Wolf D. Seka

Senior Scientist and Associate Professor of Optics

Office: Laboratory for Laser Energetics 205
Phone: (585) 275-3815
E-mail: seka@lle.rochester.edu

Short Biography
Wolf Seka is a senior scientist at the Laboratory of Laser Energetics since 1977 and was Director of the Experimental Division at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics from 1997 to 2001. He holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor at The Institute of Optics. Dr. Seka received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1965. His research areas include visible and x-ray spectroscopy, plasma physics, and laser physics. Dr. Seka has contributed significantly to the design and testing of the LLE’s original OMEGA laser system and its conversion to a 2.5-kJ third-harmonic laser facility. He has used the LLE laser systems extensively to investigate nonlinear laser plasma interaction processes such as stimulated Raman and Brillouin scattering. In addition, Dr. Seka has lead the effort to optically characterize cryogenic laser fusion targets to determine the perturbations of the cryogenic D2 and DT ice layers inside the 1 mm diameter plastic target shells.

Research
More recently Professor Seka has been involved in medical optics. On a grant from the NIH-DIH to the Eastman Dental Center, he is co-investigator of interaction processes of lasers with dental hard tissue. He has also been collaborating with surgeons at the Rochester General Hospital. In addition, Professor Seka teaches a graduate/senior optics course in medical laser tissue interaction processes. Recent problems in optics studied by Professor Seka involve saturation dynamics of various solid active media as well as generation and propagation of Bessel beams.