What's New?

New content and hot topics in the JRM Lab.

Hot Topics

We have been granted funding from the Department of Defense under the Office of Naval Research. The grant, awarded to former K-State Physics assistant professor Carlos Trallero and current graduate research assistant Derrek Wilson, will fund research to study the interaction of intense, long-wavelength, short pulses with solids and molecules. In addition, the proposal will allow the development of new techniques for the characterization of short pulses in this spectral region. Learn more from the KSU press release.
Wednesday, 16 May 2018 is the International Day of Light. The UNESCO sponsored event provides an annual focal point for the continued appreciation of light and the role it plays in science, culture, art, and education. It will be celebrated by physicists attending CLEO that day, as well as in other OSA organized activities.
Following an internal search, the College of Arts and Sciences has named Kristan Corwin as the new associate dean for research. Since June 2017, Corwin has served as interim associate dean for research of the university's largest college, serving 22 academic departments, two ROTC programs, and two research centers. She succeeds Beth Montelone, who is now senior associate vice president for research. Corwin holds the rank of professor of physics and held the Ernest K. and Lillian E. Chapin professor in the Physics department. See more via the KSU press release.
Teams led by three Kansas State University researchers have been awarded National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grants. The grants will provide more than $2.5 million to advance understanding of lipids, agriculturally significant gases and nanoparticles, as well as student training and regional research capacity. One project was proposed by our own Kristan Corwin and Brian Washburn. Another comes from our frequent collaborator in the Chemistry department, Christine Aikens.
The latest edition of the Division of Laser Science newsletter is available.

Local Research in the News

The latest work by Uwe Thumm's group has been featured on the cover of the 01 June issue of Physical Review Letters. The paper is titled "Imaging plasmonic fields with atomic spatiotemporal resolution".
A recent Physical Review Letter by the Ben-Itzhak and Esry groups has been featured in the "Physics Update" section of the May Physics Today.
Derrek Wilson, a JRM doctoral student, was selected as the 2017 Ultrafast Optics XI Conference award winner in the Ultrafast Optical Phenomena Technical Group Outstanding Poster Presentation Award. Derrek presented his poster "Generating few-cycle pulses in the long wave infrared for use in strong field science" in Jackson, Wyoming, October 8-13. Derrek received a certificate as well as a monetary prize.
JRM graduate student Adam Summers was recently invited by the Department of Defense (DoD) to serve as a featured speaker at the inaugural Science, Technology, and Innovation Exchange (STIx) event. The event showcased the impacts made by DoD science and technology investments, outcomes, and innovations.
JRM researchers and their collaborators have published unexpected results in Nature. Press releases from K-State, DESY and SLAC all describe how "physicists create a 'molecular black hole' using ultra-intense X-ray pulses". Further popularizations can be found in Scientific American and Newsweek.
Photonics Online has named our invention of hollow-core fiber gas lasers as one of their "Top 10" news stories of 2016. See also the original story reports below.
See older press releases concerning ultrafast physics at JRM.

Web Site Updates

The new book Attosecond and Strong-Field Physics is our latest home page feature story. The book is published by Cambridge University Press and will be available in June from booksellers everywhere. CD Lin, Anh-Thu Le, Cheng Jin, and Hui Wei collaborated to produce the volume. Aimed at beginning graduate students, the book provides an intuitive approach to these emerging fields.
See all the latest news from the KSU Physics Department, including the latest edition of the departmental newsletter.