Lasers and Applied Physics
Lasers are important as diagnostic tools and in instruments whose use spans a spectrum from materials fabrication to medical applications. The underlying physics is applied to diverse areas such as advanced propulsion systems, X-ray generation, and understanding the properties of complex materials and fluids. This area includes laser technology and applications; X-ray lasers; flow field and combustion diagnostics; multiphoton processes and nonlinear optics; high-energy lasers; atomic and molecular spectroscopy; molecular dynamics; plasmadynamics; high field phenomena; controlled laser-driven molecular and acoustic processes; picosecond and subpicosecond sources;high-energy incoherent source development; advanced spacecraft propulsion; space plasma physics; active space experiments; electric discharge and radiation studies.
Faculty
- Craig Arnold ~ (Laser processing and transport in materials for applications in energy storage, photonics, bioengineering, and nanotechnology)
- Edgar Choueiri ~ (Space plasma physics, spacecraft propulsion, plasma dynamics, astronautics)
- Michael Littman ~ (Automatic controls, tunable laser design, and bio-mimic robotics. His principal research concerns the Terrestrial Planet Finder, a project involving design and control of a high contrast coronagraph.)
- Richard Miles ~ (Spectroscopy, non-linear optics, laser applications in fluid dynamics and combustion)
- Marlan Scully ~ (Quantum Engineering)
- Szymon Suckewer ~ (Spectroscopy, atomic processes, X-ray lasers, laser-matter interactions, application of lasers in biology)
