Ultrafast Laser Laboratory for Photonics Undergraduates

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The project incorporates an Ultrafast Laser Laboratory (ULL) into the existing Photonics B.S. degree program. The ULL adds a strong ultrafast laser component to the program's Laser Physics and Applications core course and allows the establishment of an elective entitled Advanced Photonics Lab Techniques, providing undergraduate photonics technologists with the experience necessary to help them confidently design, construct, operate, maintain, and characterize ultrafast solid-state laser systems. Within the past 5 years, lasers have been developed based on titanium-doped sapphire crystals that allow the generation of extremely short pulses of light; these pulses can in turn be used to study the time evolution of microscopic processes, including chemical reaction kinetics and charge-carrier propagation in semiconductor quantum well materials. The ability to create and detect light pulses as short as a few femtoseconds (femto = one-quadrillionth) is rapidly transforming scientific understanding of the microscopic world. Accordingly, photonics technologists and engineers who understand ultrafast laser systems and can assist in their implementation are needed by the research and academic communities. This Photonics program aims to prepare its graduates to fill that need. Until now, the school has lacked the state-of-the-art resources necessary to provide critical experimental learning experiences with ultrafast laser systems to its students. Now, rather than purchase an expensive commercial ultrafast laser for students to operate, faculty can teach students how to construct one themselves from off-the-shelf components. In the laboratory, students can also build a crucial characterization tool (an `autocorrelator`) needed to measure the duration of the pulses output by the laser they've set up and aligned. The experience gained in developing this laboratory and its accompanying documentation can assist other universities seeking to strengthen their undergraduate physics and optics programs.