Donna Strickland
Donna Strickland, professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Waterloo, and Nobel laureate, Physics 2018, will present “From Nonlinear Optics to High-Intensity Laser Physics” at a Director’s Special Colloquium on Friday, Oct. 25, 2019, at 10:30 a.m. in the Building 402 Auditorium. All employees whose schedules permit are invited to attend.
Shuttle service will be provided starting at 9:45 a.m. One shuttle will start at Building 201 and another at Building 240, with continuous stops at Buildings 201, 212, 202, 203, 200, 205, 240, and 362 to the Building 402 Auditorium. Return trips will follow the talk.
Abstract
The laser increased the intensity of light that can be generated by orders of magnitude and thus brought about nonlinear optical interactions with matter. Chirped pulse amplification, also known as CPA, changed the intensity level by a few more orders of magnitude and helped usher in a new type of laser-matter interaction that is referred to as high-intensity laser physics. In this talk, I will discuss the differences between nonlinear optics and high-intensity laser physics. The development of CPA and why short, intense laser pulses can cut transparent material will also be included. I will also discuss future applications.
Biography
Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 for developing chirped pulse amplification with Gérard Mourou, her Ph.D. supervisor at the time. They published this Nobel-winning research in 1985 when Strickland was a PhD student at the University of Rochester in New York state. Together they paved the way toward the most intense laser pulses ever created. The research has several applications today in industry and medicine — including the cutting of a patient’s cornea in laser eye surgery, and the machining of small glass parts for use in cell phones.
Strickland was a research associate at the National Research Council Canada, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a member of technical staff at Princeton University. In 1997, she joined the University of Waterloo, where her ultrafast laser group develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations. She is a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Premier’s Research Excellence Award and a Cottrell Scholar Award. She served as the president of the Optical Society (OSA) in 2013 and is a fellow of OSA and SPIE (International Society for Optics and Photonics). Strickland is an honorary fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and holds numerous honorary doctorates. Strickland earned a Ph.D. in optics from the University of Rochester and a B.Eng. from McMaster University.