Laureate
Prof. Dr. Majid Ebrahim-Zadeh, ICFO-Institute of Photonic Sciences, ICREA-Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies & Radiant Light S.L., Spain
Subject
"Femtosecond Light Source Spanning from the Ultraviolet to Infrared"
|
|
 |
| Prof. Dr. Majid Ebrahim-Zadeh |
|
| | “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Despite the fact that physically black is not a color but the absence of light, the attitude expressed in this famous quote, allegedly by Henry Ford, fits well when it comes to the availability of colors of laser light. They are determined by existing types of lasers. |
|
|
Being monochromic is an elementary property of laser light. Unfortunately the laser principle usually does not allow simply attaching a dial on the laser to select a single pure output color. It is a property of the specific laser active material. In fact, the situation of laser customers is worse than those of the historic Ford T-Model since their choice is restricted by material science and not simply by the decision of the supplier. | |
 |
| Ebrahim-Zadeh at an experiment together with a student. |
|
|
|
Ford introduced different colors after ten years, and so did scientists by finding new laser active material systems. Some of them even featuring tunability over a specific range of wavelengths. Today, users can – and have to – choose laser types from a complex matrix of laser light sources regarding the ‘color’ or a range of tunability, maximum output power, beam and pulse properties, cost, system complexity and commercial availability.
|
 |
| In the center of it all is an optically non-linear crystal that can divide one photon into two. |
|
| | The search for the right femtosecond laser system has been simplified since 2007 when the spin-off company Radiantis, founded by Professor Majid Ebrahim-Zadeh close to Barcelona, Spain, introduced a new tunable femtosecond laser light source. A single device with a computer-controlled tunable output covers the unprecedented wide range of wavelengths from the infrared all over to the ultraviolet, including the complete visible range. |
|
Not only the large spectrum is appealing. The source also fills the important gap of tunable femtosecond laser light in the visible spectrum, which is very important for applications in biophotonics and spectroscopy.
Pivotal to the success is a new nonlinear crystal applied in optical parametric conversion, frequency doubling and tripling. These processes allow modification of the wavelength of the light generated by a titan-sapphire-laser. The research on application of the new crystal had been conducted by Dr. Masood Ghotbi at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona (ICFO), as a PhD student of Ebrahim-Zadeh. Working for more than 20 years in the field of nonlinear optics, Ebrahim-Zadeh has been a professor at the ICFO since 2002. As co-founder, Dr. Sara Otero developed the business plan for the company. Today she is the CEO of Radiantis. Four years of development and research by Dr. Michael Yarrow, R&D Engineer at Radiantis from 2006 to 2010, Ebrahim-Zadeh and the technical team finally led to the successful transfer from scientific research to a commercial turnkey tabletop system now serving the scientific community and industry. |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
