"FOCUS: Frontiers in Optical Coherent and Ultrafast Science"

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FOCUS is a new Physics Frontiers Center devoted to Frontiers in OpticalCoherent and Ultrafast Science. The FOCUS mission is to provide national leadership in the areas of coherent control, ultrafast, and high field physics. The work of FOCUS will include three frontier "Major Research Components" in High Field Control; Ultrafast Control; and Quantum Control. FOCUS will extend the frontiers of its discipline: the production, control and utilization of light pulses shorter than one thousandth of one trillionth of a second; physics of ultrahigh intensity laser fields, exceeding ten billion trillion watts per square centimeter; coherent manipulation of molecular bonds and molecular motion; and the control of quantum mechanics in ultracold atoms and ions. The coherent field strengths under direct control will span 18 orders of magnitude, from ultra-relativistic laser-driven plasmas (TV/cm) to control fields in cooled ion traps (uV/cm). Much of the coherent control physics developed in one area is applicable toanother. Science and society depend on these novel and rapid advances in coherent and ultrafast optical science now as never before. The coherent and ultrafast optical physics developed by the FOCUS center will be at the forefront of some of the most ambitious and exciting advances in physics in the next two decades. Examples extend across thefields of matter-wave precision devices, gravitational wave detectors, x-ray free electron lasers, quantum encryption and computing, coherent control of chemistry, laser-driven particle acceleration, as well as others. This award is jointly funded by the Division of Physics and the Office of Multidiscipliary Activities in the MPS Directorate.