Highly intense light beams undergo spatio-temporal evolution due to nonlinearities in the medium. We investigate numerically and experimentally how this behavior changes as a function of beam shapes in time as well as space. Using our new terawatt laser system we are currently investigating filamentation dynamics in air as well as bulk materials.
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Guiding and confining light in micro- and nano-scale devices can greatly enhance the efficiency and bandwidth of nonlinear optical interactions. We investigate sub-micron silica and silicon optical waveguides and resonators as nonlinear optical elements and develop wavelength converters, pulse compressors and amplifiers for all-optical processing.
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Hollow-core photonic crystal fibers offer low-loss guidance over long lengths in a single mode with very low nonlinearities. These fibers can be filled with atoms and molecules to greatly enhance their nonlinear interaction with light confined in the core. We demonstrate low-light level nonlinearities as well as enhance nonlinear interaction with weakly nonlinear materials.
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 Telecommunications at high bit-rates are limited in bandwidth by the need to convert the optical signals to electrical signals for packet routing and switching. We are developing all-optical techniques for packet header recognition, tunable delay buffering, and signal regeneration, and ultrafast signal processing. These techniques will eliminate the optical-to-electrical conversion bottleneck.
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