Cornell Engineering

Many dramatic developments in science and technology have resulted from applications of the laser to fields of telecommunications, information processing, remote sensing, materials processing, and as a diagnostic tool in biology, chemistry, and physics. Applied Physics faculty members are at the leading edge of these laser-related areas. 

One such area is in the development and use of lasers that produce sub-100 femtosecond pulses (a femtosecond = 10 to the -15 second). New or improved sources of ultrashort pulses are under development, including high-power fiber-based lasers. Femtosecond sources have been used to monitor the course of chemical reactions, to observe molecular dynamics, to perform 3-D imaging of biological tissue, and to study carrier dynamics in semiconductors and for ultra-high-speed optoelectronics. Nonlinear propagation effects with femtosecond pulses are also the subject of extensive research, including the generation of spatio-temporal solitons (i.e., pulses propagated without diffracting in space or dispersing in time), fiber delivery of high power pulses, and laser filaments in condensed matter and gases.

World-leading efforts in optics at Cornell are also devoted to photonics including the use of nanostructures to enhance the interaction of light with matter for applications to ultrahigh-speed all-optical processing, frequency metrology, novel mid-infrared sources, and quantum information technology. For example, semiconductor quantum “dots” and defects are being investigated for potential development of highly broadband optical amplifiers, solar cells, and quantum computing and information processing. In addition, nonlinear optical processes in silicon nanostructures are being investigated to produce devices that can be used for high precision all-optical clocks and highly compact sources for mid-infrared optical spectroscopy.

Applied Physics faculty members are engaged in other cutting-edge research efforts in optics including three-dimensional biomedical imaging and controlling individual solid-state spins at the nanoscale.