Short Course in Laser by Professor Alain Aspect

Prof Alain Aspect, Honorary Doctor of Science of the University, Senior Fellow of Institute for Advanced Study and Visiting Distinguish Professor of the Department, has presented a short course in laser in CityU on 27th and 28th November 2018. The short course consisted of two public lectures – “Lecture 1: Principle of Lasers” and “Lecture 2: Laser: A Fascinating Non-Linear System”. The short course attracted over a hundred audiences from internal and other external institutions.

Since its invention in 1960, the laser has revolutionized both the study of optics and our understanding of the nature of light, prompting the emergence of a new field, quantum optics. Surprisingly enough, such quantum optics phenomena hardly existed at the time that the laser was invented, and almost all optics effects could be fully understood by describing light as a classical electromagnetic field; the laser was no exception. This short course is devoted to presentation of the semi-classical approach where only the amplifying medium is described as a quantum system. It is not intended to be a specialized course, and will emphasize general physical phenomena of which the laser behaviour is a remarkable example.

Lecture 1 on Principles of Lasers described the principle of the operation of lasers, their generic features and the specificity of the light they emit. Lecture 2 on Laser: A Fascinating Non-Linear System described how such a simple optical device can generate fascinating nonlinear phenomena at work in many different systems, not only in physics but in many other scientific fields and beyond.

Biography

Alain Aspect has held positions at Institut d'Optique, ENS Yaoundé (Cameroon), ENS Cachan, ENS/Collège de France, CNRS. He is currently a Professor at Institut d'Optique Graduate School (Augustin Fresnel chair), and at Ecole Polytechnique, in Palaiseau, where he teaches courses in quantum optics.

Please click http://www.lcf.institutoptique.fr/Alain-Aspect-homepage for details.