Ultrafast Laser Laboratory for Photonics Undergraduates

该项目将超快激光实验室（ULL）纳入现有的光子学学士学位课程。ULL在该项目的激光物理与应用核心课程中增加了一个强大的超快激光组件，并允许建立一个名为高级光子学实验室技术的选修课，为本科光子学技术人员提供必要的经验，帮助他们自信地设计、构建、操作、维护和表征超快固体激光系统。在过去的5年中，基于掺钛蓝宝石晶体的激光器已经开发出来，可以产生极短的光脉冲；这些脉冲可以反过来用于研究微观过程的时间演化，包括化学反应动力学和半导体量子阱材料中的载流子传播。创造和探测短至几飞秒（飞秒=千万亿分之一）的光脉冲的能力正在迅速改变对微观世界的科学理解。因此，研究和学术界需要了解超快激光系统并能协助其实施的光子学技术专家和工程师。这个光子学项目旨在为毕业生填补这一需求做好准备。到目前为止，该学院一直缺乏最先进的资源，无法为学生提供超高速激光系统的关键实验学习体验。现在，教师可以教学生如何用现成的组件自己构建一台超快激光器，而不是购买昂贵的商用超快激光器供学生操作。在实验室里，学生们还可以建立一个关键的表征工具（一个“自相关器”），用来测量他们设置和校准的激光器输出脉冲的持续时间。在开发该实验室及其附带文件中获得的经验可以帮助其他寻求加强其本科物理和光学课程的大学。

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.