This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Optics and optical tools have played a key role in the scientific development over the last century. In this project, the next generation of optical tools is developed. Specifically, a method to construct the world's first arbitrary optical waveform generator is studied. This is a device that will generate millions of lasers (each with a different color) simultaneously, covering infrared, visible, and ultraviolet spectral regions. Highly coherent molecular vibrations and rotations are utilized to generate these lasers. Constructing an arbitrary optical waveform generator has been one of the biggest challenges since the invention of the laser in 1960.
Once constructed, such a device will have important applications in broad areas with a large impact on society: (1) By combining all the lasers with different colors, flashes of light whose duration is shorter than a femtosecond (a billionth of a millionth of a second) can be synthesized. As a result, ultrafast electronic processes that occur on these time scales can be probed and understood. With this new understanding, new devices with possible applications in fiber optic communication systems may be constructed. (2) By using all these lasers with different colors, a large number of atomic and molecular species can be investigated simultaneously. Chemical structures of complex molecules, including biological molecules such as proteins, can be much better understood. (3) Using arbitrary optical waveforms, certain chemical reactions can be laser controlled with a precision that has never been achieved before. As a result, specific chemical products (such as drugs) may be synthesized much more efficiently.
