If you are a grad student applying to Princeton and are interested in Professor Prucnal's lab, please check off the box "Optics and Photonics" on your application form, and also mention his name in your essay, so that we are sure to see your application!
Ultrafast optics opens up an access to a sub-picosecond time scale, which is way beyond the capabilities of electronics.
Using ultrafast processes in optical fibers we invent new applications for high speed optical communications. Our
research includes applications for physical (optical) layer network security, scalable and survivable optical networks based on optical CDMA, high-speed data transmission, interfacing with existent telecommunication technologies, all-optical signal processing, and signal detection. The technologies that we use span from semiconductor optical amplifiers and high-speed electronics to picosecond mode-locked fiber lasers, fiber Bragg gratings, nonlinear fibers, and utrafast nonlinear optical switches.