Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

This proposal seeks to upgrade the Femtosecond Laser facility at the University of Waterloo by purchasing a new femtosecond oscillator for it. This upgrade will enable fabrication of novel devices for quantum and biosensing applications. Waterloo's Femtosecond Laser Laboratory was established and is operating under the auspices of Prof. Donna Strickland and Prof. Joseph Sanderson. Over the years, it has evolved into an interdisciplinary research facility with cross-faculty collaborations that exploit the ability of high-power femtosecond laser pulses to both probe and dramatically change the nature of materials on a nanoscale. The femtosecond laser pulses can be used in high-resolution lithography, imaging and diagnostics, as well as to create new materials with unique properties which can rapidly be incorporated into practical devices, and used to solve real world challenges, often of medical or environmental significance. At the heart of this facility is an ultrafast regenerative amplifier based on the phenomena for discovery of which Prof. Strickland received the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics. This amplifier is seeded by low-energy femtosecond laser pulses from an oscillator laser and the resulting high-energy pulses are then routed into one of the several experimental 'beam lines' that fan out of the system. Overall, eight research groups from Waterloo's Faculty of Science and Faculty of Engineering require regular use of the Femtosecond Laser Laboratory for their research projects. Unfortunately, over the last few years the performance of the seeding femtosecond oscillator laser has deteriorated with age to the point where there is a significant risk of extensive damage to the regenerative amplifier from incorrect seeding and the facility is experiencing frequent downtimes.       This proposal primarily seeks to eliminate these downtimes, simplify the use, and extend the life of the Femtosecond Laser laboratory, as well as to further expand the scope and performance of the laboratory, by purchasing a new, more stable femtosecond oscillator laser. The new experiments that this upgrade will enable include interference-based direct laser-writing to create fiber-integrated structures and optical metasurfaces for realization of quantum memories, as well as systematic exploration of pulsed laser-ablation of nanoparticles in liquids (PLAL), which is used to synthesize novel nanomaterials with applications in biosensing for healthcare, food industry, and enviromental monitoring.