talk: Modeling the dynamics of pulsed optical fiber lasers that rely on nonlinear polarization rotation

CSEE Colloquium

Modeling the dynamics of pulsed optical fiber lasers that rely on nonlinear polarization rotation

Brian Marks
Research Scientist
UMBC Computational Photonics Laboratory

1 pm Friday, 2 November 2012, ITE 227, UMBC

Ultrashort pulse lasers are important tools in time and frequency metrology, atomic spectroscopy, and medical applications. Passively modelocked fiber lasers are short pulse lasers that have many advantages over non-fiber alternatives — particularly size, weight, and cost. However, fiber lasers can drift due to environmental changes and changes in fiber properties, making robustness a problem. Although fiber modelocked lasers have been studied for decades, until recently modeling these devices has primarily been phenomenological. In this talk, I will discuss how passively modelocked fiber lasers work, improvements in the modeling effort in recent years, challenges for their robustness, and possible improvements for robustness based on our modeling work.

Brian Marks is a research scientist in the computational photonics laboratory at UMBC. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University, and B.S.'s in Math and Physics from N. C. State University. He was at UMBC from 2000–2005 in the computational photonics lab, then taught math and statistics at Indiana University in Bloomington for several years, and is now back at UMBC. His research interests include modeling and simulation of photonics and communications systems.

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