This work has been developed at the Department of Physics of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, with the participation of Ignacio Moreno.
It demonstrates a polarization gating method based on the experimentally measured Mueller matrices. Polarization gating refers to a collection of imaging methods based on the combination of different controlled polarization channels. Here, first the Mueller matrix is characterized, and then employed to evaluate different polarization channels. The methodology is applied on different biological samples.
We were very pleased that Prof. Kristiaan Neyts, Head of the Liquid Crystals and Photonics Group from the Ghent University, accepted our invitation to come to Elche and impart a seminar on liquid crystals in the frame of the 3rd TECNIT PhD Workshop of our university, held in March 29th.
Ignacio Moreno became the President of SEDOPTICAÂ –Â the Spanish Society of Optics. After three years as Vicepresident, he now becomes the President of the society for the period of the next three years.
SEDOPTICA joins researchers, academia and professionals of the area of Optics & Photonics in Spain.
During this period SEDOPTICA will reach its 50th anniversary in 2018.
We published a new paper in Journal of Optics entitled Solc filters in a reflective geometry. It presents the realization of  birefringent Solc type filter in a reflective geometry.
This geometry reduces by half the number of required retarders, ensures the same spectral retardance function in pairs of retarders. The key element is a quarter-wave Fresnel rhomb located in between the set of retarders and a mirror. We present two cases, one with multiple-order quartz retarders, and a second one that uses two liquid-crystal retarders, this last one being therefore tunable.
This is the second paper in the PhD Thesis of Abdelgahfour Messaaddi, and it has been done in collboration with our friend Asticio Vargas form Universidad de La Frontera , Temuco (Chile) and our friend Noureddine Bennis and his coworkers at the Military University of Technology, Warsaw (Poland).
RSEF is the Royal Spanish Society of Physics. With more than 4000 members, it is organized in different thematic divisions and specialized groups, as well as in local sections. The Local Section of Alicante started few years ago, and MarÃa del Mar has been active as a member of the Board. Now a new board has been elected and she has become President of the local section. The main objectives of the new board is promoting Physics in our local area, through outreach activities and seminars, and to foster the collaboration with High Schools, including activities to attract girls to STEM.
A new paper entitled Arithmetics with q-plates was published in Applied Optics where we show the capability to form various q-plate equivalent systems using combinations of commercially available q-plates. We show operations like changing the sign of the q-value, or the addition and subtraction of q -plates. These operations only require simple combinations of q-plates and half-wave plates.
This work was developed in collaboration with our friends at San Diego State University.
We published a new paper in the journal Optica & Lasers in Engineering about a digital microscope with programmable Fourier transform filtering. The paper is entitled Microscope system with on axis programmable Fourier transform filtering and was developed by Jose Luis MartÃnez, Pascuala Garcia and Ignacio Moreno.
In this work we demostrate such opto-digital filtering on-axis, taking advantage of phase and polarization modulation of a LCOS-display. We use a Hamamatsu SLM,free of flickering, which can be tuned to fully eliminate the zero order component of the encoded diffractive filter, therefore making use of the full space-bandwidth. The system is  demonstrated by implementing different optical processing operations based on phase-only gratings such as phase-contrast, band-pass filtering, or additive and subtractive imaging. A simple Differential Interference Contrast(DIC) imaging is also obtained changing to a polarization modulation scheme.
This paper describes the exhibition with the same name that was developed to commemorate the International Year of Light, describing the life and work of 12 women that made relevant contributions to the science of light.
A new paper has been published in Applied Optics entitled New key based on tilted lenses for optical encryption, that describes a novel concept based on tilted spherical lenses for optical encryption using Lohmann’s type I systems. An experiment is presented, considering a hybrid encryption/decryption process where the image is numerically encrypted but optically decrypted.
This work was developed by our friends at the University of Valencia and we contributed by developing a experimental system that demonstrates the procedure.
In this work we propose the use of twisted-nematic liquid-crystal spatial light modulators (TN-LC-SLM) as a useful tool for training students in the manipulation of light beams with phase-only masks. In particular, we focus the work on the realization of phase-only gratings and phase-only spiral phases for the generation of vortex beams, beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM). We include different examples, including a optimal triplicator phase grating, and its combination with spiral phase patterns and lens functions to generate a variety of vortex beams.
A new paper has been published in Journal of Biomedical Optics entitled Polarization gating based on Mueller matrices.
