Nonlinear Optics

Catalog description

This course introduces nonlinear concepts applied to the field of optics. Students learn how materials respond to high intensity electric fields and how the materials response: enables the generation of other frequencies, can focus light to the point of breakdown or create waves that do not disperse in time or space (solitons), and how atoms can be cooled to absolute zero using a laser. Students will be exposed to many applications of nonlinear concepts and to some current research subjects, especially at the nanoscale. Students will also observe several nonlinear-optical experiments in a state-of-the-art photonics laboratory.