Effect of bandpass filtering on melodic contour identification by cochlear implant users

Melodic contour identification was measured in cochlear implant (CI) and normal-hearing (NH) subjects for piano samples processed by four bandpass filters: low (310-620 Hz), middle (620-2480 Hz), high (2480-4960 Hz), and full (310-4960 Hz). NH performance was near-perfect for all filter ranges and much higher than CI performance. The best mean CI performance was with the middle frequency range; performance was much better for some CI subjects with the middle rather than the full filter. These results suggest that acoustic filtering may reduce potential mismatches between fundamental frequencies and harmonic components thereby improving CI users' melodic pitch perception.     

Effects of speaking style on speech intelligibility for Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant users

Cochlear implant (CI) users' speech understanding may be influenced by different speaking styles. In this study, speech recognition was measured in Mandarin-speaking CI and normal-hearing (NH) subjects for sentences produced according to four styles: slow, normal, fast, and whispered. CI subjects were tested using their clinical processors; NH subjects were tested while listening to a four-channel CI simulation. Performance gradually worsened with increasing speaking rate and was much poorer with whispered speech. CI performance was generally similar to NH performance with the four-channel simulation. Results suggest that some speaking styles, especially whispering, may negatively affect Mandarin-speaking CI users' speech understanding.     

具线性退化特征场对角型方程组Goursat问题的奇性形成机制

For an inhomogeneous quasilinear hyperbolic system of diagonal form, under the assumptions that the system is linearly degenerate and the C^1 norm of the boundary data is bounded, we show that the mechanism of the formation of singularities of C^1 classical solution to the Goursat problem with C^1 compatibility conditions at the origin must be an ODE type. The similar result is also obtained for the weakly discontinuous solution with C^0 compatibility conditions at the origin.     

Luminescent properties of Dy doped SrMoO4 phosphor

Trivalent dysprosium ions (Dy³⁺) doped strontium molybdate (SrMoO₄) phosphors were synthesized by solid-state reaction and their photoluminescence (PL) properties were investigated. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analysis confirmed the formation of SrMoO₄:Dy³⁺. PL measurements indicated that the phosphor exhibited intense emission at 482, 490 (⁴F_9/2→⁶H_15/2) and 575 nm (⁴F_9/2→⁶H_13/2) under UV excitation. The effect of the doping concentration of Dy³⁺in SrMoO₄:Dy³⁺ on the PL was investigated in detail. Na⁺ ion was a good charge compensator for SrMoO₄:Dy³⁺.     

Multi-wavelength metal-dielectric nonpolarizing beam splitters in the near-infrared range

A 21-layer multi-wavelength metal-dielectric nonpolarizing cube beam splitter was designed by use of an optimization method and theoretically investigated in the near-infrared range. The angular dependence of the reflectance and differential phases induced by reflection and transmission were presented. The simulation results revealed that the non-polarizing effect could be achieved for both the amplitude and phase characteristics at 1310 and 1550 nm. The differences between the simulated and the target reflectance of 50% are less than 2% and differential phases are less than 5°in the range 1300–1320 nm and 1540–1550 nm for both p- and s-components.     

Fiber-optic curvature sensor with optimized sensitive zone

A novel fiber-optic sensor that can measure curvature directly has been developed previously. In this paper, the transduction of curvature to light intensity is described analytically by using the geometrical optics analysis. The mathematical model allows a quantitative optimization of the sensor without having to produce many sensors with slightly different combinations of parameters in order to accomplish a similar objective experimentally. The Monte Carlo simulation by ray tracing and an orthogonal matrix are used to optimize the fiber-optic sensor’s configuration. The results show that the depth of the sensitive zone and the number of teeth are two main parameters that affect the sensor’s sensitivity and the optimum number of teeth is 55, which is in agreement with the mathematical model.     

Properties of a vector soliton laser passively mode-locked by a fiber-based semiconductor saturable absorber operating in transmission

We experimentally demonstrate a passively mode-locked fiber laser employing a fiber-based semiconductor saturable absorber (SSA) operating in transmission. Polarization rotation locked vector solitons are observed in the laser. Due to the intrinsic dynamic feature of the laser, period-doubling of these vector solitons has also been observed. Furthermore, extra spectral sidebands are formed on the optical spectrum, caused by the energy exchange between the two orthogonal polarization components of the vector solitons. By careful reduction of the pump power together with fine adjustment to the cavity birefringence, period-one state can further be obtained. Additionally, the phase noise properties of the vector soliton fiber laser have also been characterized experimentally and analytically.     

High-frequency phase recovery of distorted wavefront and analysis on phase correction effect

By constructing a distorted wavefront with random phase screen, the correction process of distorted wavefront has been simulated, and the correction effect of deformable mirror has been simulated and analyzed with the method of high-pass filtering. The variations of correction effect and high-frequency phase distortion have been quantitatively analyzed. The results show that the beam quality of the corrected beam degrades obviously with the increase of high-frequency phase. In addition, a new method has been presented to recover the high-frequency phase of distorted wavefront according to the given intensity distribution and low-frequency phase in near field and the intensity distribution in far field. It shows that the method is very effective to recover the high-frequency phase of distorted wavefront.     

Surface plasmon tunneling through a touching gold nanocylinder array on a thin gold film

The optical property of a structure composed of a touching gold nanocylinder array on a thin gold film is investigated using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. It is discovered that the transmission behavior can be tuned by tuning the geometry of the structure. As the film thickness increases, the transmission mode associated with the localized surface plasmon resonance blue shifts accompanied with a decrease of magnitude and full width at half maximum, and a second transmission appear due to the interaction of the plasmons on the cylinder with their images induced on the film. The localized waveguide resonance diminishes but the second resonance peak is intensified and broadened noticeably with the separation of the cylinder array and film increase. The cylinder radius size influences the localized surface plasmon resonance mode obviously. These results may be helpful for the design of a novel optical device.