 Computational Photonics Laboratory
Dr. Jerome Moloney. Located at
the Arizona Center for Mathematical Sciences in the University of Arizona’s
Economics Building, this research computing laboratory contains an in-house
22-CPU Silicon Graphics ONYX2 supercomputing platform with two dedicated high
speed graphics pipes for large scale interactive simulation and visualization.
The laboratory also houses a distributed 1 Gbit optical fiber-linked, 1.3 GHz PC
Linux cluster of 8 PCs. The laboratory provides a powerful interactive
environment for the study and optimization of complex geometry high power diode
lasers, simulation of high power femtosecond pulse propagation in nonlinear
optical materials and optical propagation in nanoscale integrated optical
circuits including photonic Bragg structures.
Semiconductor Optics and Photonics Computing Program
Dr. Rolf Binder. Semiconductors
are a central part of the ongoing and future revolution in opto-electronics. A
detailed understanding of the microscopic processes in semiconductors, which
determine both their linear and nonlinear optical response characteristics, is
the focus of the Theoretical Semiconductor Optics and Photonics Group. The
research topics under investigation span a variety of issues. With regard to ultrafast (femtosecond) processes in semiconductors, an important issue is
whether semiconductors exhibit nonlinear optical coherence properties similar to
those of atoms. While atoms are simple optical systems with "nice" nonlinear
coherent effects, semiconductors, being mechanically robust solid materials, are
better suited for device applications. However, optical nonlinearities,
including nonlinear coherent optical effects, are strongly influenced by
many-particle effects such as scattering of electrons in the semiconductor as
well as more complicated quantum mechanical electronic correlations. Starting
from the Hamilton operator characterizing the coupled semiconductor-light system
and numerically solving the corresponding equations of motion, such as Green’s
functions equations of motion or density matrix equations, we investigate
fundamental many-particle effects in semiconductor quantum wells, semiconductor microcavities and other relevant semiconductor systems.
Femtosecond Ti: Sapphire Laboratory
Dr. Axel Schulzgen. A dual
color femtosecond laser system provides extremely short and very intense optical
pulses to study the dynamics of optical excitations and nonlinear optical
properties on a very short time scale.
 The femtosecond pulses can be tuned
between 300 nm and 3000 nm. Researchers apply femtosecond laser spectroscopy to
investigate a variety of advanced materials and develop new concepts for
optoelectronic devices. Current research areas include coherent dynamics in
semiconductor nanostructures, fast optical nonlinearities in glasses doped with
semiconductor quantum dots, nonlinear optical response of transition metal
oxides and the propagation of intense femtosecond pulses through nonlinear
materials.
This
research is partially supported by TRIF, Arizona’s Technology & Research
Initiative Funding enterprise:
http://www.optics.arizona.edu/TRIF.
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