Modern Optics in the City of Light, a Collaborative REU Site in Paris

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a new international REU site hosted at the University of Michigan's Center for Ultrafast Optical Sciences (CUOS) with research opportunities at Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Nationale de Techniques Avancées (ENSTA), and the Institut d'Optique in Palaiseau, France. The students will be put into research teams that include 2 students, a faculty member at UM and a faculty member in one of the Parisian institutions. The students will spend one week in Ann Arbor, followed by 9 weeks in Paris. Each student will keep weekly on-line research diaries for discussion in weekly video teleconferences with each full group. A CUOS research scientist will accompany the students to Paris and stay for two weeks to ensure that the students get a good start. The students will be housed in a local dormitory in Ann Arbor and at the Cité Universitaire in Paris. The research in all projects will all involve the use of ultrafast lasers to discover very current, state-of-the art phenomena in a wide range of fields including; relativistic optics, plasma physics, materials spectroscopy, nanomachining, art restoration and conservation, patterned biological cell templating, high power fiber lasers, plasma x-ray sources, dynamics of nano-magnetic materials, terahertz imaging, biomedical imaging with shaped pulses, fatigue life studies of materials, etc. This award is co-funded by the Physics Division and the Office of International Science and Engineering.