LCLS: Ultrafast Science

Philip Bucksbaum (SSRL)

This lecture is available for online viewing.

28 June 2005

Everyone knows that lasers can be bright. From Goldfinger to Star Wars, intense lasers carry a "death ray" reputation in popular culture. But what is intense light, anyway? How can you even make or direct something that will blast to smithereens any material that it encounters? And how can something as ephemeral as a ray of light turn into an irresistible force? Is there an ultimate intensity, a brightest light? We'll answer these questions, and more.

About the Speaker

2004-2005 Sabbatical:  Visiting Scholar, Stanford Department of Applied Physics and Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory.

Permanent Position: Otto Laporte Collegiate Professor of Physics, University of Michigan;  Director of FOCUS, the  NSF Center for the Advancement of Frontiers in Optical Coherent Ultrafast Science; Editor of VJUltrafast, the APS Virtual Journal of Ultrafast Science.

Previous career and education:

• 9/90-8/98 Professor of Physics, University of Michigan.
• 11/82-8/90 Principal Investigator Member of Technical Staff, Physics Research Division, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 07974.
• 1/89-8/90 Adjunct Associate Professor of Applied Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.
• 8/80-11/82 Post-doctoral research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ 07733, and at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, Berkeley, CA 94720.
• Ph.D. (1980) and M.A. (1978) in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.
• A.B. (1975) magna cum laude in Physics, Harvard College, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Honors

• Member, National Academy of Sciences, 2004.
• Michigan Sokal Award for Research, 2001.
• Distinguished Traveling Lecturer, APS Division of Laser Science, 1996-97.
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, 1996-97.
• Michigan Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, 1996.
• Visiting Miller Professor, University of California at Berkeley, 1996.
• Fellow of the American Physical Society, 1990.
• Fellow of the Optical Society of America, 1995.
• NSF Graduate Fellowship, 1975-78

Current Service (partial list)

Chairman of National Academy Decadal Study on AMO Phyiscs; Divisional Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters for the Laser Science Division; member of the Physics Today Advisory Committee; Chairman, APS Nominating Committee.

Research Interests

I am an atomic physicist. My main research interest is fundamental light-matter interactions, and especially the control of quantum systems using ultrafast laser fields. I develop new sources of ultrafast laser light in the infrared, visible, ultraviolet,  and x-ray regions of the light spectrum.