Spatio-temporal-polarization control of ultrafast laser interactions

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Nanoscience and nanotechnology are evolving with the new physical laws encountered as the structures and devices we make become smaller. Quantum-level effects manifest in new ways to manipulate electrical, magnetic, optical, mechanical – virtually all – properties of materials in surprising but exceedingly useful ways. Optical physics and quantum optics have embodied these trends to push resolving power well below the classical diffraction limit in areas of near-field, confocal, plasmatronic and multi-photon microscopy, prodding an Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014 for super-resolution optical microscopy. Such tools are opening the frontiers of nanoscience by enabling the formation, interrogation and manipulation of nanostructures down to the size of single molecules while laser projection lithography has come to define the nanotechnology forefront for high-volume manufacturing of microelectronic chips with transistor gate widths of 10 nm – just a few atoms thick (TSMC, 2017).***In this race to shrink the world, our program is seeking to understand and harness the new optical phenomena found in nanostructures much smaller than the wavelength of light. Beginning in the domain of linear optics, novel types of optical materials with unusual photonic bandgap, metamaterial, or plasmatronic properties have been developed that reshape how light can propagate or reach below conventional diffraction limits with powerfully enhanced optical resolution. The advent of commercial laser systems that can deliver high power in extremely short duration pulses has accelerated the pace of studies in nonlinear optical interaction physics and underpinned the recent emergence of mainstream industrial femtosecond laser micromachining applications. Such high brightness light poses significant questions when propagating inside bulk transparent and nanostructured media. The short light pulse is ‘self' manipulated by the nonlinear response of the medium, while also receiving resonance feedback in the proximity of nanostructured media. Such nonlinear interactions define a new unexplored opportunity for manipulating the phase and absorption response that we aim to study and control with new spatio-temporal-polarization tools based on our advanced short-pulsed lasers.***Our program proposes various modes of amplitude, phase and polarization shifting to create novel beam shapes and patterns - non-diffracting (Bessel), vortex, ‘self-accelerating' – and harness advanced real-time characterization tools such that the nonlinear absorption, Kerr-effect, plasma response, phase explosion and shock physics can be followed in transparent media and eventually be controlled to drive open new manufacturing methods for photonics, biology and medical devices.