Plasma Optics for Novel Sources of Bright Light: Expanding the Frontiers of Achievable Light Intensities

Event Date/Time

Location

Bowen Hall

Series/Event Type

MAE Departmental Seminars

Plasma mirrors – microscopically small, momentary light reflectors formed by high-power laser beams irradiating and ionizing solid surfaces – are powerful photonic devices for manipulating light that is too intense to be handled by conventional optics. Not only can plasma mirrors redirect and focus high-power light, they can also serve as ultrafast nonlinear filters suppressing unwanted noise in pulsed laser beams, and as generators of a broad range of frequencies from terahertz to x-rays, potentially with properties that are beyond the reach of current light sources. Among the results obtained by our group in the last six years, the first generation of relativistic high-order harmonics from plasma mirrors at Princeton stands out because of its potential to become a novel compact soft x­ray source providing power as great as much larger accelerator facilities and useful for a vast range of applications that rely on x­ray light and will greatly benefit if more intense and shorter x­ray pulses are available. 

 

Speaker Bio

Dr. Julia M. Mikhailova is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany. She received her MS and PhD degrees in Physics from M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2003 and 2007, respectively. Dr. Mikhailova’s current research focuses on studies of light-matter interactions, ultrafast phenomena in materials and plasmas, ultrashort pulses of light, super-strong electromagnetic fields, and laser-produced plasmas. At Princeton, she is leading Extreme Light-Matter Interactions Laboratory.

Semester