The Optics Blog

Summer School of Ultrafast Laser Science & Applications in Menorca (spain)

2012-02-02T04:05:00.000-08:00

Between the 10. - 15. June a summer school of ultrafast laser sience and applications is hold in Menorca (Spain). In total there will be 28 hours of lectures about intense short laser technology, attosience, femtochemistry, material processing and biomedecine. The summer school is promoted by the Spanish network of ultrashort ultraintense lasers "Consolider-Ingenio 2010: SAUUL" and mainly organized by CPLU and the optic group of the University of Salamanca.

Registration is now open until 31th March 2012: click here

Have fun (and enjoy the beach ;) )!

CLEO 2009 Highlights

2012-01-25T07:24:00.000-08:00

Actually, I was looking for something else but found suddenly this video about CLEO 2009. Very nice, enjoy!

Fast Electrically Focus Tunable Lens

2011-12-27T09:32:00.000-08:00

When you are reading this post, when you are looking around, your eyes will automatically focus on the spot by reshaping our eye lens. With glass lenses as used in optics, you can achieve that only with moving a lens-system back and forward.

Optotune has introduced now a commercial tunable lens which reshapes its surface and allows continuously focusing between 20mm to 120mm by an external voltage. In the manual version you can even go from -40mm to 40mm, so from concave to convex!

This could find applications in material processing, ophthalmology or microscopy. For further applications have a look at their application homepage

Interesting is also the microscopy application:

Have fun!

Wavelength Conversion Calculator

2011-12-08T07:38:00.000-08:00

APE (standing for Angewandte Physik & Elektronik GmbH, a german company in Berlin) has a nice small (and free) wavelength converter on their homepage. It allows you to directly calculate the sum frequency and difference frequency generation, the wavelengths relations in an optical parameteric oscillator (OPO) as well as in coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering (CARS) spectroscopy. Furtermore, the conversion between wavelength, wavenumber, and frequency as well as different characterizations of pulses (dispersion) can be calculated.

The calculator page is in english and very userfriendly. Enjoy.

Prism Awards 2011

2011-11-18T04:13:00.000-08:00

The finalists for the prism awards for photonic innovations by the SPIE has been anounced:

Finalists Prism Awards

Take the time to look at the finalists in the 9 different categories. The awards will be presented at the next SPIE Photonics West in January.

Video Showing the Inside of a Ti:Sa Laser

2011-10-21T04:02:00.000-07:00

I was quite surprised to find such a video showing in detail a titanium saphire laser from a company. Let's see how long it stays at youtube ;) .

Have fun watching it!

SWAMP OPTICS... & lectures

2011-09-29T04:10:00.000-07:00

The ones of you working in the field of ultrafast lasers know what I mean with Swamp Optics, for the other ones it is a company for ultrashor laser pulse measurements. SWAMP Optics was founded by Rick Trebino, the inventor of FROG and GRENOUILLE (which is french and means frog). As you imagine, FROG and GRENOUILLE stands for some types of pulse measurement devices... and their strongest competitor is the SPIDER. Well well... Recently I got aware that SWAMP also stands for something, namely "simply wonderful apparatus for measuring pulses"...

Aside from that, the homepage includes a real good choice of tutorials about pulse measurement devices: Swamp optics Tutorials and also the lectures from Prof. Trebino are available: lecture files. It is really worth to read it. Have fun!

Seen in twitter.

2011-09-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

"We don't allow faster than light neutrinos in here" said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar."

Jokes are coming out in reaction to the announcement of CERN that they have found neutrinos that travel faster than the speed of light. Einstein theories have been challenged several times, but the theory always proved to be right, so we'll wait a bot, before changing our courses.

InTech - Open access publisher of Scientific Books and Journals

2011-09-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

Founded in 2004, InTech is a open access book (and some journals) publisher covering the field of science and technology. Since then, they have published already over 550 books with over 2.5 millions of downloads (counting the chapter downloads). In 2010 its publishing program was expanded into the field of medecine.

Concerning the field of Optics and Lasers, 16 books have been published so far. Although the titles of the books sounds general, the chapters are already dedicated to a specific research topic, which makes it not very suitable for non-expert who are looking for an overview or introduction. However, if you work in the same field, it is probably worth to have a look into it.

Sam's Laser FAQ

2011-08-30T03:30:00.000-07:00

The homepage of "Sam's Laser FAQ" looks on the first moment very old and strange but actually, it is a real treasure about lasers. Sam's Laser FAQ exist already since 1994 by Samuel M. Goldwasser and is updated until today. One has to understand this page as "a practical guide to lasers for experimenters and hobbyists". It is a huge page and the navigation is a bit unusual but nevertheless it is worth to spend some time on it. Have a look on the "comprehensive table of contents". There are tons of chapters and sections as well as many many pictures, covering the scope from different types of lasers to possible experiments to do by oneself. Actually, there is a certain change that you find your laser which you uses in the lab and how you can repair it ;). What is missing on the page is a section about pulsed lasers, especially fs or ps laser as well as amplifications schemes. However, Sam's Laser FAQ addresses mainly hobbiest and for them it is a true treasure... and many hearts of scientists will jump faster if they see the pictures ;).

ps: check out the laser equipment gallery

Scitable by nature education

2011-07-18T13:42:00.000-07:00

What is Scitable: "Scitable is a free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group" according to the NPG. It is on the one hand a communication platform for scientists and on the other hand an education resource. Currently, the research topics are concentrated on biology. However, there are two large and extensive topics about

English Communication for Scientist

and

Guide to Life Science Career

which are relevant for all scientists. It is definitely good invested time to have a closer look on these two topics if you are writing a paper or thinking about staying in science. Especially to recommend is the "Writing Scientific Papers" and "Effective Writing" page. But also the "Personality Assessment" is interesting to read, doesnt matter if you plan to stay or not in science.

The homepage is very well and serious done. It is a pleasure to read it and one can really say that one has learned something :) .

ps: It is nice that they are using some PhD Comics strips ;).

Jobs at ICFO, Spain (Barcelona)

2011-06-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

Originally, I planned to write about the famous ICFO which stands for "Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques" or in english: the Institute of Photonics Science; but when I visited the homepage, I found a big announcement of seeking researchers. Therefore, now a post about both issues.

(from ICFO page)

ICFO is located in Barcelona (Spain) and was founded 2002. Currently it has around 250 staff members, around 20 research groups and 50 different laboratories. In 2014, the expansion phase should be finished with around 300 staff members and occupying 9000 square meter. The main research lines are biophotonics, nonlinear optics, quantum optics and nano optics. The probably most well known professor is Niek van Hulst, working in the area of nanophotonics (nanoantennas, single molecule ultrafast photonics).

As you already can see from the picture, ICFO is searching new members in all areas and all positions. An overview of positions you can find on the job page (date: 29th July 2011). ICFO has a very good infrastructure and allows you top research.

further pages:
wikipedia-ICFO

El laser, la luz de nuestro tiempo

2011-06-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

For the 50th anniversaire of the laser in 2010, the OSA student chapter of Salamanca, together with the optics group in Salamanca, has written a book that communicates clearly the concepts and applications of lasers to the general public.

(picture from the OPN book rewiew)

A review by the OPN (Optics and Photonics News, published by OSA) can be found here. As the title of the book already suggests, it is written in spanish. An english version is currently discussed. The book is for free (you have read correctly) but only limited copies exist. If you are interested in one, please contact osal (at) usal.es

One of the copies is already in my hands and I can tell you that even after 5 years working in many optic areas, the book still had some nice and interesting suprises for me :). Have fun!

HyperPhysics - Optics

2011-05-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

No new special physics but an interesting homepage of the Georgia State University.

HyperPhysics

HyperPhysics explains concept in physics and was originally built for high school physics teachers. Nevertheless it is useful for students or independent learners as well. The site design could need an update. However, you should not be scared because of that. The site is maintained and still under continuous development by Carl Rod Nave (I guess that he is also the founder) and has over 3 million users per year.

The "light and vision", respectively optic, part presents a interesting and good overview about the general concepts in optics.

Light and Vision

The concepts are well explained and contain often some examples. For the ones who want to repeat or getting quickly an overview about general optic concepts, this site is ideal.

If you search for detailed nonlinear optic or laser physcis/ technology, you should visit this post: Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology

Have fun!

Photonics Clusters

2011-05-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

On the SPIE (International Society for Optical Engineering) homepage I found an interesting page which lists a lot of photonics cluster all over the world.

Photonics Clusters

In total they listed over 30 photonics clusters with over 700 member organizations. As photonics cluster SPIE refers as

"Optics and photonics clusters are concentrations of optics-related firms and universities that maintain strong research and workforce ties, create quality jobs, share common economic needs, and work with government and stakeholders to strengthen the industry."
(from SPIE Photonics Cluster page)

Most of the clusters are located to a region of the country. Especially a lot of clusters exist in germany. Most of the cluster homepages are well made (even, some links on the SPIE page are not working anymore). Spend some time to visit the cluster page in your region. Even, the clusters are not directly relevant for university research groups, they still have some interesting information for you (and if it is only the member and job list ;) ).

some clusters:
Spanish cluster (Southern European Cluster in Photonics and Optics (SECPhO) )
BayernPhotonics (Germany)
Optics Valley France
Rochester Regional Photonics Cluster, Inc. (USA)

have fun!

Art+Science.

2011-05-06T03:36:00.000-07:00

This blog is mainly for lasers and things related to research but in this entry i would like to comment
some other uses of light and lasers.

Watching light itself is appealing and it is part of the art. In the FastLight festival in the framework of the
150 years of MIT you can see a great example of mixture between science, technology and art.

This is the link --> http://arts.mit.edu/fast/fast-light/

Enjoy with the light.

50 and 1 years of laser

2011-05-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

Very nice talk at MIT celebrating the
50 years of the laser.

The museum of sciences of MIT hosted this nice talk
Check it out !

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/839

IONS-9 has started!

2011-04-08T00:29:00.000-07:00

IONS-9 in Salamanca, Spain has started (7.-9. april)! Check their facebook page for the latest information and pictures (click here).

(official group picture IONS-9, picture from IONS-9 facebook page)

(Prof. Dr. Luis Roso discusses the CPLU lasers; picture from IONS-9 facebook page)

The next IONS-10 will be hold in Southampton from the 10.-13. august this year. Don't miss it ;).

Shaking test for a laser...

2011-02-28T12:48:00.000-08:00

If you work with homebuild lasers then this video looks quite crazy... It shows a shaking test with a femtosecond laser.

The video was made by Femtolasers Produktions GmbH with one of their turn key laser-systems (Integral).

There is even a more impressive video by Toptica, where they have left falling a laser onto the floor (if i remember correctly) but unfortunately I havent found it yet on the internet nor their homepage. If you have it, please post it!

Attosecond laser - the world's fastest laser

2011-02-14T13:06:00.000-08:00

By chance I found this video over an attosecond laser at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in the group of Prof. Dr. Ferenc Krausz (www.attoworld.de). The video is on public level and nice to watch.

Additional information you can find in the press release (click) or at Attoworld.
Enjoy!

btw... did you found the mistake in the video? Everyone has once a bad day ;)

IONS-9 in Salamanca!

2011-02-01T14:18:00.000-08:00

Don't miss it! Present and discuss your research with other young scientists.

IONS stands for International OSA Networks of Students and has the aim to connect you with young researchers in optics and photonics. Therefore there is no special conference topic but you can present your results and research to young scientists. Discuss, and get informed about the projects of other young scientists. More about the IONS, what they do and where the next IONS will be held you can find out here.

The next IONS in europe will be held in Salamanca, Spain, from the 7. - 9. April 2011 and is organized by the OSAL student chapter. Registration is free and open until the 25. february. For travel grants one can apply until the 7. february. Please check the IONS-9 Salamanca homepage for more information and details, or the IONS-facebook page. The poster can be downloaded here (2MB).

Check the IONS page and register today!

Optics & Photonics Focus

2011-01-18T00:37:00.000-08:00

It is time to know this page, in case you have overlooked it like me.

Optics & Photonics Focus

It is a magazine (sponsored by EPS and OSA) presenting recent interesting and important developments in the fields of optics and photonics. The topic selection over the last years is well done and you will find many interesting articles respecively reviews. They have a nice length to read and are not too specific written, accessible for a wide range of readers. Have a look at the archive

OPFocus Archive

All articles are online available. Take time for an overview, and perhaps you even have a suggestion for them what to present next!

A Booklet for Properties of Optical Materials

2010-11-11T00:08:00.000-08:00

Probably most of you know that many companies have small booklets regarding different topics/ technologies on their webpages. One which I personally like is from the Oriel-LOT company and summarizes the properties of optical materials, especially transmission curves. Unfortunately it is only available in german but this will not limit you as the booklet contains to 95% transmission curves and datas, understandable for everyone.

(copied from the bookled, page 8)

You can download the booklet (pdf) here:
booklet properties of optical materials

If you know other booklets which helped you in your work, feel free to post a comment!

Attogram - free software

2010-11-08T02:31:00.000-08:00

This post addresses more the specialists working with attosecond pulses. If you want to learn more about attosecond optics and its techniques, please read following article "attosecond physics" or visit "attoworld".

Measuring the pulse duration of an attosecond pulse is not so easy as you do with a 20fs pulse. To do so, you have to perform a streaking measurement from which you can reconstruct the desired data. Attogram is a programm designed "to reconstruct the temporal profiles of an attosecond pulse and a laser field from a streaking measurement". It also enables to analyze the chirp of the attosecond pulse.

(from attoworld)

Attogram is based on a blind FROG algorithm, and can also perform PG, SHG, THG and SD FROG retrievals. More detailed informations about the algorithm and its operation can be found in Applied Physics B 92, 25-32 and for the programm in the manual

Please download (free, no registration) Attogram from following page:

download Attogram

There you can find the system requirements too. Don't hesitate to contact the programmer if you have any questions or comments (contact on the download page).

Big Laser Assembling...

2010-10-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

In May 2008, the assembling of one of the largest laser systems in the world, hosted at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at University of Rochester, was after 3 years completed. This laser system is used for the same objects like at NIF (see post), namely for inertial confinement fusion. The following time lapse movie of the laser construction gives you a nice idea about its dimension. The main view is on this hall, which contains the "OMEGA EP" laser system.

(taken from LLE homepage)

Have fun watching it!

More time lapses movie can be found here.

If you are interested in more information, please check the links in the text.

Infinity Mirror Illusion!

2010-09-09T04:15:00.000-07:00

Time for a movie! It doesnt need much words for this one, have fun!

(it takes some seconds, sorry)

Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology

2010-09-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

The open access "Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology" by Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta is well-known and very often consulted by researchers. I already have mention it briefly in an earlier post (literature search I) but i think it is really worth to draw your attention again on it by a separate post to this valuable and helpful encyclopedia.

Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology

Around 570 articles are listed, still growing. The navigation is clearly laid out. Most of the articles are very detailed, inlcuding references to scientific articles. They explain

"the physical principles and common techniques in laser technology, while also covering major areas of fiber-optic technology and nonlinear optics, and addressing supplementary topics like ultrashort pulses, optical communications, general optics, optoelectronics, and quantum optics."

quoted from the encyclopedia. During august 2010 around 160 000 page hits have been counted. If you havent yet known this encyclopedia, then click the link and take a minute for it. Test some keywords! You will not regret it. Have fun.

Companies & Photonics

2010-08-25T01:06:00.000-07:00

If I ask you to write down how many companies you know working in the optic area, how many would it be? I think everyone knows Thorlabs and Newport, where most of us buy our optical components. And then... some other general well-known companies, some special companies working on your research topic, and then... i guess you know that there are much more companies.

There are several benefits for your research why to search once for other companies as to stay always at the same one:

finding same product but cheaper (e.g. crystals, mechanical components, daily used things)
better quality or performance (measurement devices)
better support/ shorter delivering time (that is an important aspect)
new products/ ideas for your research

But how to find them? A simple search with google or another search engine will often lead you to a useable result. Asking your working colleagues is good invested time too. Advertisement of new released products you can find in the different optic magazines (like Photonics Spectra and many others) or in the newsletters of the companies (wanted or unwanted you receive them ;) ). But in this post i want to draw your attention to something what many people know but also many doesnt. There are guides of companies where you can browse by subject to find different companies concerning your search. I want to introduce the one of Photonics Spectra:

Photonics Buyer´s Guide

You can browse by product/ service/ company name and region. The guide contains profiles and contact information for more than 4000 manufacturers and suppliers of photonics products and services worldwide. The page is clearly laid out and information are updated. Try it!

One more motivation why to know such a guide... if you are searching a job in the optics industry, you can find with the guide easily all the companies in your country ;).

Summer School!

2010-08-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, every graduate student should at least have visited one summer school during his graduate studies. Why... because you benefit a lot from a summer school!

A summer school handles of a main topic and tries to bring together graduate students and young Post-docs from diverse range of fields relevant to the main topic. Lectures are normally given by leading researchers in the field. As a graduate student you will not only learn new things but you also have the chance to talk with the lectures in a relaxed atmosphere. In the postersession you can present your own work. A summer school goes between 1 and 2 weeks.
What I liked very much was to learn other graduate students from different places, working on the same/ similar project. Very nice for everyone are the social events during the school. Mostly you are going for sightseeing a day. And, in the evenings you are free to do what you want.
Normally, there is a small summer school fee but often you can apply for a scholarship which overtakes most of the fee. Summer school anouncements you can find everywhere... in journals (Photonics Spectra), on the blackboard of your department, but best thing is to ask simply your professor/ supervisor.

As an example for a summer school:

66th Scottish Universities Summer School in Physics
International Summer School in Ultrafast Nonlinear Optics 2010

Take the chance to visit a summer school!

Sunset in the Lab

2010-07-13T00:20:00.001-07:00

Sunset in the lab, that´s how we named the first picture and I think you guess why ;).

We are focusing with a 1030nm beam in a YVO4 crystal generating "white light" which contains only near-infrared wavelengths from 600nm to around 1100nm. The blue light in the crystal originates from third harmonic generation.

The next picture shows stronger white light generation from 450nm to around 1400nm in a YAG crystal

Both pictures were taken in our lab by Thorsten Naeser and can be soon seen at the attoworld gallery.

If you want to know more about white light generation, then you should read following article: Femtosecond continuum generation in bulk laser host materials with sub-μJ pump pulses (journal access necessary).

Have fun!

Photonics in Spain: Open for Business

2010-07-06T00:12:00.000-07:00

The latest (june/july 2010) euro photonics issue (included in photonics spectra) presents an article about the photonics in Spain:

Photonics in Spain: Open for Business (free access)

A brief and very general overview of the situation of photonics development and research is given. ICFO, SECPhO and CLPU are mentioned. The article is nice to read and I guess especially interesting for our Spanish readers :) . Let´s hope future will show what the article says, namely: “Outlook is good”. Enjoy!

PS: the articles in the current photonics spectra issue are really interesting. Don’t forget, you can subscribe for free!

Links:
ICFO - Institute of Photonic Science
CLPU- Center for Ultrashort Pulsed Lasers
SECPhO- Southern European Cluster in Photonics and Optics

LAB2 - The Virtual Femtosecond Laboratory

2010-06-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

LAB2 is a (for free) modular programming tool written in Labview which enables one to simulate basic experiments and devices daily used in femtosecond experiments.

LAB2

As examples they mention:

propagation through a linear medium
prism compressor
second harmonic generation with depleted fundamental wave
crystal wizard - how to find the phase matching angle

But to my knowledge there are more functions in the package.

LabII was developed in 1998 at the Institute for Optics and Quantum Electronics (IOQ) in Jena. Since Fall 2004 it is at the Institute of Applied Physics in Bern with Prof. Thomas Feurer. The download is free but you have to register. What I like is the detailed manual which will help you to use efficiently LAB2. Basics and concepts are introduced too and always worth to read it. If you have used LAB2 already, please write a comment about your experience with it.

OSLO - Free Optical Design Software

2010-06-15T00:29:00.000-07:00

Optical Design Software are widely used in optic industry and also in certain scientific optic fields. But in general, our research in nonlinear/ quantum optics does not require the assistance of optical design software. However, sometimes there are cases where one thinks that it would be not bad to design it proper (especially if you have to optimize). Most popular (and very good) optical design softwares are Code V and Zemax. But they are expensive and therefore quite often not purchased. However, there are other softwares and one of them is

OSLO, Optics Software for Layout and Optimization.

The version OSLO-EDU (for education) can be downloaded for free. But compared with other software demos or free version, OSLO-EDU still contains a lot of features which enables you to really work with it. Good and extensive introductions, manuals and examples exist and will help you to operate the software. But as with every software, you have to spend first a little bit time to learn it, depending what you want to design. OSLO is provided by the company Lambda Research Corporation. The link for the download page you can find here:

Download OSLO-EDU

on the same page you can also download 2 manuals. I hope for smaller optical design tasks this software will help you.

Lambda Research Corporation
OSLO Wikipedia
Code V
Zemax

THz Science & Technology Network

2010-06-07T00:23:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in terahertz research, or you want to get an overview then this Thz Science and Technology Network may be worth to consider:

THz Science & Technology Network

The page is maintained and regulary updated. I like the news and furthermore, they have their own virtual (monthly published) virtual journal. Not bad is the conference page as well as the career page too. A real nice feature is the buyer´s guide. It will provide a good starting point if you search commerical THz technology (depending of what you are searching this can be real challenge!). You can get also a member of the THz network. The basic membership is free. However, all pages are free accessible and actually it is nowhere written, what for additional features you receive if you get a member. If you are a member (i am not), please write a comment.
What you will not find on this network is a short introduction to THz or an overview for people not really involved into the THz research. An overview gives for example following article from nature photonics (access of the journal necessary): cutting edge terahertz technology, or searching on wikipedia will show you some results too (terahertz radiation).
Have a look on the THz network, if you know other such pages, or you are even a member, please write a comment :). Enjoy.

SNLO - Crystal Property Caculations Software

2010-06-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

I guess that everyone working in nonlinear optics knows this (free) software. And if not, it is time that you hear about it.

SNLO is a free programm with many functions helping one to select the correct nonlinear crystal, and in modeling nonlinear frequency conversion processes in those crystal. Developed and maintained by Dr. Arlee Smith, at that time working at the Sandia National Laboratories and now founder of AS-Photonics. The software is constantly updated and currently version 51 is available (november 18, 2009). It includes data for more than 50 crystals as well as a good introduction manuel. The PDFs to the software and crystal references you find on the same page where you can download the software:

Download SNLO

Since Dr. Smith is working at AS-Photonics you have to register (free) for it. Take time to read the introduction/ help manual to learn the full possibility of this software (and it is not so much time to take ;) ). I am quite sure that this software has simplified the life of many graduate student working in nonlinear optics. Enjoy.

Happy birthday Hubble!

2010-05-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

Twenty years ago, on 24. April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit. Since then, Hubble has given us many spectacular images, allowing us to explore and understand a little bit more the Universe.
Let us review some of the most relevant Hubble telescopes's science finding:

Dark energy: the term "dark energy" refers to a force against the gravity; it is then responsible of the expansion of the Universe. By observing distant supernovae, the astronomers can study how the dark energy behaves, which is a key to understand the origin of the Universe.
The age of the Universe: by measuring the brightness of pulsating stars it was possible to calculate their distance to the Earth. This parameter was used to determine the Hubble constant and the Universe's age, estimated to be around 13,75 billion years.
Large galaxies: Hubble has registered images of galaxies when the universe was just 100 million years; these observations revealed that they were smaller than today's galaxies, concluding that large galaxies built up over time as smaller galaxies collided and merged.
Extrasolar planets: planets out of our Solar System are called extrasolar planets. Hubble has detected many of them and made significant contributions to broaden our knowledge about them. For instance, its observations showed for the first time in history the composition of the atmosphere of one extrasolar planet.

+Info:
This post has been adapted from "Hubble space telescope's top science findings".
A complete review of select research papers can be found in this special issue of Nature.
More information about Hubble telescope and stunning images from it, can be found in the official website:

HUBBLE SITE

"Milestones of Photon History"

2010-05-19T02:32:00.000-07:00

On occasion of the 50-year anniversary of the first demonstration of the laser (actually on the 16 May 1960), "Nature Milestones" highlights key discoveries in optics, which are based on the photon:

nature milestones: photons

A timeline is presented with small but compact articles to the different milestones. It presents a fast but interesting overview/ introduction over many important discoveries which are today everywhere used in optics. It is really worth to read it. If I am not wrong, I think the articles are even open access. You can either read it directly on the page or as pdf:

pfd of milenstones timeline (link)
pdf of all milenstones (link)

have fun

"Bringing Star Power to Earth"

2010-05-12T02:02:00.000-07:00

A lot of high-energy laser facilities exist around the world, or are in planning. One of them is the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL):

National Ignition Facility (NIF)

NIF is a laser based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device. Thereby powerful lasers will heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclrear fusion reactions take place. The original purpose of the experiments at NIF are simulations of nuclear weapon detonations, as replacement for nuclear tests. However, the knowledge gained will be used too for a possible civil energy winning device by inertial confinement fusion. NIF will be probabyl the first ICF device which should produce more energy than was put in to start the reaction. We will soon know it.

some data:

number of beamlines: 192
energy per beamline: 18.75 kJ
center wavelength: 1053nm
pulse length: few nanoseconds
repetition rate: 4-6 shot per day
focusspot size: 5x of the diffraction limit
final costs: 3.4 billions (USD)
dimensions: nearly three soccer fields (around 21.368m²)
finished: end of march 2009

Like most of the very big constructions NIF had around 5 years of delay and the costs were 4 times more as budgeted. However it works now! In January, they have reported a laser energy of more than 1 mega joule!

NIF has a very good and informative page. Take some time to surf on it, it provides you with much more details as on this short post here. Below, I have put two links to "how NIF works" and the "video gallery". I liked the wikipedia entry too (it contains also over 70 references). Enjoy!

links:

ToptiCalc, a (free) Photonic Scientific Calculator

2010-05-05T01:03:00.000-07:00

Few days ago I crossed the way of this "photonic scientific calculator" from Toptica. It is a small calculator but containing interesting and helpful features for our work, small things which saves a lot of time ;). My favorite is the short pulses properties and chirp feature. Other features are:

spectral unit conversion
calculating spot sizes for focussed gaussian beams
Fabry-Perot calculations
reflection and diffraction at plane glass surfaces
pulse train calculations
short pulse properties and chirp
conversion between linear and decibel scale

The calculator is made by the laser and optics company called Toptica and can be downloaded for free. However, you have to register (for free of course) but this should not keep you away. More detailed information about the calculator features can be found on their homepage, or click ToptiCal page. It is also interesting to watch their homepage, especially the applications page. Toptica is a well-known company in optics and offers many products and special solutions to research in optics (i am not sponsored by Toptica ;) )

free download (registration page)

ResearchGATE

2010-04-23T04:51:00.000-07:00

ResearchGATE is a scientific networking platform, founded in 2008 in Hannover, Germany. Today, over 300´000 thousands scientists have joined from all over the world and from every topic. The access/ registration is free (contrary to its competitions) and the site works like facebook. You can create groups, asking questions, upload your publications, networking, finding people from your field, semantic abstract search, etc.

ResearchGATE

Have a look at their video, where they introduce their network.

What i like on this network is that you can ask a specific questions (most questions seems to be about sample preparation) and in most cases you get even a good answer. Furthermore, you can create groups on your topics...building your own network, staying in contact with others (perhaps once there will be a OSA student chapter group) However, i havent joined to researchgate as there seems to be no real optic group. More detailed information you can find in the articles below and on wikipedia. If you have some experience with this network, please write a comment!

articles:

in TechCrunch (english):Professional Network ResearchGate Is A LinkedIn For Scientists

in "DER SPIEGEL" (only german): "Facebook für Forscher"

wikipedia entry

Student chapters

2010-04-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

This might be the first time you hear these words: "Student Chapters".
So, let's start by the beginning...

What is a Student Chapter?

A student chapter is a group of students with a common interest, in our case Optics. They usually promote the discipline among young students and general public through outreach activities.

Who sponsors them?

Several proffesional societies (OSA, SPIE, EPS...) have a worldwide network of student chapters and offer grants for them (activity grants, educational grants, start-up funding, classroom materials...).

What kind of activities are made in the frame of student chapters?

There is a huge variety of activities! Here are some examples:

- Student networking: IONS conferences

- Educational outreach projects; for example: "Day of the Light" (ICONS), "Curso de iniciación a la investigación en óptica" (IOSA), "The Optics Adventure" (OSAL)...

- Workshops for teachers in Africa (I really love this one!): NUTS project by Naples Student Chapter.

- Lab tours during conferences (such as, OSASG during CLEO).

- Cross-chapter activities (meetings with other chapters...).

- Professional development activities (visit to companies, seminars...).

- Social events to promote interaction between members (beer&pizza, dinner, trip...).

Benefits of becoming a member

Apart from the benefits of joining a professional society (travelling and student grants, Leadership Meetings, suscriptions to reviews...), it is a good way to build technical and leadership skills. You will learn many things that wouldn't be possible in any other case (for example, seek for funding, manage a group...).

What do I have to do if I want to establish a student chapter at my Uni?

Usually, you have to recruit at least five students, join a/several society(ies) and decide who is who (elect a president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer). Depending on the society, the process can be slighty different; for further information, I would advise you to visit their website:

Optical Society of America (OSA): www.osa.org

SPIE: http://spie.org

European Physical Society (EPS): http://epsyoungminds.com

Photonics Spectra

2010-04-09T05:59:00.000-07:00

It is free, and even not so bad. Actually it is quite good and interesting. I am talking from

"Photonics Spectra".

A monthly published magazine for researcher and engineers who are working in the optic/ photonics field. It provides news and featured articles and gives a good overview about new developments in science as well as in industry. Articles are about technical and practical information covering all parts of photonics like "optics, lasers, imaging, fiber optics and electro-optics as well as photonic component manufacturing, solar cell improvements, LED lighting for cars and offices, THz, EHz, UV, IR, and visible light imaging and test equipment." (quoted from the homepage)
A second, smaller magazine exists too for the new bio-photonics field: "Bio Photonics". Photonics Spectra has been published since 1967 by Laurin Publishing Company.
What I like on these magazines too, are the technology updates, new producs and literature, application reports, business reports and calendars of conferences. Sometimes you see by chance some tools or techniques which you can use too for your experiment.

Subscription for Photonics Spectra can be found here: Subscription, and for biophotonics here.
Have a look at Photonics.com too, the "general page" of the magazines. It contains news, blogs, videos and a lot more. By the way, all articles etc. of the magazines can be found too on the page.

Enjoy reading, you will get a good overview about what is going on in the different fields of optics!

Los quintos.

2010-03-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

Para los que dicosian moléculas,
Para los que calibran espectrometros,
Para los que buscan estados vestidos,
Para los que buscan bombear laseres XUV.
Para todos ellos.
El quinto hamrónico

The European X-Ray Free Electron Laser

2010-03-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

The European X-Ray Free Electron Laser is a new (in construction) research facility in Germany near Hamburg, using an free electron laser which produces high intensity, coherent x-ray pulses at kHz repetition rate. Their intensities are several magnitudes brighter than those achieved today by conventional synchrotron light source. The XFEL and its unique characteristic will open new reasearch opportunities for scientists.

Page: European XFEL

The video is in german, I am sorry. The english version can be download here or directly watched on the XFEL homepage (right upper side)

(from European XFEL)

The construction time has already started in 2009 and will lead until 2014. Users can operate the facility and beamline in 2015. The project costs are around 1082 million euros (price level 2005) whereas Germany covers 54% and Russia 23%. The rest is split among the other members. Currently 13 countries are participating, all from europe except China. The facility has a total length of 3.4km (including accelerator), starting from DESY in Hamburg.

Characteristics of the European X-Ray Laser:

wavelength: 0.1 - 6nm
repetition rate: 27kHz!
pulse duration: < 100fs
average [peak] brilliance: 1.6*10^25 [5*10^33]
coherence: yes

The average brilliance is around 10 000 better as the best conventional X-Ray sources, the peak brilliance even a billion times. As the X-Ray flashes are coherent, they can even make 3D images at the atomic level! A short but good description how the X-Ray flashes are generated you can find here.

The XFEL allows researcher to enter new areas which were inaccessible so far. Tiny structures, ultrafast processes and extreme states of matter will be explored. Let me quote from their homepage:
"Using the X-ray flashes of the European XFEL, scientists will be able to map the atomic details of viruses, decipher the molecular composition of cells, take three-dimensional images of the nanoworld, film chemical reactions and study the processes in the interior of planets."
The XFEL opens a lot of new research possibilites, have a look at their research page.

Take time and enjoy the XFEL homepage. It is seriously done and contains a lot of interesting information. Have fun.

additional information: wikipedia -XFEL

"Your Own Laser Experiments"

2010-03-09T06:20:00.000-08:00

Doing laser experiments at home are in most cases challenging due missing tools. Nevertheless some easy but still very interesting experiments can be done demonstrating fundamental phenomena. By chance I found a homepage which describes in detail and well explained some very interesting and easy to do experiments.

The page is the EU-HOU project: “Hands on Universe, Europe. Bringing frontline interactive astronomy to the classroom” and has the goal of renewing the teaching of science and awaking the interest of science to the young generation. The page covers mainly experiments from astronomy but some nice optics experiments (important for astronomy) are presented too.

EU-HOU, startpage

Four easy laser optics experiments can be found here:

EU-HOU, Laser Experiments
EU-HOU, home-made spectroscope

They handle of the:

“Refraction , or bent light”
“Determination of the index of refraction by a laser pointer”
“Eureka, Light is a wave”
"A home-made spectroscope"

My favorite is the third one but all of them are great. The easiest one to perform is the first one and very interesting for many peoples will be the last one. But let me show you some more pictures:

(bent light)

(measuring the refraction index)

(halogen bulb and its spectrum)

All the pictures are taken from the EU-HOU page. Note that the EU-HOU page is addressed for teachers but every pupil (high school) can do it too. And please,

never never look into a laser beam!

It can cause serious irreparable eye damage! Hence, take care even with a laser pointer. Enjoy the experiments!

Laserfest

2010-02-13T05:25:00.000-08:00

16. May 1960: Theodore Maiman achieves for the first time in history light from a laser.

Thus,2010 is the 50th Anniversary of the first laser.

For this reason, there is an innitiative from APS, OSA, SPIE and IEEE to conmemorate this anniversary: Laserfest.

Events around the world will showcase how the laser works, the history of the laser and its impact on society, and the laser's potential for the future.

I strongly recommend you to visit the website for Laserfest.

Here you can find a lot of information and latest news about lasers, curiosities and of course, info about all the events related to Laserfest that will take place this year.

ELI - Extreme Light Infrastructure

2010-02-11T04:46:00.000-08:00

The Extreme Light Infrastructure, called ELI, is a european project which will provide in ~ 2015 a new infrastructure for an ultra-high intensity laser to investigate laser-matter interactions in the unexplored ultra-relativistic regime.

picture from ELI-Wikipedia

From 13 european countries, more than 50 institutes are involved and cooperating for this project. The preparatory phase will end in November 2010, followed by a construction period of 5 years. The project will have 4 facilities located in Hungary, Czech Republic and Romania. The last location will be decided in 2012. The research focuses onto three fields:

Ultra high science field (exploring laser-matter interaction)

Attosecond laser science (temporal investigation of electron dynamics)

High Energy Beam Science (development of ultra-short pulses of high energy radiation and particles (100 GeV) for fundamental and applied sciences)

But ELI is not only relevant for scientists. Public will benefit too of ELI as new techniques in medicine will be developed like new radiography and hadron theraphy methods. A big field will be also the laser driven nuclear physics which can help to find new ways to treat nuclear waste.
ELI will be a unique laser facility on the world, opening new ways to the secrets of matter on the ultra-short timescale. Although, 2015 seems to be far away, if you start now with your phd or study, you will be finished around the time when ELI will show its "first light", a perfect time or ;)?

Sources and links:
ELI - offical site
ELI-Wikipedia
ELI Beamlines Facility in the Czech Republic (only in czech)

picture from OSAL

Light for the Future!

2010-02-04T01:02:00.000-08:00

A short but professional made video about the “Excellence Cluster MAP” in Germany. MAP stands for Munich Centre for Advanced Photonics and is sponsored/ granted by the “Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG” (German Research Foundation). The first part of the movie shows laser and laserlabs whereas the second parts concentrates on possible applications in medecine. Have a look!

movie: LIGHT FOR THE FUTURE

I couldnt implement the video directly into the blog, sorry. Additional information you will find on the same page too. Furthermore, more movies you can watch using the DFG Video Portal. Every monday a new research video will be published there.

MAP: Munich Center for Advanced Photonics

Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics

Attoworld

"Brave New Attoworld"

2010-01-04T03:45:00.000-08:00

Since beginning of the new year, the newly designed HOMEPAGE OF THE ATTOSECOND GROUP at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics is online:

ATTOWORLD

or: www.attoworld.de (startpage):

Attoworld contains a lot of interesting background information not only what we are doing, but also our techniques, aims, visions, challenges, information for public, even teaching etc... The attoworld section (attoworld) gives you a well understanding of what attoscience is. Take time to surf and to enjoy it. The homepage is very well linked too further information and gives access to many papers (free download).

As people often want to have a look into the laboratories, attoworld presents an extensive gallery of our works: Gallery Labs. But also you will find pictures everywhere at attoworld.

(Both pictures are from the gallery of attoworld. You can find there a detailed caption too.)

Enjoy... and dont forget the breakthroughs of the year vote!

The Breakthroughs of the year

2009-12-25T10:44:00.000-08:00

2009 is coming to its end... and it is time to review the most important scientific contributions of the year.
For this reason the magazine Science has published a special issue with the top 10 breakthroughs of the year (according to Science). And the winners are...

1.- Ardipithecus ramidus. Ardi was an Ethiopian woman, 1.20 m tall... and who lived 4,4 million years ago! It is the most ancient hominid fossil ever found.
2.- Pulsars. Gamma rays Fermi NASA telescope has allowed to detect pulsars. The telescope was put in orbit in 2008, and providing a measurement that was a proof of the relativity theory has been its most important success so far.
3.- ABA receptors. Major advances in the knowledge of the structure of the drought hormone have been achieved during 2009.
4.- Monopoles. Two research group have achieved magnetic pertubations of monopoles from spin ices.
5.- Rapamycin. Rapamycin (a medicine used to prevent transplant rejection) can prolong mammal's life. The experiment was carried out in rats, that prolong their lives between 9% and 14%.
6.- Water in the moon. NASA announced on the 13th November that the Lcross spacecraft sensors had detected water vapour and ice in the moon.
7.- Genetic therapy. Advances in genetic therapy to treat blindness.
8.- Graphene. Latest research about the graphene properties has revealed that this material could replace silicon in chips.
9.- Hubble repair. Hubble repair mission prolonged its life and improved some features.
10.- X-ray laser. Since we reported in a post some months ago, SLAC laboratory started running the first X-ray laser.

And what is the most important discovery for you? Fill in the survey you can find on your right!

Also, you can also find a really interesting and comprehensive podcast about the 10 most popular stories of Science in 2009 (the transcript can be downloaded here).

PHD Comics: Laser in Use!

2009-12-23T10:13:00.000-08:00

Dont worry. There are real lasers in our optic labs ;).
(click on the picture to enlarge it)

If you want to know how graduate students are living or how life in the lab really is then visit:

"Piled Higher and Deeper - Life (or the lack thereof) in Academia".

PHD Comics

A comic strip by Jorge Cham. In general every 2. or 3. day there is a new phd comic strip online and he hits absolutly the situation :)! Click here if you want to go directly to his most popular 200 comic strips! Enjoy!

p.s. have a visit in our optic labs!

Refractive Index Database

2009-12-09T04:47:00.000-08:00

Who dont know this problem: you need something urgent but you have to spend two hours until you have found it. In optics, knowing the refractive index of a material at a certain wavelength could be such a problem. The long solution is to search a book or a paper which helps you to calculate the refractive index, the short solution...

...is going to RefractiveIndex.INFO

created and maintained by Mikhail Polyanskiy. The Database is very extensive and includes:

Crystals/ Metals/ Liquids/ Gases/ Glasses/ Optical Glasses/ Plastics/ Liquid Crystals and even Metamaterials.

Simple choose the material and enter the desired wavelength. But you can do more as only calculating the refractive index. You can choose too from the optical property caculator things like:

reflection coefficient/ Abbe number/ Brewster´s angle/ critical angle or chromatic dispersion.

Simple things, but it save a lot of time. Enjoy!

Modelling an artificial eye with a CCD camera: see how they see!

2009-12-08T03:18:00.000-08:00

In September I attended the "IX Reunión Nacional de Óptica" (Spanish National Optics Meeting); one of the posters presented there by the Optics Group from Zaragoza (J. Ares, V. Collados, J. Arines and A. Sánchez-Cano) was "Adiestramiento de la refracción subjetiva con ojos simulados mediante cámaras web". In this communication, the authors reported a system based on a CCD camera to simulate an artificial eye that is used to teach optics and optometry.

Let's start by explaining how the eye works.

Figure 1: Scheme of the eye

In the image an schematic view of an eye is represented; in a very simple model, we can consider the eye as a system formed by a refractive surface, the cornea, and the lens. In a normal eye, the light is focused at the fovea and the image is well-defined. When a person suffers from myopia, light is focused before the fovea; when a person suffers from long-sight, image is formed after the fovea.

Now, how can it be modelled with a web camera? Well, basically the webcam is a CCD sensor with a lens. If we replace this lens by a 35mm focal length lens (typical value for a human eye) and a diaphragm (which will act as a pupil), we can build an artificial eye.

Once, the webcam is ready you can try how people see. Ask for example for a pair of glasses and place them immediately before the webcam. If the person who has lent you the glasses suffers from myopia, you will see a blurred image: this is how this person sees without glasses (or better said, the opposite to the way this person sees: it corresponds to the vision of a long-sighted person with the same gradation):

Figure 2: Pictures from the first row represent a near-sighted eye without (left) and with (right) glasses to correct the myopia. The second row corresponds to a normal eye (ie., the webcam) without (left) and with (right) the same lenses as used in the previous case.

Literature Search II: Keep you up in Research – the Virtual Journals and RSS Feeds!

2009-11-17T04:22:00.000-08:00

We know how to search relevant papers but science is a very fast developing field, especially the optic communities. To keep up we have to know what is published but we can´t do every week an extensive literature search. The solution is very easy but still satisfying: virtual journals and RSS feeds!

A virtual journal presents an online collection of relevant papers from different journals published during the last week or month. In physics the virtual journals by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the American Physical Society (APS) are very good, covering 5 topical areas:

virtual journals

For optics it is called:

virtual journal of ultrafast science

But also the ones for quantum information and nanoscale science contain a lot of optic papers:
virtual journal of quantum information
virtual journal of nanoscale science & technology
The first two mentioned are updated every month, the nanoscale science even every week! But although virtual journals present a good overview about relevant and interesting papers for the community, papers relevant to our work are perhaps (or mostly) not published there. Hence, we have to find an additional way to search relevant papers for us… and RSS feeds will help us a lot.

RSS feeds stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and are placed on many web-pages today. They provide you with the newest articles, information and news on the web-page. You only have to click on the RSS logo and then you can create a folder in the favorite of your browser. Today, more convenient is to connect them directly to your email client or reader. All advanced clients or readers support them (if you don’t have one, search for thunderbird or google reader). Really powerful are RSS feeds if you combine them with word-filters of your email client/reader program! Using the keywords of your research, your email/ reader program collects directly all relevant papers out of hundreds of papers. You don’t have to check them all personally.

Enjoy the lecture ;)!

Very Short Pulses – from Attoseconds to Yoctoseconds!

2009-11-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

Coincidentally I noticed a headline:

“Yoctosecond Photon Pulses from Quark-Gluon Plasmas ” [1]

Like many optic scientists I am working with femtosecond laser pulses (1fs=10^-15). Many comrades in my group are dealing with attoseconds (10^-18s). They generate them in high harmonic generation processes and can push them down to around 80as [2,3]! Near to the frontier of the zeptoseconds (10^-21s) scale. In 1as light can travel a distance of 3*10^-10m, which corresponds roughly to the length of three hydrogen atoms. Today, 80as are the limit because of physical reasons in the high harmonic generation process. But new methods are in progress to reach the zeptoseconds scale. Now, a group has proposed a method how to generated yoctoseconds; 1ys is 10^-24 seconds! They describe how high-energetic photon pulses down to the yoctosecond time scale can be produced in heavy-ion collisions, particularly during the formation of a quark-gluon plasma.
How to measure (and to produce them in reality!) and to characterize these yoctosecond pulses… future will know it. However, my comrades have enough to struggle with 80as ;).

[1] Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 152301 (2009)
[2] Science Vol. 320, 1614
[3] Attoworld

Literature Search I: How to find Information concerning your Work!

2009-11-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

Very essentially, often underestimated, most poorly done, about what am I talking? Of course of the literature search! The literature search is a very important and powerful tool and helps you to save a lot of time and performing good experiments. Three main purposes are behind a literature search:

1. Find information concerning your experiment achieved by other groups (part I).
2. Keep you up of the progress in your research field (part II).
3. Getting new ideas :) …

In this post I write about the first part, presenting some useful webpages for literature search. The second part follows end of the week (introducing the virtual journals).

Today, nearly all scientific information are online available in the internet. But the challenge is to find it! To do so, many search pages exist which are in parallel checking different databases about your request. Probably your university or institute offers such a search machine too. In science, probably the best search page is:

web of knowledge

The page is well done, user friendly and contains a lot of background information.
Another way (which I really like) is to search directly on the journal homepage. Every (good) journal has today a (advanced) search function. In Optics, most of the relevant articles are published in the journals of the “Optical Society of America” briefly OSA. The link to the journal page is:

Opticsinfobase

You can search on all journals or on specified ones. If you have found an interesting paper, have a look at its references and citings. They are often listed with titles and links to their PDFs. I am sure it contains a lot of interesting papers for you. With time you will notice an author who have several publications on the same field. Check their group homepage! Normally, their full publications list (even PDFs) is online.
An – unusual – approach is to search publications by google. Either by google, or its version for science:

scholar.google.com

It is not as good as the other possibilities, but I had already some nice surprises with scholar google.
Another exotic way but it is worth to mention it, is the:

arxiv server

Papers can there be pre-published before they are accepted or rejected by a journal. Some communities, like the quantum information one, are nearly publishing every article on this server too.
To complete the first part, I want to draw your attention to the:

Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology

It is an open-access encyclopedia with around 570 articles, and it explains the physical principles and common techniques in laser technology.
At the end, please remember that every search machine is worthless if you use the wrong keywords. But with some training you will quickly learn the suitable ones ;).

Optics at the disco

2009-10-31T05:31:00.001-07:00

Thinking about going out tonight...?

If so, you might be familiarized with the lights shown in the video.

Sometimes people seem to dance in slow motion, as in the minute 1'02 of the video; the lights responsible of this effect are called stroboscopic lights.

Smoke is also widely used at the disco to produce optical effects: light is slightly dispersed by it and coloured ray traces are easily observed (example: minute 1'14 of the video).

And do you like drinking tonic? If you ask for one at the disco, it can have this appereance:

Don't worry! You haven't asked for the wrong drink and neither have you become colour-blind... It happens because in some discos there are ultraviolet lights (emitting at around 365nm) which excites quinine, a substance contained in the tonic, and producing fluorescence.

Acknowledgments: the author would like to thank B. Hester (from University of Maryland Student Chapter) for her help with the tonic fluorescence.

Where is your Coffee Cup?

2009-10-22T04:38:00.000-07:00

…because soon we have coffee break! And you don’t want to miss it this time…

If you have heard something about the taste, please make a comment ;). It seems that they enjoy their coffees and tea.

To heat the water they used a continuous wave Nd:YAG laser with a maximum power of 2.5kW at 1064nm. The wavelength is already in the near infrared range and therefore not visible to our eyes. This type of laser is very often used in industry for material processing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find more information about this group, what they are mainly working. Looking around in their laboratory I guess it is not an optics group but probably an engineering group – working somehow on material processing.
Have you already asked yourself, why we see the laser beam even it should be invisible for our eyes? The reason is simple. The digital camera with the CCD sensor (Nobel Prize this year!) is sensitive at these wavelengths too. Normally, the camera blocks the near infrared and infrared spectral range by a filter. If you watch carefully the movie, you will notice that they change the camera to their research camera where they do not have such a filter (after 42 seconds). Hence, the laser light scattered by the water can be detected by this camera and we can see the laser light on the camera screen.

Photonic Crystal Fibers: the 2. Generation of Optical Fibers

2009-10-20T01:56:00.000-07:00

(taken from Optics Express Vol. 15, pp 15365)

Charles K. Kao was awarded this year with the Nobel Prize for his fundamental contribution about optical fiber in 1966. Nowadays, applied in high speed data communication optical fibers have an enormous impact in public life. But, is this already everything from optical fibers? Definitely not! In 1996 the research group around Prof. Dr. Russell was able to create the first micro-structured optical fibers, later called photonic crystal fibers (PCF). Contrary to normal optical fibers which consist of a core surrounded by a cladding with a smaller refractive index for total internal reflection, a PCF doesn’t have a cladding in this sense but its core is periodically surrounded by several small “air tunnels” which acts like a cladding, and much more! This construction allows researcher to engineer different parameters of the fiber, like the zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW) and the single mode condition. In bulk silica the ZDW is approximately 1.3µm. Above 1.3µm the dispersion is positive and this wavelength regime is called anomalous regime because it allows new phenomena (solitons, supercontinuum) which are not possible in the normal dispersion regime (negative dispersion). Note, that the dispersion parameter D [ps/km*nm] is proportional to –B2, the group velocity dispersion. The design of photonic crystal fibers enables to shift down the ZDW to 600nm, thus in the working regime of Ti:Sa lasers (800nm). Doing so, solitons (= “self-guiding light bullets”) are created which cover together a very large spectral range, called supercontinuum. Often, the supercontinuum ranges from 530-1100nm but depending on the fiber material, design, length and input laser parameter, different spectral ranges can be covered. Right now, to my knowledge the record covers a wavelength range from 1-5µm using an 8mm telluride PCF.
During the last years supercontinuum spectrums have found applications in spectroscopy. But the most famous, and perhaps most important one, application is on the field of laser based precision spectroscopy, for precision measurements of atomic structures and optical frequencies. Thereby the optical frequency comb technique is applied, which is based too on fiber generated supercontinuum. In 2005, Theodor Hänsch (Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics) was one of the Nobel Prize winners “for their development of laser based precision spectroscopy, that is, the determination of the colour of the light of atoms and molecules with extreme precision.” Without fiber generated supercontinuum, hence without photonic crystal fibers, these very accurate measurements wouldn’t have been possible. And public life is also profiting from these experiments, because e.g. it helps to improve GPS systems.
Today, many different kind of photonic crystal fibers exist with different properties (see picture). Some have instead of a core a whole, so called hollow core fiber, other ones are doped in the core or cladding with another material, mostly Ytterbium (Yb) or Erbium (Eb). These doped fibers are extensively used in fiber amplifiers and fiber lasers, probably the next generation of lasers.
Photonic crystal fibers are at the very beginning to enter scientific experiments in a broad application range, and because of their special properties we can expect many new techniques and exciting discoveries. Hence, it is a good time to consider PCFs in your experiment…and perhaps you may be awarded with the Nobel Prize some years later ;).

Review Articles:
Photonic Crystal-Fibers
by P. St. J. Russell
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 24, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2006

Nonlinear Waveguides Optics and Photonic Crystal Fibers
by J. C. Knight
Optics Express Vol. 15, pp 15365

Research Groups:
Russell Group at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen

Centre for Photonics & Photonics Material, University of Bath

Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton

Companies:
NKT Photonics
(former called Crystal-Fibre)
with the well-known distributors
Thorlabs and Newport

Nufern

nLIGHT
(former Liekki, acquired by nLIGHT)

Laser and armies.

2009-10-12T14:35:00.000-07:00

While the laser is always presented as a big destructive weapon in any science fiction story, the reality is that they haven't play a role at all as weapons. They are extensively used as guidance systems, detection systems and such, but not direclty as weapons, until now.

Here is an entry from the Boing Boing blog about Boeing getting money from the US army to build big lasr that they promes can harm the enemy's army.

" The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) is a directed energy weapon (aka ray gun) developed by Boeing under a US military contract. According to an overview document (PDF) about Boeing's Directed Energy Systems program, "In August 2009, the ATL defeated a ground vehicle target from the air, demonstrating its first air-to-ground, high-power laser engagement of a tactically representative target." The video above documents that experiment, in which the laser weapon, mounted on a C-130H Hercules transport plane, was fired at a car. See the Boeing site for more videos, including aerial footage. (via Smithsonian Air & Space) "

More details here. And some videos here.

Nobel Prize 2009: Kao, Boyle and Smith

2009-10-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

Nobel Prize 2009 for Charles K. Kao "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication" and W. S. Boyle and G. E. Smith "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor".

Charles K. Kao was born 1933 in Shanghai, China. He got his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering 1965 from Imperial College London, UK. He worked at Standard Telecommunication and Chinese University of Hong Kong. He retired in 1996.
Willard Sterling Boyle, was born 1924 in Amherst, NS, Canada. He got his Ph.D. in Physics 1950 from McGill University, QC, Canada. He was the executive Director of Communication Sciences Division, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, USA; he is retired since 1979.
George Elwood Smith, was born 1930 in White Plains, NY, USA. He got his Ph.D. in Physics 1959 from University of Chicago, IL, USA and also worked Bell Laboratories He got retired in 1986.

Why is their contribution so important? C. Kao has been awarded the Nobel Prize due to his prediction of the optical fiber. Thanks to his discovery, you are reading this! Optical fibers are widely used in communications; it allows information spreading almost at the speed of light.
Boyle and Smith invented the CCD (charged coupled device). Do you have a digital camera? If the answer is yes, thank Boyle and Smith! CCD sensors are sometimes called "the electronic eye". Without them, not only the digital camera would have taken a slower course, but also the images from telescopes or the way we analyze beams in optics.

To know more about their contribution to Physics (and particulary to Optics), I recommend you to download the digest with easy-reading information for the public about their work.

You can find more information about Nobel Laureates at http://nobelprize.org (you can even ask them a question!); a more detailed report (but still easy to understand) can be found here.

Breaking the Optical Resolution Limit by Near-field Microscopy

2009-08-16T23:23:00.000-07:00

Gaining spectroscopic information of a sample by optical image devices (spectrometers, fourier transform spectroscopy) is a daily and important task in science. But it encounters a fundamental problem when used in nanotechnology where sample structures can have dimensions of a few nanometers. Then the optical resolution is limited by diffraction to about half the used wavelength. For the visible spectrum this means a possible resolution of around 300nm but for the infrared (1-50µm) or terahertz (50 - 500µm) regime this allows only µm resolution, far too bad for nanotechnology. Different techniques like AFM, SEM or TEM exist to examine nanoscaled samples but all of them lack to gain directly spectroscopic information. This gap can be closed by near-field microscopy.
The most advanced near-field technique, called s-SNOM for scattering scanning near-field optical microscope, is based onto an AFM in tapping mode. Additionally to an ordinary AFM, a laser is focused onto the cantilever tip apex generating a nano-focus locally illuminating the sample surface. The interaction between the nano-focus and the sample scatters the light which will be modified in amplitude and/ or phase. Scanning the sample and recording for every pixel the scattered light allows obtaining an optical image. Thereby the optical resolution is only determined by the tip apex radius and independent of the illuminating wavelength! This has been demonstrated from the visible to the THz [1]. Routinely, 20nm is achieved but sub 10nm has been demonstrated too. For gaining spectral information the wavelength has to be changed and a new picture to be taken. Comparing the different pictures enables to gain the desired spectral information of the material properties, like the chemical composition, crystal structure or mobile carrier density which is very interesting for the semiconductor industry [2,3]. But also applications in biology are possible as demonstrated with a tobacco virus [4]. Thereby s-SNOM benefits from the advantage that its sample hasn’t to be labeled as it often necessary in biology. Currently, different approaches are underway to replace the tunable laser source by a broadband source to record the spectral information in one measurement attempt. Today, s-SNOM starts to enter several labs of research groups completing their analysis tools for nanotechnology. Hence, keep your eyes open, especially on the nanoscale!

University Groups:
Nanogune, San Sebastian
University of Washington
University of Rochester
ICFO, Barcelona

Company:
Neaspec GmbH

References:
[1] Terahertz Near-Field Nanoscopy of Mobile Carriers in Single Semiconductor Nanodevices, A.J. Huber, Nano Lett., 2008, 8 (11), pp 3766–3770

[2] Simultaneous IR Material Recognition and Conductivity Mapping by Nanoscale Near-Field Microscopy, A.J. Huber, Volume 19 Issue 17, Pages 2209 - 2212

[3] Controlling the near-field oscillations of loaded plasmonic nanoantennas, M. Schnell, Nature Photonics 3, 287 - 291 (2009)

[4] Infrared Spectroscopic Mapping of Single Nanoparticles and Viruses at Nanoscale Resolution, M.Brehm, Nano Lett., 2006, 6 (7), pp 1307–1310

World's fastest camera

2009-06-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

The technique, called Serial Time-Encoded Amplified imaging (STEAM), is based on supercontinuum laser pulses (ie., ultrabroad bandwidth pulses). The pulses are propagated to a bidimensional colour matrix by two optical elements. Then, the beam lights the samples: a part of it is reflected by the sample, depending on the dark and light areas of the illuminated point, and the reflections come back through the same way. Since the propagation of the different colours of the pulse is so regular, the range of reflected colours have detailed spatial information about the sample.

According to Bahram Jalali, professor of the University of California and director of this research, "the light points reflects their assigned wavelength, but the dark ones do not, so when the bidimensional rainbow is reflected in the object, the image is copied over the pulse spectrum". The pulse goes back through the optical dispersive system and is converted once more in a single spot, with the image saved in a serie of distributed colours; then, the beam goes through a dispersive fiber (ie., an optical fiber with different velocity limits for each colour). As result, the red part of the spectrum travels at different from the blue, they get separated and finally they arrived at different moments. The signal is then detected by a photodiode and the image is reconstructed. As a result of this technique, an improvement of the speed of images recording is improved (it is the same as the laser repetition rate) with a very high spatial resolution. This could find a wide variety of applications, such as pictures of blood or even the internal structure of the cells.

Teleportation –from Fiction to Reality?

2009-05-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

“Beam me up, Scotty”, who hasn’t yet heard this phrase from Star-Trek? Beaming – alias teleportation –is a favored part of many science fiction stories and thus well-known by publics. Probably most of us would like to have a teleportation tool, for saving stressful traveling time, or to experience famous adventures on alien planets… During the last ten years you may have heard that scientists have successfully entered the field of teleportation. But, is it the same teleportation as in Stark Trek? Let us find out what fiction is and what to reality belongs.

In Star Trek, humans and materials are teleported with superluminal speed from one place to another – empty - place. Thereby, teleported is the matter (atoms) or energy and the information in which state the matter is. Mostly, the teleportation process is controlled by a station which can act as receiver or sender. In Science things are a bit more complicated as usual, but the good news is that there exists no physical law which prohibits the teleportation of humans – it is only quite complex to do so. Today, mostly single photons are teleported. Contrary to Star Trek and similar, in reality you can teleport only the information of a state and not its matter or energy. As a consequence, you need at the receiver place already the same type of matter/ energy onto which you can overwrite the state of the particle which you want to teleport. Furthermore, you can´t do it with superluminal velocity, hence no causality violation. The reason is that the particle at the sender and the one at the receiver´s place have to be specially prepared, namely to be entangled together. The entanglement allows the teleportation of the state of a particle with superluminal velocity (Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance”) but to read out this information for further processing, the receiver needs some special information from the sender -after he performed a special action to the particle- which he can get only with not superluminal velocity (by phone etc). Another point is the entanglement process for more complex systems. Photons and ions are routinely entangled, but even simple molecules are very hard to do so. To my knowledge, single Buckminsterfullerene (C60, 60 carbon atoms) are the biggest systems which have been entangled (diameter around 0.7nm). But they haven’t yet been teleported, because as larger an entangled system is, as shorter the duration of the entanglement state. Now, imagine a human body and you will understand why it is quite difficult to teleport us. Hence, “beam me up, Scotty” has to stay for longer time in fiction.

These days, teleportation in the lab with photons is already routinely done. The teleported distance increases continuous and is over 100km for teleportation in free space as in fibers. Furthermore, teleportation using ions (spin) have been demonstrated too. In future, scientists are planning to teleport larger atom complexes (fullerene) up to small bacteria. But until this time has arrived, new techniques have to be developed.

Nevertheless, theoretically humans could be teleported but the question arises, if our body is teleported, will our spirit, our soul be teleported too? Nobody knows.

Video from the teleportation group in Geneva (in french):

Links to teleportation groups:
Geneva, Prof. Gisin
Munich, Prof. Weinfurter
Vienna, Prof. Zeilinger

Pink is not a colour

2009-05-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

Have a look at the visible spectrum; you can see many colours: red, blue, green, yellow... but what about pink?

You can not find it in the spectrum... but then, why do we see it? Basically, we could say that the reason is just the difference between wavelength (property of waves) and colour (asigned by the brain).

When the eye perceives just one wavelength (for example 600 nm), our brain identifies the colour of that wavelength (in this example, red).

But, what happens if the eye receives light of more than one wavelength? In this case, the colour interpreted by the brain is usually the sum of the input responses on the retina, i.e. the colour halfway between them... except when the wavelengths come from both ends of the light spectrum at once (i.e. red and violet light).

In this case, the colour halfway would be green (not very representative of the mixture), so the brain simply invents a new colour halfway between them: pink (or magenta, according to its official name).

This post has been adapted from http://www.biotele.com/magenta.html. You can find there a extended version.

Ultra-Fast Dynamics Imaging

2009-05-07T09:20:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is Camilo Ruiz and i am special correspondent sent to the island of Ischia close to Naples Italy for the conference Ultra-Fast Dynamics Imaging celebrated from 30/04 - 03/05 in 2009.

This small workshop was organized by the local group at University of Naples and many of the most important players in the attosecond science were invited to participate. While attosecond is all about precious stability only achieved in well equipped and rich labs, everybody was happy to be invited to the southest part of Europe, where the sun is always there and there is not much of a rush, so we had a perfect combination.

The full program of the conference as well as the book of abstract can be found in the conference web page , i will instead point out some of the topics that i liked more together with some references.

On wednesday 29th, we had several good results. From the University of Frankfurt, Reinhard Dörner presented a paper on "Inteference and electron entanglement in photoionization of H2 and N2", this work is published in Science recently and explore the question of electron localization: When a diatomic molecule absorb a big photon a hole is produce because a k-shell electron is ionized, but then the question is weather the hole created is localized or not. In the case of the hole being localized, the electron hole should hope in 20 fs, later in time an Auger electron should be emitted to fill the hole. If this electron is emitted from one electron only, it should be diffracted but if it is not localized, probably the diffraction will be vanished.

Quotimg the reference: "Whether the core hole is better thought of as being localized or delocalized depends on the direction in which the photoelectron or Auger electron is emitted. Detecting the direction of the photoelectron in the experiment selects between cases in which the transient core hole is best described by a delocalized state of g or u symmetry, and other cases for which it is more appropriate to think of a localized hole. This situation can be described by a coherent superposition of gerade and ungerade states, or alternatively by a superposition of states corresponding to a hole on the left and one on the right."

Certainly there is more to it, as the enviroment breaks this description, but as expected the answer is very quantum like. These are beautiful experiments which don't even need a fast pulse, these are synchrton radiation only. Will time might play a role? Lets find a 419 eV photons in a short pulse to answer that.

The gropu of Garching talked about the new set of experiments in solid interfaces, these are very interesting results, more interesting is the new rout of this leading lab which will concentrate on multiple streaking. As this is something i am also doing i will not mention anything more about it. But try this paper.

These are just two talks, so you can imagine the number of things happening. The next message might be about the new XFELs around the globe.

First light from world's first hard X-ray laser

2009-04-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, it was published that the the world's first X-ray laser (LCLS) has achieved "first light".

When fine tuning is complete, the LCLS will provide the world's brightest, shortest pulses of laser X-rays for scientific study. As tool for studying the arrangement of atoms in materials, this source will find a wide range of applications in science.

(I love this video, you can really feel the passion of these scientists for their work)

But do you know how it works?

Imagine an accelerated electron bunch which goes through a sinusoidal transverse magnetic field. It will experience a force given by F=q(E+vxB) (Lorentz's force) and thus the trajectory will be sinusoidal too; if the trajectory is a curve, the electrons suffer centripetal acceleration. As it is well known, a charged accelerated particle emits radiation (Lienard-Wiechert). In the Spring-8 website, you can download a program to simulate the radiation emitted by an electron in different magnetic fields.

Due to the electron-radiation interaction, the electrons form electron bunches which emit coherently and the intensity is increased.

These systems are called free electron lasers (FEL); they consist on an accelerator (formed by klystrons which deliver microwave radiation to accelerate the electron and a resonator) and a ondulator (a periodic structure of magnets to produce the sinusoidal transverse magnetic field).

The main problem of these facilities is the size and cost.
Another approach to get X-rays is based on high power lasers: instead of the accelerator, a high-power laser accelerates the electrons which go later through the ondulator. This implementation leads to a reduction of energy and size (in fact, these systems are called Table-Top XFEL).

Prof. Sánchez Ramos awarded Best Invention of the Year

2009-04-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

Spanish researcher Professor Celia Sánchez Ramos, has been awarded in Geneva with a prize for the Best Invention of the Year given by the World Intellectual Property Organisation.
Prof. Sánchez Ramos, who is a researcher at the Complutense University in Madrid (UCM), invented a light filter for contact lenses to protect the retina and prevent blindness.
Between 15% and 20% of the light spectrum consists of harmful colours for us (blue and violet), which destroy the retina neurons leading to a degeneration into the macula (DMAE); the fovea, a part of the retina structure, protects us from these colours. Prof. Sánchez Ramos proved that this part of the spectrum could be blocked by inserting a yellow filter into the lenses.
In spite of being yellow, the lens does not vary the perception of the person.
To test the efficiency of the lens, the researcher carried out a experiment with rats exposed to different light types and rabbits which had been previously operated for cataracs.
Nowadays, the UCM is carrying out a clinic trial in 23 hospitals with people operated for cataracs.

Michelson interferometer

2009-04-14T15:27:00.001-07:00

Maybe you have ever heard that "light+light=darkness". Today, we will try to explain this and build a home-made Michelson interferometer to prove it.

Interferences

In physics, we define an interference as the superposition of two or more waves. Depending on the kind of wave, the pattern is different: for example, the interference of two spherical waves is a pattern of rings, while the pattern for plane waves are fringes.

But, why don't we see this phenomenon if we switch on two lamps?

Well, it has to do with the "coherence": for a simple explanation, we could translate this in waves coming from the same source or having nearly the same frequency. It is also possible to get them with non-monochromatic waves, but in these case they have to have the same range of wavelengths and same phase differences for each wavelenght (for instance, you can see interferences from sunlight when there is oil on a road).

Michelson interferometer

In the picture below, you can see what is called Michelson interferomter.

Let's explain how it works: coherent light emitted from a source (for example, a laser or a sodium lamp) travels up to a beamsplitter (BS), a device capable of dividing a beam into two beams (it is basically a glass with one of its surfaces partially reflective). From there, one of the beams goes to a first mirror (M1) where it is reflected; the same happens to the second beam. In the beamsplitter they meet again and travel together to the observation screen. Notice that there is an adittional glass (the blue one in the figure) to compensate the paths (the first beam goes twice through the beamsplitter and the second one just once).

In the following film from the Celtic Mad Scientist you can learn how to build your own Michelson interferometer, as well as applications and a detailed description of the setup:

For students of advanced levels, you should notice that if the interferometer was perfectly align you would get the interference of two plane waves with the same propagation vector (as they should be pararell) and thus there should not be interference fringes! Obviously, it is not the case here: since it is not perfectly aligned, there is a slighty angle between the two beams that allows you to see the fringes.

As curiosity you should know that, together with Edward Morley, Abraham Michelson tried to demonstrate with this system the existence of the "ether" in 1887. In the 19th century, it was believed that the Earth was surronded by a gas called ether. Michelson and Morley wanted to measure the speed of the Earth with respect to the ether. This movement will produce a wind and, since the light propagated through the ether, the speed of light would be different depending on the propagation direction. In one of the interferometer arms, the light would propagate in the same direction as the wind, but in the other one would propagate against the wind and thus more slowly.

However, they did not find any differences; the "failure" of the experiment showed the non-existance of ether and the propagation of light in vacuum.

In this link, you can find an interactive movie where you can reproduce the experiment and in the AIP Center for History of Physics you can download the original article.

How to measure the speed of light with a liquorice stick

2009-04-12T16:08:00.000-07:00

Try the following experiment at home (all you need is a liquorice stick and a microwave oven):

Can you guess why the value you have calculated is the speed of light?
First of all, let's explain how the microwave oven works.

The oven acts as a cavity for the waves; thus, the waves are no longer travelling waves, but standing waves.

As you can see in the video, the amplitude remains zero at some points which are separated half wavelenght. For this reason, the stick is not burnt at these points.

Since the speed of light is the product of the frequency (given by the oven specifications) by the wavelength, which can be deduced from the distance between two non-burnt points, it is easy to get a good approximation for it.

This experiment has been adapted from "Cuaderno de bitácora estalar"

Funny webs for funny science

2009-03-31T14:57:00.000-07:00

Surfing into the net today, I have found two very amusing web sites that I strongly recommend you to visit.

The first one, "The Naked Scientists", is, in their own words, "group of physicians and researchers from Cambridge University who use radio, live lectures, and the Internet to strip science down to its bare essentials, and promote it to the general public". Simply wonderful.
The second one is "Cuaderno de bitácora estelar", by D. Barrado and B. Montesinos; it is a blog where interesting topics related with science and astrophysics fare presented so that everybody can understand them.

Enjoy them!

Laser cooling

2009-03-30T14:53:00.000-07:00

If you want to know what laser cooling is, Nobel Laureate Steven Chu delivers a Lecture at UC Berkeley under the title "Laser cooling: from atomic clocks to watching biomolecules" that you can watch here:

The dancer

2009-03-23T16:27:00.001-07:00

In which way is the woman dancing? Clockwise or anti-clockwise? Sure?
It spins in the way you want to!
Don't you trust us?
Think about the fact that the image is not a tridimensional (since it is on your PC screen, it can just have two dimensions), so it can not have a rotational movement. If you want to see it spinning on the other way, have a look for one moment to the other side of the screen.
But why do you see in one or the other way?
The image has been extracted from an austrilian newspaper:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html
As it is explained here, it could depend on which side of your brain you use more.

Transverse modes

2009-03-19T15:26:00.000-07:00

Have a look at this video:

What you are watching here are acoustic harmonics (pay attention to the way they change depending on the sound frequency). The acoustic waves produce vibrations on the table which are proportional to the the intensity pattern.

In a very simple model, a laser can be described as a cavity with an active medium inside. The field pattern measured in a perpendicular plane to the cavity is the so called transverse mode. They depend on the cavity geometry.

Some examples:

They are denoted by TEMplq, where p is the number of radial zero fields, l is the number of angular zero fields and q is the number of longitudinal fields. The TEMoo is usually preferred as it is easier to be focused.

T. Maiman, inventor of the laser

2009-03-17T15:13:00.000-07:00

In the CD player, in the pointer, in the printer, in the industry, in surgery... lasers are everywhere!

But do you know who was the person who developed the first laser?

As you will have already deduced from the title of this post, his name was Theodore Maiman.

Let's find out something more about him.

He was born in 1927 in Los Angeles. He inherited the liking for engineering from his father, who worked as electronics engineer and inventor.

He studied engineering physics at the University fo Colorado, where he got his BsC degree in 1949. Two years later he attended Stanford University and earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering and then a doctorate in physics in 1955.

In 1953, C. Townes together with J. P. Gordon and H. J. Zeiger, had invented the maser ("microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation"); two years later, inspired by this development and the basis set by C. Townes and A. Schawlow, Maiman built the ruby laser, considered to be the first functioning laser, in 1960, while working at Hughes Aircraft Company.

If you feel curiosity, you can download the original patent (US3353115) here: http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=3353115

In 1962, he founded his own enterprise, Korad Corporation, to manufacture lasers; six years later he sold it to Union Carbide and established a new corporation, Maiman Associates.

Among the awards he received throughout his career, he was given the Japan Prize.

He died in 2007 in Vancouver.

PS: Maiman was not given the Nobel Prize (even though he was twice nominated)... surprising, isn't it?