Andre D. Bandrauk – författare

Studying and using light or "photons" to image and then to control and transmit molecular information is among the most challenging and significant research fields to emerge in recent years. One of the fastest growing areas involves research in the temporal imaging of quantum phenomena, ranging from molecular dynamics in the femto (10-15s) time regime for atomic motion to the atto (10-18s) time scale of electron motion. In fact, the attosecond "revolution" is now recognized as one of the most important recent breakthroughs and innovations in the science of the 21st century. A major participant in the development of ultrafast femto and attosecond temporal imaging of molecular quantum phenomena has been theory and numerical simulation of the nonlinear, non-perturbative response of atoms and molecules to ultrashort laser pulses. Therefore, imaging quantum dynamics is a new frontier of science requiring advanced mathematical approaches for analyzing and solving spatial and temporal multidimensional partial differential equations such as Time-Dependent Schroedinger Equations (TDSE) and Time-Dependent Dirac equations (TDDEs for relativistic phenomena). These equations are also coupled to the photons in Maxwell''s equations for collective propagation effects. Inversion of the experimental imaging data of quantum dynamics presents new mathematical challenges in the imaging of quantum wave coherences on subatomic (subnanometer) spatial dimensions and multiple timescales from atto to femto and even nanoseconds. In Quantum Dynamic Imaging: Theoretical and Numerical Methods, leading researchers discuss these exciting state-of-the-art developments and their implications for R&D in view of the promise of quantum dynamic imaging science as the essential tool for controlling matter at the molecular level.

This book is focused on the nonlinear theoretical and mathematical problems associated with ultrafast intense laser pulse propagation in gases and in particular, in air. With the aim of understanding the physics of filamentation in gases, solids, the atmosphere, and even biological tissue, specialists in nonlinear optics and filamentation from both physics and mathematics attempt to rigorously derive and analyze relevant non-perturbative models. Modern laser technology allows the generation of ultrafast (few cycle) laser pulses, with intensities exceeding the internal electric field in atoms and molecules (E=5x109 V/cm or intensity I = 3.5 x 1016 Watts/cm2 ). The interaction of such pulses with atoms and molecules leads to new, highly nonlinear nonperturbative regimes, where new physical phenomena, such as High Harmonic Generation (HHG), occur, and from which the shortest (attosecond - the natural time scale of the electron) pulses have been created. One of the major experimental discoveries in this nonlinear nonperturbative regime, Laser Pulse Filamentation, was observed by Mourou and Braun in 1995, as the propagation of pulses over large distances with narrow and intense cones. This observation has led to intensive investigation in physics and applied mathematics of new effects such as self-transformation of these pulses into white light, intensity clamping, and multiple filamentation, as well as to potential applications to wave guide writing, atmospheric remote sensing, lightning guiding, and military long-range weapons.

The increasing power of high performance computers and the mathematical modelling and simulation of photonic systems has enabled many new areas of research. With contributions by theorists and mathematicians, supplemented by active experimentalists who are experts in the field of nonlinear laser molecule interaction and propagation, Laser Filamentation sheds new light on scientific and industrial applications of modern lasers.