for the monitoring of the tritiated hydrogen molecules at KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment was adapted to optimally control the excitation laser power and polarization, and to precisely define the Raman light collection geometry. The measured Raman depolarization values were compared to theoretical values, which are linked to polarizability tensor quantities. For this, the ‘raw data’ were corrected taking into account distinct aspects affecting Raman depolarization data, including (1) excitation polarization impurities; (2) extended Raman excitation volumes; and (3) Raman light collection over finite solid angles. Our corrected depolarization ratios of the hydrogen isotopologues agree with the theoretical values (based on ab initio quantum calculations by R.J. LeRoy, University of Waterloo, Canada) to better than 5% for nearly all of the measured Q₁(J”) lines, with 1σ confidence level. The results demonstrate that reliable, accurate Raman depolarization ratios can be extracted from experimental measurements, which may be substantially distorted by excitation polarization impurities and by geometrical effects. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this article, we address the notoriously difficult problem to quantitatively link measured Raman depolarization values to theoretical polarizability tensor quantities, since quantum calculations do not incorporate experimental parameters. For this, we introduce a numerical model to calculate, for realistic experimental configurations, effective Raman line strength functions, Φ, which find their way into depolarization ratios, ρ. The model is based on interlinked integrations over the angles in the light collection path and a finite Raman source volume along the excitation laser beam. The model deals also with the conditional aperture parameters, associated with more than one optical component in the light collection path. Finally, we also can take into account polarization aberrations introduced by the sample cell windows. The procedure was fully tested for Raman depolarization spectra of selected hydrogen isotopologues. Distinct aspects affecting Raman depolarization data were validated, namely: (1) excitation polarization impurities; (2) extended Raman excitation volumes; (3) Raman light collection over finite solid angles; and (4) polarization aberrations introduced by optics in the light collection path. The correction of the experimental measurement data for the aforementioned effects resulted in depolarization ratios for the Q₁(J " ) Raman lines of H₂ and T₂, which mostly differed by less than 5% from those obtained by quantum‐calculations. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We report a fully fiberized, single-polarization, gain-switched, diode-seeded fiber MOPA delivering 28ps pulses at a repetition frequency of 214MHz with 200W of average output power and up to 0.93μJ pulse energy.