The Optical Society of America (OSA), the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), and the Australian Optical Society (AOS) have combined to sponsor the short courses at ACOLS 2001. Reduced registration fees are available for members of these societies.

The SPIE and the OSA have also offered a student prize. Click here for more information.

Two exciting short courses are being presented as part of ACOLS 2001. Each course is conducted by a leader in the relevant field and provides the opportunity to gain insights only an expert can impart.

Numbers are strictly limited, so early registration is advisable.

Short Course Fee Information (click here)

These courses are each anticipated to run for half a day and to be presented consecutively on Friday 7 December 2001.

Infrared (IR) fiber optics transmitting wavelengths beyond 2 mm are useful in sensor, IR laser power delivery, and fiber amplifer applications. This course will provide attendees a basic understanding of the three categories of IR fibers; fluoride and chalcogenide glass fibers, poly and single-crystalline fibers, and hollow waveguides. Specifically, the course will cover IR fiber fabrication techniques, including drawing and extrusion, the optical and mechanical properties of fibers, and current and future applications of these unique fibers. Emphasis will be placed on the IR optical materials that have today been fabricated into the best IR fibers. In particular, the best glass fibers are made from the heavy metal fluoride and chalcogenide glasses while the polycrystalline silver halide and single-crystal sapphire materials have been fabricated into the most promising crystalline fibers. Hollow waveguides with metallic/dielectric coatings and new IR photonic bandgap structures will also be discussed. Finally, many examples will be given of the use of IR fibers in sensor applications, such as chemical analysis, radiometry, and imaging, laser power delivery for laser surgery and industrial cutting and welding, and IR fiber amplifiers.

This course will enable you to:

• learn about the different types of IR fiber optics
• develop an understanding of the fundamental loss mechanisms in IR fibers
• compare the advantages and disadvantages of one IR fiber type over another as it relates to a particular application
• learn about the wide variety of IR fiber applications
• design a specific IR fiber system for your application

Anyone interested in learning about this emerging specialty fiber field. This includes engineers, scientists, optical designers, and those interested in adapting IR fiber optics in their systems. Learn the differences between these unique fibers and the traditional silica fibers so that you will know what to realistically expect from current IR fiber technology.

James A. Harrington is Professor of Ceramic & Materials Engineering within the Fiber Optic Materials Research Program at Rutgers University in Piscataway, NJ. Dr. Harrington's basic research interests are in the area of optical properties of solids with emphasis on IR fibers. Since 1977, he has worked on all aspects of IR fibers including fabrication, optical and mechanical characterization, and many different applications. His current research interests include the development of special fiber optics for use in the delivery of laser power in surgical and industrial applications and for use as chemical and thermal fiber sensors. Currently he is developing new hollow waveguides based on photonic bandgap structures.

To measure an event in time requires a shorter one. As a result, the development of a technique to measure ultrashort laser pulses - less than 10^-12 seconds long and the shortest events ever created - has been particularly difficult. We have, however, recently developed a simple method for fully characterizing these events, that is, for measuring a pulse's intensity and phase vs. time.

This method relies on two seemingly unrelated ideas:

1. the concept of the musical score and
2. the fact that the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra fails in two dimensions.

Specifically, an optical analog of a musical score of the pulse is produced by measuring its spectrogram. And the mathematics involved is equivalent to the two-dimensional phase-retrieval problem--a problem that is solvable only because the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra fails in two dimensions. We call the method Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating (FROG), and it is simple, rigorous, intuitive, and general. It can measure pulses in all spectral ranges, on a single-shot basis, and over a wide range of energies.

FROG has been used to measure pulses as short as 4.5 femtoseconds (4.5 x 10^-15 sec). Recent work involves measuring the most complex pulses ever measured (with time-bandwidth products of >1000) and the development of the world's simplest pulse measurement device, which has no beam splitter, delay line, thin nonlinear crystal, or spectrometer, and it has no sensitive alignment parameters. This course will discuss these and other techniques for measuring ultrashort pulses, as well as their applications to important problems, such as coherent control of chemical reactions.

This course will enable participants to:

• Measure the intensity and phase of an ultrashort laser pulse.
• Verify that such a measurement is correct.
• Measure few-femtosecond pulses.
• Measure extremely complex pulses.
• Explain the fundamental mathematics and physics behind these methods.
• Measure extremely weak pulses.
• Measure ultrafast polarization variation.
• Determine which technique is right for your application.

This course is intended for anyone with an ultrashort laser pulse who would like to measure it. Anyone who would like to perform measurements of solids, liquids, gases, or plasmas would also find these techniques useful. This course is also intended for anyone who would like to see how to measure the shortest events ever created without using a shorter one.

Rick Trebino was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 18, 1954. He received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1977 and his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in 1983. His dissertation research involved the development of a technique for the measurement of ultrafast events in the frequency domain using long-pulse lasers by creating moving gratings. He continued this research during a three-year term as a physical sciences research associate at Stanford. During this time he was also the President of the Stanford Laser Consulting Group.

In 1986, he moved to Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California, where he studied higher-order wave-mixing, nonlinear-optical perturbation theory using Feynman diagrams, and ultrashort-laser-pulse techniques with application to chemical dynamics measurements and combustion diagnostics.

His latest work has been the development of Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating (FROG), the first technique for the measurement of the intensity and phase of ultrashort laser pulses. In 1998, he became the Georgia Research Alliance-Eminent Scholar Chair of Ultrafast Optical Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he currently studies ultrafast optics and applications.

Prof. Trebino has received several prizes, including the SPIE¹s Edgerton Prize, and he is currently an IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society Distinguished Lecturer. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America. His interests include adventure travel, archaeology, and primitive art.

Department of Physics, The University of Queensland
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 4072
Authorised by: Head of Department
©2000 The University of Queensland

Created by: Michael Harvey
E-mail: webmaster@physics.uq.edu.au
Modified: November 5, 2001
Legal notices                              Feedback