Click On The Links Below:

>>Dr. Matt's Homepage
>>Research
>>Group Members
>>Publications
>>Course Information
>>Curriculum Vitae

Cool Links:

>>Society of Physics Students
>>Department of Physics
>>San Diego State University
>>APS Division of Laser Science

Our research is in the area of ultrafast laser physics and coherent quantum control.

The ultrafast laser is a special type of laser that can produce pulses less than 100 picoseconds (10^-12 seconds). These lasers have important applications in medicine, micromachining, optical communications, spectroscopy, and anything else that requires studying physics at extremely short time scales or extremely high powers. Also, there is considerable research in constructing, improving, and measuring the characteristics of ultrashort lasers.

Conventional wisdom says that there are two mantras of technology: faster and smaller. However these days scientists are combining the two mantras: shorter. Not short like a few seconds, but short as in a millionth billionth of a second short. Using the principle of superposition, the wider the bandwidth a laser can generate the shorter each pulse it can produce, so to make ultrashort pulses you need a large spectrum. We have custom built a 20 femtosecond laser system using Titanium doped Sapphire as our gain medium.

We have several projects underway:

Josh Thornes is studying the effects of programmable spatial light modulation for ultrashort laser pulses. This is the optical analogy to the function generators used in electronics. Once this system has been implemented we can study how different pulse shapes can affect matter and also use it to study matter.

Charles Barnes is studying the effects of ultrashort ablation for use in biological tissues and particularly for use in eye surgery. This is extremely important because ultrashort pulses are known to make extremely precise cuts with minimum thermal damage.

Andy Carson will study the ability of femtosecond lasers to create waveguide structures in optical materials. This technology is extremely useful in optical communications where alignment issues are critical.

Phillip Poon will be studying blue light induced red absorption. An effect which occurs in non-linear materials at high energies. It may lead to applications in holographic data storage as well as advances in quantum optics.

Here's a picture of former students, Steve Jensen and Catherine De Marco working on our 20 femtosecond Ti:Sapphire Ultrafast Laser.

This is a partial picture of our oscillator cavity. In the center is the Titanium doped Sapphire crystal. As you can see there is a green laser beam entering the cavity, this is the pump beam which is creating the population inversion in our crystal.

An autocorrelation of a femtosecond laser. There are three accepted ways to measure pulses: autocorrelation, spectral phase interferometry for direct electric field reconstruction, and frequency resolved optical gating.