KM Lab

I currently work in the lasers group 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

Stage mount stability testing

I routed a portion of the power from a main laser beamline through a compressor system with a new type of stage mount. We wanted to use the new mounts for a more stable system, but we weren't sure how they would hold up over the course of a few hours. I used a camera at the output to track how much the beam wiggled around coming out of the compressor. In the end, the standard deviation was less than 1% of the spot size--fantastic!

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.

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.

Herriott cell

I'm building a Herriott cell to take advantage of nonlinear self-compression to compress a laser pulse.