Overview | Projects

The general research interest of our laboratory is to investigate the applications of ultrafast optical technology. This broad definition covers areas such as imaging, nonlinear optical engineering, and photonic devices. Our current research is focused on the development of spatially coherent but temporally incoherent optical information systems using white light laser (technically called "supercontinuum" ). Such white light can now be efficiently generated by propagating short laser pulses in a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber. The white light laser is very unique in that it has high spatial coherence but low temporal coherence.

High spatial coherence means that the white light can be focused to a tiny spot just like a laser beam and therefore probe a small object, and that it can also be collimated to a highly directional beam and therefore interact with a remote object. The low temporal coherence can be looked at from two different perspectives. If we look at the time domain picture, the white light laser is an excellent candidate for low coherence interferometric applications. On the other hand, if we look at the frequency (wavelength) domain picture, the abundance of wavelength channels brings unprecedented parallelism and versatility to optical information systems.

The white light laser presents us with exciting new opportunities to develop next generation optical information systems, and at the same time challenges in accommodating our system design to fully harness its power. Our laboratory is currently developing research programs to investigate such novel spatially coherent but temporally incoherent systems and their applications in imaging, spectroscopy, and optical communications.