Welcome to the Georgia Center for Ultrafast Optics, directed by the Georgia Research Alliance-Eminent Scholar Chair of Ultrafast Optics, Prof. Rick Trebino, and located in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Funded by the Georgia Research Alliance, the National Science Foundation, and NASA, this Center develops state-of-the-art techniques in ultrafast optics and advanced polarimetry techniques. It is the world’s leading developer of techniques to measure the shortest events ever created, ultrashort laser pulses. It is also actively transferring this technology to the private sector, where it is finding widespread use in research labs throughout the world.

Background

To measure an event in time requires a shorter one. So how do you measure the shortest one? This is an important, long-unsolved, problem in ultrafast laser science, the science of ultrashort laser pulses—the shortest events ever created. And this is the type of problem considered—and solved—at the Georgia Center for Ultrafast Optics, which develops applications of and techniques for measuring these elusive events. These techniques have important applications in biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and telecommunications.

Purpose

Our purpose is to perform basic research in ultrafast laser physics. As a result, we are developing ever simpler devices for measuring ever more complex (and important) light pulses.  But any ideas that may be useful to society are pursued.  For example, we are also developing potentially foolproof methods for tagging bullets using ultrashort-laser-pulse micro-machining.

Research Areas

• Techniques for measuring ultraweak ultrashort laser pulses, such as fluorescence of biologically important molecules.
• The development of simple devices that completely determine an ultrashort laser pulse’s spatio-temporal properties.
• Advanced polarimetry techniques for application to drug development and for astrobiological applications to the search for life elsewhere in the universe.
• Science and technology for perhaps solving problems of society: ultrashort-laser-pulse micro-machining for tagging bullets.
   

GCUO Collaborators

• Professor Ali Adibi
  School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Georgia Tech
   
• Professor John Buck
  School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Georgia Tech
   
• Professor John M Dudley
  Université de Franche-Comté
  Besancon, France
   
• Dr. Michael Dudzik
  Director of Advanced Technology
  Georgia Tech Research Institute
   
• Professor Alexander Gaeta
  School of Applied and Engineering Physics
  Cornell University
   
• Professor Almantas Galvanauskas
  Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
  University of Michigan
   
• Professor Donald C. O'Shea
  School of Physics
  Georgia Tech
   
• Dr. Robert Windeler
  OFS Laboratories
   

What’s New in 2003

We have recently formed a company, Swamp Optics (which stands for Simply Wonderful Apparatus for Measuring Pulses, and so named because the devices it sells have the acronym, FROG), to produce ultrashort-laser-pulse measurement devices. This company has developed compact easy-to-use devices that measure the pulse’s intensity and color vs. time, the beam spatial profile, and spatio-temporal distortions (for example, these pulses can tilt, a distortion that can ruin an important measurement)—all measurement capabilities never before available.

Rick Trebino, Director and the Georgia Research Alliance-Eminent Scholar Chair of Ultrafast Optical Physics, School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology rick.trebino@physics.gatech.edu

The Georgia Center for Ultrafast Optics is a component of the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology