Posts Tagged Institute of Optics

University of Rochester doctoral graduate Donna Strickland ’89 (PhD) and former optics faculty member Gérard Mourou shared the Nobel Prize in Physics today for work they undertook at the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. Their breakthrough paved the way for the creating very short and very intense laser pulses now used in a variety of applications, from LASIK eye surgery to the manufacturing of materials used in cell phones.

For 90 years physicists have known that incompatibly opposite properties are inherent in all elementary particles. Now Rochester researchers say they’ve resolved this weird and inescapable wave-particle duality.

John Tarduno has been awarded the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professorship, and Thomas Eickbush and James Zavislan are recipients of the Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professorship.

A University of Rochester research team has devised a much simpler way to measure beams of light—even powerful, superfast pulsed laser beams that require very complicated devices to characterize their properties.

Joseph Marron ’86, an alumnus of the Institute of Optics, has more than 20 patents to his credit. But his latest, for a new way to obtain real-time readings from large laser radars, has special significance.

Optical physics and quantum optics will have a profound effect on our daily lives in the decades to come, and two Rochester faculty are among the authors of a new survey of the biggest scientific challenges and questions in the field.

Wolf served on the Rochester faculty for more than 50 years and was a leading expert in coherence and polarization of optical fields. His Principles of Optics is the most cited textbook in physics.

University Research Awards for 2018-19 have been awarded to 15 projects ranging from an analysis of the roles of prisons in the Rochester region, to a new approach to genome editing, to new initiatives for advanced materials for powerful lasers.

Lenses and mirrors with freeform rather than symmetric can lead to optical devices that are more effective than ever before. A new design method would eliminate the expensive trail-and-error needed to work with freeform optics.

Rochester researchers have been using lasers to change the properties of metals in incredible ways. But to make the technology commercially viable, a partnership between scholars and business will focus on making the lasers much more powerful.