Random lasers are a type of lasers that lack typical resonator structures, offering benefits such as easy integration, low cost, and low spatial coherence. These features make them popular for speckle-free imaging and random number generation. However, due to their high threshold and phase instability, the production of picosecond random lasers has still been a challenge. In this work, we have developed three dyes incorporating polymer optical fibers doped with various scattering nanoparticles to produce short-pulsed random fiber lasers. Notably, stable picosecond random laser emission lasting 600 ps is observed at a low pump energy of 50 µJ, indicating the gain-switching mechanism. Population inversion and gain undergo an abrupt surge as the intensity of the continuously pumped light nears the threshold level. When the intensity of the continuously pumped light reaches a specific value, the number of inversion populations in the “scattering cavity” surpasses the threshold rapidly. Simulation results based on a model that considers power-dependent gain saturation confirmed the above phenomenon. This research helps expand the understanding of the dynamics behind random medium-stimulated emission in random lasers and opens up possibilities for mode locking in these systems.

模块化多电平换流器（MMC）已成为新型全固态特种高压电源的有效解决方案，对其进行轻量化设计以节约设备空间成本成为当前研究热点。MMC中限制功率密度提升的首要因素为子模块大尺寸电容，为降低MMC对子模块容值的需求，提高系统功率密度，提出一种改进型MMC（I-MMC）拓扑。应用隔离型开关电容变换器，实现上下桥臂一对子模块高频链互联。研究中相单元内上、下桥臂子模块对并联的高频链两侧采用同步控制，使子模块电容之间呈现开关电容特性，实现波动功率在电容之间的自由传递，进而消除相位相反的基频与3倍频波动分量。结合MMC运行调制比和功率因数分析基频与3倍频波动分量消除后子模块电容取值，完成模块化设计。所提方案可将子模块电容减小至常规MMC的1/4。仿真与实验结果验证了所提拓扑方案的正确性与有效性。

An 80-GHz DCO based on modified hybrid tuning banks is introduced in this paper. To achieve sub-MHz frequency resolution with reduced circuit complexity, the improved circuit topology replaces the conventional circuit topology with two binary-weighted SC cells, enabling eight SC-cell-based improved SC ladders to achieve the same fine-tuning steps as twelve SC-cell-based conventional SC ladders. To achieve lower phase noise and smaller chip size, the promoted binary-weighted digitally controlled transmission lines (DCTLs) are used to implement the coarse and medium tuning banks of the DCO. Compared to the conventional thermometer-coded DCTLs, control bits of the proposed DCTLs are reduced from 30 to 8, and the total length is reduced by 34.3% (from 122.76 to 80.66 μm). Fabricated in 40-nm CMOS, the DCO demonstrated in this work features a small fine-tuning step (483 kHz), a high oscillation frequency (79–85 GHz), and a smaller chip size (0.017 mm²). Compared to previous work, the modified DCO exhibits an excellent figure of merit with an area (FoM_A) of –198 dBc/Hz.

Breathing solitons, i.e., dynamic dissipative solitons with oscillating pulse shape and energy caused by different mechanisms of spatiotemporal instabilities, have received considerable interest from the aspects of nonlinear science and potential applications. However, by far, the study of breathing solitons is still limited within the time scale of hundreds of cavity round trips, which ignores the slow dynamics. To fill this lacuna, we theoretically investigate a new type of vector dissipative soliton breathing regime and experimentally demonstrate this concept using mode-locked fiber lasers, which arise from the desynchronization of orthogonal states of polarization (SOPs) in the form of complex oscillations of the phase difference between the states. The dynamic evolution of polarization states of the vector breathings solitons takes the form of a trajectory connecting two quasi-equilibrium orthogonal SOPs on the surface of the Poincaré sphere. The dwelling time near each state is on the scale of a tenth of a thousand cavity round trip times that equals the breathing period, which is up to 2 orders of magnitude longer than that for common breathers. The obtained results can reveal concepts in nonlinear science and may unlock approaches to the flexible manipulation of laser waveforms toward various applications in spectroscopy and metrology.