KM Group

I currently work in the lasers team in the Kapteyn-Murnane (KM) Group at the University of Colorado at Boulder. We build high-power laser systems with ultrashort pulses, focusing on laser stability over the course of hours or days.

My projects so far (in chronological order)

FROG pulse characterization

Gabiscope microscope

I built a small, lightweight microscope with an adjustable height and angle that can be positioned over critical areas of the beamline. It has a resolving power of 20 microns. The biggest challenge of this project was just building out the base and the arm that hangs over the experiment, so that it's stable, adjustable, and small enough that we can squeeze it in between other optics on the table.

Multi-pass cell

I built a Herriott-style multi-pass cell to take advantage of nonlinear self-compression to shorten a laser pulse. Check out the project page here.

Current projects

Crystal metallization

I'm working with the Keck Lab at CU Boulder to develop a process for coating crystals in metal. Crystals need to be kept cold (if not, thermal effects can distort the laser passing through), so we mount them in thermally conductive metal blocks and cool the blocks. But metals often have different thermal expansion rates than the crystals mounted within, so the crystals need to be coated in thin layers of squishy metal to ensure a thermal connection with their mount.

High-harmonic generation

Labmate Will Hettel and I have been working to optimize high-harmonic generation, to upconvert mid-IR laser light to bright, coherent soft x-ray wavelengths. We've had huge successes with our 3 μm wavelength system in the past year; stay tuned for an upcoming paper detailing those results!