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Optical
Pulse Shaper ... Sorry, what?!?!
Dane
Austin
Today,
I completed construction of an optical pulse shaper, a device
which allows me to exercise individual control over the velocity
and intensity of all the colours in a single pulse of light.
Using diffraction gratings, I can disperse the light into
its constituent wavelengths, in the same way a rainbow spreads
out all the colours in white light from the sun. The pulse
shaper will allow me to produce complicated and arbitrarily
shaped bursts of light which can then be injected to a fibre
to create new nonlinear effects.
The complete setup is shown below.
I built the pulse shaper as part of my PhD in nonlinear and
ultrafast optics – the study of short intense pulses of light
and how they interact with matter. Ultrafast optics has many
applications including telecommunications and medical imaging.
My job involves practical work such as building the setup
above as well as theoretical analysis and mathematics to understand
it!
Why did I choose this science, and this topic in particular?
Science requires you to use all of your talents to the fullest.
You need to be creative, to come up with new ideas, and also
critical, because scientists must be precise and careful.
You need to be able to think analytically and mathematically,
and yet also communicate in an informative and entertaining
manner, both orally and on paper. In experimental physics
especially, you need to think abstractly, like in mathematics,
and practically, like in woodwork! There is never a dull moment!
Dane Austin |
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