Lasers have been around for over six decades. Since their invention, they have found their way into many applications that have changed our lives. Optical communications is of course one of them, and there are many that may surprise you. There is also still plenty of room to take laser performance to new heights, leading to even more new applications. In Episode 40, we continue our conversation with laser and optics expert Juliet Gopinath, Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Here she describes techniques she’s developed for creating femtosecond laser pulses, including phase locked laser arrays and time lensing. – Pat Chou, Cisco Optics Product Manager

Juliet Gopinath is the Alfred T. and Betty E. Look Professor of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering and Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She received her B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at MIT. She was a member of technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory from 2005 to 2009. Since then, she has led a research group at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her current research interests include ultrafast lasers, nonlinear optics, mid-infrared materials, spectroscopy, orbital angular momentum and adaptive optical devices. She has published 78 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 97 conference presentations. She is the recipient of an R&D 100 Award (2012) and is an Optica Fellow. She served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Photonics Society Journal (2011-2017), the Associate Director for Cubit (2019), and currently is an Associate Editor for Optica.

Take Juliet’s course on Active Optical Devices for free! https://www.coursera.org/specializations/active-optical-devices

Related links

Cisco Optics-to-Device Compatibility Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/

Cisco Optics-to-Optics Interoperability Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/iop

Cisco Optics Product Information: https://copi.cisco.com/

Additional resources

Cisco Optics Podcast: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticspodcast Cisco Optics blogs: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog (subscribe at https://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CiscoOpticsBlog )

Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen

Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics

Timestamps

2:59 Ultrafast (short pulse) lasers in semiconductors

5:51 Upper state lifetime

7:42 Two-photon absorption

10:01 Phase and frequency controlled laser array

12:04 Time lens

14:17 Electrically pumped ultrafast laser for neuroscientists

15:53 Difficulty of phase controlled laser arrays

17:06 Devices for time lensing

Music credits Sunny Morning by FSM Team | https://www.free-stock-music.com/artist.fsm-team.html Upbeat by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com