Power It
Resume:
Curriculum vitae
Oussama MHIBIK
Personal data
Date of birth: 26th April 1982 (29 years old)
Place of birth: Medenine (Tunisia)
Nationality: Tunisian
Current profes- Laboratoire “Aimé Cotton”
sional address: Campus d’Orsay,
91 400 Orsay, France
Phone: 003**-**-**-**-**
Fax: 003**-**-**-**-**
E-mail: *******.******@*-****.**
Personal address: 39 rue Lafontaine, Apt. G227
92 160 Antony, France
Phone: 003**-**-**-**-**
Current position
Since October 1st, 2008, PhD-student at Aimé Cotton laboratory (CNRS - University Paris-Sud,
France).
Topics: Study and development of narrow linewidth, visible, continuous-wave solid state laser
sources: an all-solid state alternative to dye lasers.
Education
• 2008-2011. PhD student in Physics: Paris-Sud University (France)
• 2006-2008. Master degree in nanosciences, lasers, and materials: Paris-Nord University
(France)
• 2005-2006. Licence of physics and chemistry : Paris-Nord University (France)
• 2004-2005. Licence of mathematics: Paris-Nord University (France)
• 2002-2004. D.E.U.G Sciences and technologies: Paris-Nord University (France)
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Teaching activities
Stipendiary lecturer (2008-2011): (Polytech’Paris-Sud (France))
• 2008-2009: lasers physics tutorial: 15 h
Laboratory work in lasers physics: 32 h
Laboratory work in instrumental optics: 32 h
• 2009-2010: Laboratory work in lasers physics: 32 h
Laboratory work in instrumental optics: 32 h
• 2010-2011: Laboratory work in lasers physics: 32 h
Laboratory work in instrumental optics: 40 h
Tutor in physics (January 2007-June 2007):Paris-Nord University (France)
Research activities
Research internship (Paris-Nord University, France) (June 2006-July 2006)
• Topics: Study of ferromagnetic thin layers by ferromagnetic resonance and Brillouin scattering.
• Advisor: Fatih ZIGHEM (PhD-student).
• Location: Laboratoire des Propriétés Mécaniques et Thermodynamique des Matériaux (LPMTM)
(UPR9001-CNRS, Paris-Nord University, France)
In the case of MRAM (Magnetic Random Memory Access) it is possible to store information
using the direction of magnetization. The reading is done by a simple resistance measurement
and gives two quite distinct values according to the orientation of the magnetization compared to
a reference. The writing can be done either with magnetic field or with a bias current in spin.
Our study has related to ferromagnetic materials having a strong spin polarization. It is the case
of Co2 MnGe. This Heusler alloy can be useful as an electrode in the MRAM. This internship
enabled me to get familiar with experimental techniques, in particular Brillouin spectroscopy and
ferromagnetic resonance. It was also an opportunity for me to discover "the life" of a research
laboratory and to strengthen my will to make a career in research.
Research internship (Paris-Nord University, France) (March 2008-July 2008)
• Topics: Synthesis of magnetic nanobiosensors
• Advisor: Laurence Motte (Professor)
• Location: Laboratoire de Biophysique Moléculaire, Cellulaire et Tissulaire (BioMoCeTi) (UMR
7033-CNRS, Paris-Nord University, France)
Due to their particular properties related to their size, their high surface/volume ratio and their
great reactivity, the nanoparticules find applications in many industrial fields, such as catalysis,
ceramics and the composite materials, cosmetic, and agrobusiness industry.
For twenty years, the magnetic nanoparticules have also experienced a strong development in
the biomedical field. In particular the use of magnetic colloidal dispersions like agents of contrast
in Imaging by Magnetic resonance (MRI) or the treatment of a certain number of cancers by
thermolysis via the application of an alternate magnetic field, seems to be the most widespread
applications. Thus, for the imaging, their accumulation in the tumor to be irradiated allows
a better visualization of this one by MRI, which increases the precision of the treatment. For
hyperthermia, the nano-objects are used as local sources of heat: the application of an alternate
magnetic field generates an increase in temperature within the tumor, which then sensitizes it with
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any attack. The effectiveness of chemotherapy or radiotherapy is thus improved without having to
increase the amount, i.e without increasing the side-effects. The use of the magnetic nanoparticles
as biomarkers has been considered only for a few years. This is related to the emergence of novel
methods of magnetic detection. It is in this context that this internship was conceived. The
Magnisense company develops a new technology of detection, based on the magnetic, specific
nonlinear answer of the ferromagnetic or superparamagnetic particles.
This internship presented a double aspect:
• A research and development aspect: it is the dominating part of the internship. It relies on
the synthesis of superparamagnetic nanoparticles, primarily of oxides, by chemical way. It
is a question in particular of varying the size, shapes or composition of materials, in order to
modulate their magnetic responses. The long-term objective is to work out a kind of "library"
of the magnetic signatures. This part of the internship took place within the Bionanomatériaux
group under the supervision of Pr. Laurence Motte.
• An industrial aspect: it consists in an initiation with the culture of company, by the means of
the many meetings with professionals of biotechnological industry, the participation in meetings
of companies and conferences as well as the participation in the drafting and application for
patent.
PhD Thesis (Started in October 2008 - Defense planned for September 2011)
• Topics: Study and development of narrow linewidth, visible, continuous-wave solid state laser
sources: an all-solid-state alternative to dye lasers
• Advisor: Thesis carried out under the direction of Fabien BRETENAKER (Senior researcher)
• Location: Aimé Cotton laboratory
Rare-earth ions embedded in a variety of solid state host materials, are in the focus of many
active optical applications (laser crystals, amplifying waveguides). Recently, due to their long
coherence dephasing time, they take a central part in quantum information processing. However,
among the possible rare earths, those which exhibit the longest hyperfine coherence lifetimes (i.
e., the longest possible storage times) and the longest optical coherence lifetimes (i. e., the longest
available durations for pulse sequences aiming at their coherent manipulation) are europium and
praseodymium. For example, Eu3+ has been shown to exhibit a dephasing time of 2.6 ms for
its optical transition at 580 nm, leading to optical homogeneous linewidths as narrow as 122 Hz.
Similarly, Pr3+ has been shown to exhibit homogeneous linewidths of the order of 1 kHz for its
optical transition at 606 nm. However, the coherent manipulation of optical coherences exhibiting
lifetimes in the ms range relies on the use of a laser source with a linewidth in the kHz range over
durations of the order or longer than 1 ms. However, in the orange part of the visible spectrum, dye
lasers are the only available sources which meet this specification. Such systems are cumbersome
and difficult to stabilize due to the high frequency frequency noise induced by the fast fluctuations
of the dye jet thickness. The main aim of this thesis was the development of an all-solid-state laser
sources as alternative to dye lasers. Toward this goal we have investigated several all-solid-state
schemes:
Singly Resonant Optical Parametric Oscillator (SROPO)
In a previous work, we successfully used the recently developed periodically poled near stoi-
chiometric LiTaO3 (PPSLT) to build a cw-SROPO emitting 100 mW in the red and pumped by a
commercial green laser. However, the output power of this system was limited by its high threshold
and by the onset of thermal effects in the nonlinear crystal owing to the large intracavity power at
a visible wavelength. To overcome thes limitation, we built a singly resonant optical parametric
oscillator OPO emitting in the near IR and intracavity frequency doubling the idler. The SROPO
is pumped at 532 nm by a 10 W single-frequency VERDI laser and is based on a 30-mm long
MgO-doped periodically poled stoichiometric lithium tantalate (PPSLT) crystal (deff =11 pm/V)
manufactured and coated by HC Photonics. This crystal contains a single grating with a period
of 7.97 µm, designed to lead to quasi-phasematching conditions for an idler wavelength in the
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1200-1400 nm range. The crystal is anti-reflection coated for the pump, the signal, and the idler.
The OPO cavity is a 1.15-m long ring cavity and consists in four mirrors. The two mirrors
sandwiching the nonlinear crystal have a 150 mm radius of curvature. The two other mirrors are
planar. This cavity is resonant for the idler wavelength only. The estimated waist of the idler
beam at the middle of the PPSLT crystal is 37 µm. The pump beam is focused to a 53 µm waist
inside the PPSLT crystal. All mirrors are designed to exhibit a reflectivity larger than 99.8%
between 1.2 mm and 1.4 mm and a transmission larger than 95% at 532 nm and between 850
nm and 950 nm. In order to generate the second harmonic of the resonating idler, a 25-mm long
BBO crystal is inserted between the two plane mirrors, i. e., at the second waist of the cavity.
It is antireflection coated for the idler and the second harmonic wavelengths. A 1.5-mm thick
etalon with a finesse F = 3 is also inserted in this leg of the cavity. By varying the PPSLT crystal
temperature from 80 C to 200 C, the signal (idler) wavelength can be tuned anywhere between
975 and 876 nm (1170 and 1355 nm). By progressively adjusting the orientation of the BBO
crystal with a 2 total excursion, the second harmonic generated wavelength can thus be tuned
between 585 and 678 nm. A power of 300 mW at 606 nm for a pump power of 6.5 W is available
from the frequency-doubled SROPO.
In order to take advantage of the small bandwidth of the OPO frequency fluctuations, we first
stabilized its frequency on the side of the transmission fringe of a medium finesse Fabry-Perot
(FP) etalon . This simple stabilization scheme lead to a stability of a few kilohertz with respect
to the locking etalon. However, in this scheme, the signal transmitted by the FP cavity was not
only sensitive to frequency fluctuations but also to any change in the source power, which was
misinterpreted as a frequency fluctuation. To overcome this limitation, the Pound-Drever-Hall
(PDH) stabilization technique using a high finesse stable FP cavity seems to be the best alternative,
at least, for two reasons: i) at resonance with the reference cavity, the lock signal is equal to zero,
so that any laser power fluctuations will not perturbate the lock; ii) the response will not be limited
by the cavity time storage of light; this allows the use of very high finesse FP cavity. Using this
technique we demonstrate that the system remains locked to the reference during several tens of
minutes and is insensitive to power fluctuations. The lock is only limited by the mode hoping of
the SRO as well as the reference thermal expansion. By measuring the source frequency power
spectral density (PSD) versus the instantaneous frequency from a 1-s-long recording of the error
signal. The standard deviation measured from the PSD is about 700 Hz.
Collaborations:
Laboratory of condensed matter chemistry of Paris (France)
ONERA (France)
Continuous-wave Diode-pumped solid state Orange Laser
Pr3+ -doped materials offer a large range of available laser transitions in the visible spectrum
ranging from blue to red. The main difficulty with such a laser is the pumping scheme, since the
absorption transitions of Pr3+ lies in the blue between 440 and 480 nm. The recent developments
of high power blue laser diodes emitting around 445 nm enable nowadays the pumping of Pr-doped
lasers in compact setups. Triggered by the applications for display, most of the laser transitions
that were investigated concern the green emission around 520 nm and the red emission around 640
nm in various fluoride matrices. However, the orange laser emission on the 3 P0 3 H6 transition
of Pr3+ around 600 nm may be of a particular interest since there is a lack of laser sources
in this wavelength range. Indeed, there is no laser diode emitting at these wavelengths and
the main available sources are dye lasers. An orange diode-pumped Pr-doped laser would then
offer a compact and efficient all-solid-state alternative to these heavy systems. We successfully
demonstrated the realization of the first diode pumped Pr:BaY2 F8 laser emitting at 607 nm. The
pump laser source consists of a commercially available spatially multimode GaN laser diode. At
maximum current, it provides 1 W with an emission centered at 444 nm and a spectral total width
at -10 dB of 2 nm. This beam is linearly polarized in the direction parallel to the junction. The laser
cavity is a quasi-concentric cavity composed of two meniscus mirrors with a radius of curvature
of 50 mm. The input mirror is highly transmittive for the pump wavelength (T>95% @ 444 nm)
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and highly reflective at the laser line (R>99.9% @ 607 nm). Single mode operation was obtained
by inserting a Fabry-Perot etalon inside the cavity. 100 mW of orange power are available from
the system (50 mW in single mode operation). This first realization of a diode-pumped Pr-doped
laser emitting in the orange opens the possibility to build compact and efficient laser sources and
fill the gap in this spectrum range where no laser diode is available.
Collaborations:
Laboratory of condensed matter chemistry of Paris (France)
Pisa University (Italy)
Skills
Languages
Arabic (native speaker);
English (fluent);
French (fluent);
some basis of German.
IT
Data analyzing with Matlab, Origin, Excel;
Word processing using LateX, MS Word;
Programming and computing in the following environments: C, Pascal, Labview Matlab, Mathe-
matica, Mapple.
Scientific communications
Articles published in international journals (refereed)
[P1] "Stimulated Raman scattering in an optical parametric oscillator based on periodically poled
MgO-doped stoichiometric LiTaO3 ",
Thu-Hien My, Olivier Robin, Oussama Mhibik, Cyril Drag et Fabien Bretenaker,
Optics Express 17, 5912 (2009).
[P2] "Frequency stabilization at the kilohertz level of a continuous intracavity frequency doubled
singly resonant optical parametric oscillator",
Oussama Mhibik, Thu-Hien My, David Pabœuf, Fabien Bretenaker et Cyril Drag,
Optics Letters 35, 2364-2366 (2010).
[P3] "Diode-pumped Pr:BaY2 F8 continuous-wave orange laser",
David Pabœuf, Oussama Mhibik, Fabien Bretenaker, Philippe Goldner, Daniela Parisi et
Mauro Tonelli,
Optics Letters 36, 280-282 (2011).
[P4] "Sub-kHz level stabilization of an intracavity doubled continuous wave optical parametric
oscillator using Pound-Drever-Hall scheme",
Oussama Mhibik, David Pabœuf, Cyril Drag et Fabien Bretenaker,
Optics Express submitted (2011).
Meetings and Conferences
[C1] "Visible Optical Parametric Oscillators for Application to Quantum Memories: an All
Solid-State Alternative to CW Dye Lasers",
Thu-Hien My, Oussama Mhibik, Cyril Drag et Fabien Bretenaker
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Metamaterials and their Applications: Hyderabad, India (2008),
invited conference.
[C2] "Single frequency and tunable operation of a continuous intracavity frequency doubled singly
resonant optical parametric oscillator",
Thu-Hien My, Oussama Mhibik, Cyril Drag et Fabien Bretenaker,
Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO): Baltimore, USA (2009),
Oral.
[C3] "Tunable operation of a continuous intracavity frequency doubled singly resonant optical
parametric oscillator",
Thu-Hien My, Oussama Mhibik, Cyril Drag et Fabien Bretenaker,
Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO): Munich, Germany (2009),
Oral.
[C4] "Optical parametric Oscillator with a long coherence length",
Oussama Mhibik, Thu-Hien My, Cyril Drag et Fabien Bretenaker,
JNCO: Lyon, France (2009),
Invited conference.
[C5] "Narrow linwidth tunable, visible parametric sources",
Oussama Mhibik, Tu-Hien My, David Pabœuf, Cyril Drag et Fabien Bretenaker,
Colloque Alain Boussy: Orsay, France (2010),
Poster.
[C6] "CW Visible intracavity frequency-doubled singly resonant optical parametric oscillator
stabilized at the kHz level",
Oussama Mhibik, Thu-Hien My, David Pabœuf, Cyril Drag et Fabien Bretenaker,
PAMO: Orsay, France (2010),
Poster.
[C7] "Continuous intracavity frequency doubled singly resonant optical parametric oscillator
frequency-stabilized at the kHz level",
Oussama Mhibik, David Pabœuf, Cyril Drag et Fabien Bretenaker,
EUROPHOTON: Hamburg, Germany (2010),
Poster.
[C8] "Continuous-wave Diode-pumped Pr3+ :BaY2 F8 Orange Laser",
David Pabœuf, Oussama Mhibik, Fabien Bretenaker, Philippe Goldner, Daniela Parisi, and
Mauro Tonelli,
Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO): Baltimore, USA (2011),
Oral.
[C9] "Single-Frequency Continuous-wave Diode-pumped Pr3+ :BaY2 F8 Orange Laser",
David Pabœuf, Oussama Mhibik, Fabien Bretenaker, Philippe Goldner, Daniela Parisi, and
Mauro Tonelli,
Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO): Munich, Germany (2011),
Oral.
[C10] "The kHz Level Stabilization of an Intracavity Doubled Continuous Wave Optical Parametric
Oscillator Using Pound-Drever-Hall Scheme",
Oussama Mhibik, David Pabœuf, Fabien Bretenaker et Cyril Darg,
Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO): Munich, Germany (2011),
Poster.
[C11] "Orange Emitting Diode-pumped Pr3+ :BaY2 F8 Laser",
David Pabœuf, Oussama Mhibik, Fabien Bretenaker, Philippe Goldner, Daniela Parisi, and
Mauro Tonelli,
International Conference on Luminescence: Michigan, USA (2011),
Oral.
[C12] "Sub-kHz Level Stabilization of an Intracavity Doubled Continuous Wave Optical Parametric
Oscillator Using Pound-Drever-Hall Scheme",
Oussama Mhibik, David Pabœuf, Fabien Bretenaker et Cyril Darg,
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Optics Marseille: Marseille, France (2011),
Poster.
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