ULTRASHORT PULSED LASER FOR RESEARCH ON QUANTUM CONFINED NANOMATERIALS, ENERGY TRANSFER, AND EXCITED STATE THERMODYNAMICS
Abstract
Equipment funds are requested to purchase a thermally stabilized, one-box femtosecond laser system that produces 100 femtosecond pulses with 7 milliJoule pulse energy at a 1 kilohertz repetition rate. Thermally stabilized, one-box laser systems provide high stability for both pulse energy and beam pointing for longer than 24 hours. This system will be installed in a laser laboratory being built for high environmental stability. The combined stability of laser system and laboratory will be used to dramatically enhance experimental capabilities for measuring ultrafast energy transfer processes and to enable measurements of the temperature dependence of thermodynamic free energies of electronically excited states. Such measurements would allow the first measurement of the entropies of electronically excited states. The measurements of excited state free energies may be used to evaluate the roles of incoherent non-equilibrium statistical mechanical and coherent quantum effects in disordered but highly efficient biological systems and their artificial mimics. Preliminary theoretical work suggests that the approach can be extended to measure non-equilibrium statistical mechanical entropies. Since quantum entropies evolve into statistical mechanical entropies through decoherence, and statistical mechanical entropies are proportional to classical information while quantum mechanical entropies are proportional to quantum information, powerful perspectives from quantum information theory might be brought to bear on photochemistry and photophysics through measurements enabled by this laser system. These measurements support efforts directed towards controlling energy transfer with two-dimensional nanomaterials in which the third dimension is only a few atomic layers thick. The energy transfer results may ultimately impact light harvesting and charge transport in photovoltaics, lighting, and lasers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 20, 2023
- Source ID
- FA95502210452
Entities
People
- David M. Jonas
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Regents of the University of Colorado
- United States Air Force