The 2018 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three physicists, Arthur Ashkin, Gerard Mourou, and Donna Strickland, for their innovative work to develop techniques that make lasers more widely applicable in everything from medicine to manufacturing.
Half of the prize is being shared by Mourou and Strickland for their invention of what is known as "chirped pulse amplification" (or CPA for short), a technique they developed together in the 1980s. Strickland was a graduate student at the University of Rochester at the time of this incredibly important work: CPA was the basis of her dissertation and their discovery was presented in her first ever scientific publication. Strickland became an inspiration in 2018 as only the third woman to ever be awarded the physics prize in the Nobel’s 117-year history after Marie Curie in 1911 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963.
What Is Chirped Pulse Amplification?
Chirped pulse amplification (or CPA) is a way of amplifying a laser pulse without destroying the amplifying medium, or, in other words, the material the laser pulse is traveling through, which in turn prevents further amplification.
You may recall from a previous episode that lasers are coherent beams of emission meaning that all of the light particles leave their source in unison and in one direction (as compared to a flashlight, for example, which sends out diffuse light in all directions). An ideal laser is also monochromatic, which means it emits only at one wavelength or frequency, and some laser applications require the laser be as close to single-color as physically possible. However, other applications, like those that require a tunable or ultrafast laser, use lasers with emission over a range of frequencies or colors, like the titanium-sapphire laser. In either case, the focused, high energy nature of lasers makes them ideal tools when precision is required, like for precise cuts in the human body or for...
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