Lasers and Optoelectronics (with Labs)
2009 Course Description

• June 22, Monday morning
  Fundamentals of Lasers, Prof. Carlos Stroud (Rochester):
  Basic principles of laser operation; optical amplification, threshold conditions, output power, optimum output coupling. Optical resonators: oscillation modes, stability conditions, propagation of Gaussian beams, techniques for analyzing and designing resonators.
  
  
• June 22, Monday afternoon
  Semiconductor Lasers and LED’s, Prof. Gary Wicks (Rochester):
  Survey of semiconductor materials for photonic device applications. Physics of photonic devices. Laser topics: thresholds, efficiencies and powers, wavelengths, spatial and spectral modes, modulation characteristics, edge emitters and surface emitters, single-element devices and arrays. LED topics: wavelengths and efficiencies.
  
  
• June 23, Tuesday morning
  Survey of Laser Systems, Prof. Carlos Stroud (Rochester):
  A general survey of the design, basic operating principles, and output characteristics of the most common laser systems. The lasers described will include gas lasers ranging from simple He-Ne lasers to large excimer and chemical lasers, pulsed and cw dye lasers, solid state lasers, and semiconductor lasers.
  
  
• June 23, Tuesday afternoon
  Optical Fibers and Fiber Lasers, Prof. John Marciante (Rochester):
  Properties of optical fibers: modes, dispersion, loss, nonlinearities. Fiber fabrication: methods and materials, types of fibers, fusion splicing. Fiber optic components: fiber Bragg gratings, fused couplers, photonic crystal fibers. Survey of fiber lasers including distributed feedback lasers, mode-locked lasers, dual-clad lasers, and cascaded Raman lasers.
  
  
• June 24, Wednesday morning
  Modern Laser Technology, Prof. Chunlei Guo (Rochester):
  This course will describe the principles of design and details of operation of a number of advanced laser systems for scientific and industrial applications. Examples include: high-power lasers, Q-switched lasers, and principles of mode locking and advanced mode-locked laser systems (including chirped-pulse amplification lasers).