Fields-Carleton Distinguished Lecture Series

Dr. Donna Strickland, CC

Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of  Waterloo
Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics 2018

Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. She was honored for her groundbreaking work in developing chirped pulse amplification alongside her PhD supervisor, Gérard Mourou. This pivotal research, published in 1985 while Strickland was a PhD student at the University of Rochester, laid the foundation for creating the most intense laser pulses ever developed.

Before joining the University of Waterloo in 1997, Strickland held various prestigious positions, including research associate at the National Research Council Canada, physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and technical staff member at Princeton University. At Waterloo, she leads an ultrafast laser group focused on developing high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics research.

Strickland’s accolades include being named a Companion of the Order of Canada, receiving a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Premier’s Research Excellence Award, and a Cottrell Scholar Award. She served as president of the Optical Society (OSA) in 2013 and is a fellow of both OSA and SPIE, as well as the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society. Additionally, she is an honorary fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Physics, and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Strickland holds a PhD in optics from the University of Rochester and a B.Eng. from McMaster University.

 Generating High-Intensity, Ultrashort Optical Pulses

Thursday, October 10, 2024
7 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.
Rooms 270-274, 275 Teraanga Commons
Carleton University

With the invention of lasers, the intensity of a light wave was increased by orders of magnitude over what had been achieved with a light bulb or sunlight. This much higher intensity led to new phenomena being observed, such as violet light coming out when red light went into the material. After Gérard Mourou and I developed chirped pulse amplification, also known as CPA, the intensity again increased by more than a factor of 1,000 and it once again made new types of interactions possible between light and matter. We developed a laser that could deliver short pulses of light that knocked the
electrons off their atoms. This new understanding of laser-matter interactions, led to the development of new machining techniques that are used in laser eye surgery or micromachining of glass used in cell phones.

REGISTER for PUBLIC LECTURE

We are pleased to announce that the lecture will be livestreamed on the Carleton Science YouTube channel for those unable to attend in person. Please note that the lecture will not be recorded for future viewing, so we encourage all interested participants to join the livestream at the scheduled time to engage with this exciting presentation in real-time.