Dmitri Romanov
Temple University, PA·Physics
When an extremely intense laser pulse lasting only femtoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second) passes through a gas, its electric field can be as strong as the forces holding electrons to atoms. The pulse tears electrons away and leaves a narrow trail of partly ionized gas, called a filament wake channel.
- Fields
Physics
Chemistry
- Topics
femtosecond laser filamentation
ultrafast optics
strong-field ionization
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Develop a predictive model of filament channel formation in dense gases, driven by inverse Bremsstrahlung, impact ionization and collisional excitation, and use it to explore control of the channels through pulse shape.
- Trace how electrons, ions and excited atoms or molecules evolve in filament wake channels and ionization gratings, including Penning ionization (energy transfer between excited atoms) and dissociative recombination in molecular gases, using kinetic modeling.
- Calculate the dynamic polarizability and hyperpolarizability of ions left behind by the pulse, which describe how strongly their electrons respond to light, using the auxiliary-field approach and ab initio calculations. Use these to obtain evolving nonlinear refractive indices.
- Predict how probe pulses interact with wake channels, including patterns of molecular rotational revivals and controllable Rabi sideband emission, using density matrix calculations.
More about the research
This trail is a short-lived, unusual state of matter. It changes how later light pulses travel and interact with the gas. Understanding it matters for physics and chemistry, and for technologies such as remote lasing in the atmosphere and new sources of attosecond (a billionth of a billionth of a second) and X-ray pulses.
Why it matters
Better predictions of how laser-made plasma channels behave in gases could help develop remote lasing in the atmosphere and new sources of attosecond and X-ray pulses. The work also adds basic knowledge about intense laser-matter interactions that matters to physicists, chemists and coherent-control researchers designing experiments.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Diana Qiu
Yale University, CT·Physics·Early-career
Develop ab initio software built on the GW plus Bethe–Salpeter equation approach that calculates how electrons in chiral hybrid perovskites absorb left- versus right-circularly polarized light (circular dichroism).
Thomas Weinacht
Stony Brook University, NY·Physics
Generate octave-spanning ultra-broadband laser pulses through self-phase modulation in stretched hollow-core fibers, so the pulses are short enough to follow electron and nuclear motion in real time.
Heng Zuo
University of New Mexico, NM·Engineering·Early-career
Determine how ultrafast laser energy deposition, thermal confinement, chemical transformation, and stress development combine to convert preceramic polymers into polymer-derived ceramics.
The school
Temple University: 22 labs on PI Pages, $315M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.