ln the area around the Kamloops quarry of Canada Cernent Lafarge Ltd., the Permian Harper Ranch beds comprise a succession of structurally stacked, bedded carbonate. 84 new conodont collec­tions include 21 conodont taxa and are assigned to 5 faunas and 2 subfaunas which are dated as Late Wolfcampian (Late Sakmarian) through Late Leonardian. Sorne of the Harper Ranch conodonts are not known within autochthonous American sequences but are known from Japan and China, implying a western paleo-Pacific influence. Similarly, the range of some taxa, particularly Sweetognathus, are anomalous compared with North American sequences but are similar to Asialie records. Early Permian geographic separation from North America is favoured as an explanation, although divergent species concepts may also account for some discrepancies. The taxonomy of the stratigraphically important Neos­treptognathodus, Neogondolella and Sweetognathus is reviewed. A study of fauna, conodont biofacies, and carbonate lithofacies of the Harper Ranch beds indicate a progressive increase in water depth in the study area during the Early Permian.

A Tm3+:Ho3+-codoped free-space single-oscillator fiber laser is under investigation with special focus on the power scalability of emission wavelengths from 2.1 µm to 2.2 µm. Using a tunable diffraction grating, a 200-nm tunable laser source is built. Laser output powers above 10 W are delivered from 1990 nm up to 2190 nm, demonstrating the range for stable high-power laser operation. By replacing the diffraction grating by a highly reflective, narrow linewidth volume Bragg grating, power scaling is performed at 2.1 µm and is even enabled at a wavelength of 2.2 µm. Using a volume Bragg grating (VBG) at 2.1 µm, a slope efficiency of 49% is measured with an output power of 262 W. Using another VBG with a center wavelength of 2.2 µm, the fiber laser delivers a record power of 77 W with a slope efficiency of 29%.

Making available and accessing in a controlled manner optical modes with largely disparate properties in a given system constitutes a prime challenge for different applications. Here, we propose, realize, and optically characterize a high-Q polymeric wedge-like whispering-gallery-mode resonator coated with a thin silver layer that supports pure surface plasmon polariton modes, pure dielectric modes, and hybrid photonic–plasmonic modes with Q-factors larger than 1000 and modal volumes as small as only a few cubic micrometers. We demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally that all three distinct kinds of cavity eigenmodes can be efficiently excited in the infrared via evanescent coupling to a tapered fiber. Performing finite-element simulations and coupled-mode theory, we develop an experimental procedure based on mode filtering to unambiguously identify the resonances observed in fiber transmission spectra. By controlling both the position of the tapered fiber with respect to the resonator and the input laser polarization, we successfully demonstrate that dielectric, plasmonic, and hybrid modes can be selectively excited, allowing for an explicit classification of the distinct cavity eigenmodes. Experimental results are in excellent agreement with the simulations.

A mid-infrared Z n G e P 2 optical parametric oscillator pumped by a T m 3 + -doped fiber laser is reported, providing pulse energies of 230 µ J , pulse widths of 40 ns, and peak powers of ∼ 6 k W with excellent efficiency and beam quality. The pump source is an actively Q -switched single oscillator optimized to generate high pulse energies.