- This event has passed.
Space Research at UCF: Peter Delfyett
September 27, 2022 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Photonics in Space Science – Can Ultrafast Photonic Technology Contribute?
Optical instruments have played an important role in observational astronomy and spectroscopy. Over the past many decades, advances in optical component technology has enabled a host of new approaches for observational astrophysics, both in capturing signals and in their subsequent processing and transmission. Simultaneously, there has been tremendous development in developing lasers that can generate a train of periodic optical pulses with a temporal duration of a few hundred femtoseconds with extreme temporal stability. This resulted in the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to T. Hansch and J. Hall for “the optical frequency comb”. Since that time, there has been considerable effort in miniaturizing these ‘table top’ lasers to be the size of a semiconductor microchip. In this talk, I will discuss compact ultrafast “chip-scale” optical frequency comb laser sources, and how the unique spectral and temporal properties of their output light may be useful in realizing new techniques and functionality for both ground and space based imaging and sensing systems, operating with high resolution.
About the Presenter
Peter Delfyett received the B.E.(E.E.) degree from The City College of New York (1981), the M.S. degree in EE from The University of Rochester (1983), the M. Phil and Ph.D. degrees from The Graduate School & University Center of the City University of New York (1988). He did his PhD work under the supervision of Prof. Robert Alfano, where his thesis focused on developing and utilizing a real time ultrafast spectroscopic probe to study molecular and phonon dynamics in condensed matter, using both supercontinuum and optical phase conjugation techniques. After obtaining the Ph.D. degree, he joined Bell Communication Research as a Member of the Technical Staff, where he concentrated his efforts towards generating ultrafast high power optical pulses from semiconductor diode lasers, for applications in ultra-wideband optical signal processing and communications. Some of his technical accomplishments were the development of the world’s fastest, most powerful mode-locked semiconductor laser diode, the demonstration of an optically distributed clocking network for high-speed digital switches and supercomputer applications, and the first observation of the optical nonlinearity induced by the cooling of highly excited electron-hole pairs in semiconductor optical amplifiers. In 1993, he moved to University of Central Florida, where he is University Distinguished Professor, Pegasus Professor and Trustee Chair Professor of Optics, ECE & Physics in CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, and is currently serving as the Director of the Townes Laser Institute. In 2003, Dr. Delfyett founded “Raydiance, Inc.” a spin-off company developing high power, ultrafast laser systems, based on his research, for applications in medicine, consumer electronics, defense, material processing, biotechnology, automotive and other key technological markets. He is a Fellow of the APS, IEEE, NAI, NSBP, OSA, and SPIE. He is also the recipient of the NSF PECASE Award, the APS Edward Bouchet Award, the Medalist from the Florida Academy of Science, the Townsend Harris Award, the IEEE Photonics Society’s William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, and the APS Arthur L Schawlow Prize in Laser Science. Most recently, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He has over 800 scientific publications, conference proceedings and invited presentations, and 45 US patents.
