Acquisition of a Tunable, Ultrafast Laser Facility for Studies in Materials Science and Chemistry

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0079774DickinsonThis award is for the acquisition of a tunable, ultrafast laser facility to extend existing capabilities in materials physics and chemistry research at Washington State University (WSU). The instrumentation will be used by eight productive faculty from WSU, their students, and their postdoctoral fellows who are all working in areas of advanced materials research. The instrument will also be used by one additional researcher from the University of Idaho. The new instrument provides a complete, versatile light source that ranges in pulse duration from picoseconds down to 100 femtoseconds over a wavelength range from 250 nanometer (5 electron volts) to 3 mm (0.4 electron volts). These wide variations in photon energy and pulse width are of considerable interest for materials research because it allows scientists to probe both ground and excited electronic structure of many modern and model materials. Research benefiting from this instrumentation includes efforts to understand laser desorption and ablation as applied to thin-film synthesis and chemical analysis, laser damage and surface modification, fundamental laser-surface interactions, nonlinear spectroscopic studies, and nonlinear propagation in waveguides, cavities, and bulk materials, ultrafast all-optical switching in polymer optical fibers, and theoretical studies that relate directly to the experimental efforts.This award is for the acquisition of a tunable, ultrafast laser facility to extend existing capabilities in materials physics and chemistry research at the Washington State University. The instrumentation will be used by eight productive at WSU, their students, and their postdoctoral fellows who are working in areas of advanced materials research. A scientist from the University of Idaho will also use the equipment. The new instrument will provide a complete, versatile light source that ranges in pulse duration from a 80 picoseconds down to 100 femtoseconds over a spectral range from the ultraviolet to the infrared. Research benefiting from this instrumentation includes efforts to understand laser desorption and ablation as applied to thin-film synthesis and chemical analysis, laser damage and surface modification, fundamental laser-surface interactions, nonlinear spectroscopic studies, and nonlinear propagation in waveguides, cavities, and bulk materials, ultrafast all-optical switching in polymer optical fibers, and theoretical studies that relate directly to these experimental efforts.