For those of you who handed-in your abstracts in hard-copy, I
have tried to type them exactly as they were printed--sorry for typos.
Please email me with corrections.
In no particular order ...
Yiying Wu Sum Frequency Generation
-- a powerful tool in surface study.
Because of its surface specificity, SFG has proved himself a powerful
tool in surface study. This presentation will introduce its principle and
review some of its interesting application.
Cheng Cheng Su Stimulated Raman Scattering of
Femtosecond Laser Pulse.
I investigate stimulated raman scattering in pressurized gases, such
as H2, etc. It excited with 300-fs-duration pulses at
390-nm wavelengthand. Also, it excited with 0.1 mJ of energy.
I show that SRS-generation threshold and conversion efficiency are due
to the transient nature of SRS in femtosecond regime. I determine optimal
conditions for efficient generation in the broad spectral range 289-797
nm and show how self-phase modulation and white-light generation limit
the ultimate conversion efficiency.
Michael Shumway Description, Characterization,
and Uses of Microspheres.
Microspheres are small (diameter 10-500 microns) cavities with very
detailed resonance structures. Applications for these spheres range
from particle physics (trapping single atoms) to laser physics (creating
unique lasers). The advantage to using microshperes are their quality
factors which have been measured up to Q~1012. This presentation
will analyze microspheres and their important properties as well as discussing
the results of several groups which have created impressive laser sources
from these cavities.
Poul Bering Petersen The Ti:Safir oscillator:
femtosecond pulse creation and propagation.
The talk will include: the Ti:safir oscillator system, modelocking,
pulse
chirping and "unchirping" and the autocorrelator for measuring pulse
duration.
Steven Johnson Lasing Without Inversion
a short overview of LWI
techniques and perhaps a more detailed example of a specific system.
Igor Jovanovic: X-RAY GENERATION IN GASES AND
SOLIDS USING LASER PULSES
The use of ultrashort, high-intensity laser pulses
has enabled generation of extreme UV and soft X-rays by means of high harmonic
generation (HHG) in noble gases. In solids, XUV and X-rays have been generated
as a result of laser-plasma interactions. A potential exists for generation
of table-top laser X-ray sources with high spatial and spectral brightness,
which can be used to reveal important dynamical and structural information
in materials.
This talk should cover the basic mechanisms and
issues concerning X-ray generation in gases and solids and briefly address
possible applications of generated X-rays.
Henry Chong: Ultrashort X-ray Pulse Generation using
Lasers and Electron Beams
The desire to probe structural dynamics in materials on a short time-scale
following excitation has motivated the development of ultrashort x-ray
pulse sources. Work has been done to generate short pulses of x-rays
using right-angle Thomson scattering and work is currently in progress
to generate x-ray pulses using periodic magnetic structures at synchrotrons.
The physics underlying the operation of both sources will be discussed.
Dave Bacon: The manipulation of coherent quantum
information needed to construct a quantum computer represents an experimental
challenge which currently borders on the impossible. The major obsticle
in the construction of a quantum computer is the coupling of the computer
to its environment and the subsequent decoherence induced by this coupling.
Recently a procedure has emerged for avoiding this decoherence process
by encoded over a "decoherence-free subspace" (DFS). In this talk,
I will introduce a general decoherence-free theory and connect this theory
to real world examples. In particular, I will demonstrate how electromagnetically
induced transparency (EIT) is a simple one dimensional DFS and propose
an extension of EIT which can lead to a full quantum bit (a two dimensional
DFS). Further, I will discuss how the collective damping of a large number
of two-level atoms by an electromagnetic field mode which is response for
the process of superradiance also leads to a DFS.
Colin McCormick: Properties of Optical Solitons
I will investigate the properties of optical solitons (solutions of
the Korteweg-de Vries equation) including their stability in time and during
mutual collisions. With this mathematical basis I will describe the
details of a soliton laser that can be used to generate ultra-short (tens
of fs) pulses in the infrared. If time permits I will also talk about
soliton propagation in optical fibers and/or soliton solutions to the non-linear
Schroedinger equation.
Damon Brown: Non-Linear Dynamics and Chaos in
Optical Systems