Sunny Howard, DHil Atomic and Laser Physics
I’m a DPhil student in Peter’s group, working on the characterisation of ultrashort laser pulses, using hyperspectral imaging. I did my previous degrees at Nottingham.
By compressing light into incredibly short amounts of time (10-15 s), ultrashort pulses possess peak intensities that are some of the most extreme environments ever created by humanity. According to the fourier transform, as the pulse gets shorter in time, it becomes broader in spectrum. Due to the chromatic nature of optical elements, the spatial and spectral profiles of the pulse can become coupled. This can lengthen the pulse temporally and can decrease peak intensity. Furthermore, these couplings are invisible to the majority of existing characterisation devices. The ones that can measure them generally require hundreds of shots to characterise the laser, taking up valuable experimental resources (the fire rate of this class of laser is typically ~1Hz).
My project works on developing a highly robust method to characterise the laser pulse in a single shot. To do this we utilise the hyperspectral imaging technology developed by another of Peter’s students, Robin Wang.
My project is co-supervised by Dr Andreas Döpp who is based at LMU Munich, which is the home to a Petawatt laser (ATLAS 3000). I will spend most of the third year of my DPhil working in Munich at this facility. I am very kindly supported by Living Optics and a DAAD research scholarship.
Email:
sunny.howard@physics.ox.ac.uk
Oxford Physics Page: https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/howards