A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word laser is an anacronym that originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. The first laser was built in 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, based on theoretical work by Charles H. Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow.
Electro–optics is a branch of electrical engineering, electronic engineering, materials science, and material physics involving components, electronic devices such as lasers, laser diodes, LEDs, waveguides, etc. which operate by the propagation and interaction of light with various tailored materials. It is closely related to photonics, the branch of optics that involves the application of the generation of photons. It is not only concerned with the "electro–optic effect", since it deals with the interaction between the electromagnetic and the electrical states of materials.
A femtosecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10−15 or 1⁄1 000 000 000 000 000 of a second; that is, one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth, of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second as a second is to about 31.71 million years; a ray of light travels approximately 0.3 μm (micrometers) in 1 femtosecond, a distance comparable to the diameter of a virus. The first to make femtosecond measurements was the Egyptian Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999. Professor Zewail used lasers to measure the movement of particles at the femtosecond scale, thereby allowing chemical reactions to be observed for the first time.
Photonics is a branch of optics that involves the application of generation, detection, and manipulation of light in the form of photons through emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, and sensing. Photonics is closely related to quantum electronics, where quantum electronics deals with the theoretical part of it while photonics deal with its engineering applications. Though covering all light's technical applications over the whole spectrum, most photonic applications are in the range of visible and near-infrared light. The term photonics developed as an outgrowth of the first practical semiconductor light emitters invented in the early 1960s and optical fibers developed in the 1970s.
Mode locking is a technique in optics by which a laser can be made to produce pulses of light of extremely short duration, on the order of picoseconds (10−12 s) or femtoseconds (10−15 s). A laser operated in this way is sometimes referred to as a femtosecond laser, for example, in modern refractive surgery. The basis of the technique is to induce a fixed phase relationship between the longitudinal modes of the laser's resonant cavity. Constructive interference between these modes can cause the laser light to be produced as a train of pulses. The laser is then said to be "phase-locked" or "mode-locked".
Titanium-sapphire lasers (also known as Ti:sapphire lasers, Ti:Al2O3 lasers or Ti:sapphs) are tunable lasers which emit red and near-infrared light in the range from 650 to 1100 nanometers. These lasers are mainly used in scientific research because of their tunability and their ability to generate ultrashort pulses thanks to its broad light emission spectrum. Lasers based on Ti:sapphire were first constructed and invented in June 1982 by Peter Moulton at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
In physics and physical chemistry, time-resolved spectroscopy is the study of dynamic processes in materials or chemical compounds by means of spectroscopic techniques. Most often, processes are studied after the illumination of a material occurs, but in principle, the technique can be applied to any process that leads to a change in properties of a material. With the help of pulsed lasers, it is possible to study processes that occur on time scales as short as 10−16 seconds. All time-resolved spectra are suitable to be analyzed using the two-dimensional correlation method for a correlation map between the peaks.
In optics, the Pockels effect, or Pockels electro-optic effect, is a directionally-dependent linear variation in the refractive index of an optical medium that occurs in response to the application of an electric field. It is named after the German physicist Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels, who studied the effect in 1893. The non-linear counterpart, the Kerr effect, causes changes in the refractive index at a rate proportional to the square of the applied electric field. In optical media, the Pockels effect causes changes in birefringence that vary in proportion to the strength of the applied electric field.
In optics, an ultrashort pulse, also known as an ultrafast event, is an electromagnetic pulse whose time duration is of the order of a picosecond or less. Such pulses have a broadband optical spectrum, and can be created by mode-locked oscillators. Amplification of ultrashort pulses almost always requires the technique of chirped pulse amplification, in order to avoid damage to the gain medium of the amplifier.
A blue laser emits electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 400 and 500 nanometers, which the human eye sees in the visible spectrum as blue or violet.
In optics, a supercontinuum is formed when a collection of nonlinear processes act together upon a pump beam in order to cause severe spectral broadening of the original pump beam, for example using a microstructured optical fiber. The result is a smooth spectral continuum. There is no consensus on how much broadening constitutes a supercontinuum; however researchers have published work claiming as little as 60 nm of broadening as a supercontinuum. There is also no agreement on the spectral flatness required to define the bandwidth of the source, with authors using anything from 5 dB to 40 dB or more. In addition the term supercontinuum itself did not gain widespread acceptance until this century, with many authors using alternative phrases to describe their continua during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
The Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis is an award for given to those who have created applied laser technology and innovations on the application or generation of laser light. It is open to participants worldwide. It is biennially awarded by the German non-profit foundation Berthold Leibinger Stiftung. Three prizes are awarded worth 100,000 euros. The prize winners are selected from eight finalists that present their work person in a jury session. The jury is composed of international experts from different fields.
Raydiance Inc., headquartered in Petaluma, California, was the maker of the world's first software-controlled ultrashort pulse (USP) laser. The company was established in 2003 by Jeff Bullington and Peter Delfyett in Orlando, Florida as Ablation Industries, Inc. In 2004, Ablation Industries changed its corporate name to Raydiance, Inc. and recruited Barry Schuler, former CEO of America Online (AOL), as its new CEO and chairman of the board. Raydiance, Inc. commercialized a fiber-based USP technology first developed in the laboratories at the University of Central Florida's College of Optics. This effort was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Raydiance introduced its first product, a desktop-sized picosecond pulse laser, in 2007. Ultrashort pulse lasers, which generate pulses in the picosecond to femtosecond range, are being used for applications in the life sciences, micromachining, imaging and diagnostics, and defense sectors. The company ceased operations in July 2015. The assets of Raydiance Inc were acquired by Coherent Inc in August 2015.
The IEEE Photonics Award is a Technical Field Award established by the IEEE Board of Directors in 2002. This award is presented for outstanding achievements in photonics, including work relating to: light-generation, transmission, deflection, amplification and detection and the optical/electro-optical componentry and instrumentation used to accomplish these functions. Also included are storage technologies utilizing photonics to read or write data and optical display technologies. It also extends from energy generation/propagation, communications, information processing, storage and display, biomedical and medical uses of light and measurement applications.
Time-resolved two-photon photoelectron (2PPE) spectroscopy is a time-resolved spectroscopy technique which is used to study electronic structure and electronic excitations at surfaces. The technique utilizes femtosecond to picosecond laser pulses in order to first photoexcite an electron. After a time delay, the excited electron is photoemitted into a free electron state by a second pulse. The kinetic energy and the emission angle of the photoelectron are measured in an electron energy analyzer. To facilitate investigations on the population and relaxation pathways of the excitation, this measurement is performed at different time delays.
Lightwave Electronics Corporation was a developer and manufacturer of diode-pumped solid-state lasers, and was a significant contributor to the creation and maturation of this technology. Lightwave Electronics was a technology-focused company, with diverse markets, including science and micromachining. Inventors employed by Lightwave Electronics received 51 US patents, and Lightwave Electronics products were referenced by non-affiliated inventors in 91 US patents.
(James) Roy TaylorFREng is Professor of Ultrafast Physics and Technology at Imperial College London.
Semiconductor saturable-absorber mirrors (SESAMs) are a type of saturable absorber used in mode locking lasers.
Boris Nikolaevich Chichkov, born 1955 in Novokuznetsk is a German-Russian Physicist whose research focus is on the development of novel laser technologies and their applications in material processing, photonics, and biomedicine.
