(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-10-23)
Curtis, Jennifer; Raman, Chandra; Trebino, Rick
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes two breakthrough inventions in laser physics. The first, optical tweezers, allows scientist and engineers to use lasers like the tractor beams of Star Trek to manipulate everything from molecules to living cells. Optical tweezers have provided researchers with fingers in the microscopic world that can pull apart DNA, probe the mechanics of life, detect disease and study fundamental interactions in biology, physics, chemistry and engineering. The second breakthrough, chirped pulse amplification, enabled the construction of lasers of incredible power and precision. With the super-high power lasers came cutting-edge applications as diverse as attosecond time-resolved dynamics of atoms and molecules and laser eye surgery. In this public talk, Georgia Tech Professor Rick Trebino will give an overview of optical physics. Professors Jennifer Curtis and Chandra Raman will present a brief history of these discoveries and discuss their impacts on science and society, with an audience Q&A session afterwards.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-09-07)
Trebino, Rick
Measuring an event in time seems to require a shorter one. As a result, the development of a technique for measuring ultrashort laser pulses "the shortest events ever created” has been particularly difficult. We have, however, developed simple methods for fully characterizing these events, that is, for measuring a pulse's intensity and phase vs. time. One involves making an optical spectrogram of the pulse by using nonlinear optic. The mathematics involved is equivalent to the two-dimensional phase-retrieval problem, a problem that's solvable because the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra fails for polynomials of two variables. We call this method Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating (FROG), and it' s simple, rigorous, intuitive, and general. FROG has been used to measure pulses as short as 80 attoseconds (8×10-17s), and it has also measured the most complex ultrashort pulse ever generated. And we have recently developed simple methods (also with frivolous acronyms: SEA TADPOLE, MUD TADPOLE, and STRIPED FISH) for measuring the complete spatio-temporal field of an arbitrary laser pulse, making ultrashort laser pulses the best characterized form of light known to humankind.