Links that contain the text "[LTC]" are by students from the Laser Teaching Center.

General Optics, Math, and Physics Related

University of St. Andrews Physics Department Research - At St. Andrews, work is being done with optical trapping and other cool things in photonics

Eric Weisstein's World of Physics - This site contains some very useful information about lots of physics stuff

Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics - The same as his World of Physics, except about mathematics

Exotic Laser Beams, Hollow Beams, Transverse Distribution Modes

Optical Physics at Colgate - The optical physics projects going on at Colgate University. Take special note of the last section, in which an LG beam generated with an astigmatic mode converter is interfered with one of the blobs from the original HG beam that created it, and a super-cool spiral pattern results.

Hollow Beam Atom Tunnel - A doctoral dissertation by Yonho Song on using hollow beams as a trap for ultracold atoms.

Hollow Beams [LTC] - Lucas Finco generated hollow laser beams using spiral Fresnel zone plates

Hollow Laser Beams [LTC] - Matthew Eardley furthered Lucas Finco's work by studying the effects of dfferent values of the "l" parameter

Astigmatic Laser Mode Converters [LTC] - Using an astigmatic mode converter, Seung-Hyun Lee was able to convert between a simulated TEM01 Hermite-Gaussian mode and a Laguerre-Gaussian hollow mode

Formation of Hollow Beams Through Coherent Fiberoptical Bundles [LTC] - This also belongs under the Fiber Optics heading. Dhruv Bansal did a study of the hollow beam that mysteriously came out of a coherent fiberoptical bundle when a TEM00 Gaussian beam was incident on it at an angle. This is one of the mysteries mentioned by Guy Sisalli, who is linked below.

Measuring the OAM of Single Photons - Researchers at the University of Glasgow have used several interferometers to separate single photons based on their orbital angular momentum (OAM). There is also a cool java applet on this page that shows the interference pattern between LG beams with different orbital angular momenta, which are determined by the "l" parameter.

Fiber Optics

Fiber Optics [LTC] - Matthew Eardley studied frequency combs by having a heated and stretched (narrowed) piece of fiber cable

The Single Mode Fiber [LTC] - Haijiang Gong studied polarization and intensity fluctuation effects in single mode fiber cable

The Single Mode Fiber [LTC] - Xueqing Liu also studied the focusing and coupling of a laser into single mode fiber, and the intensity fluctuations that result.

Transmission Fluctuation in the Single Mode Fiber [LTC] - Xiyue Miao studied transmission fluctuations with changes in the time scale of observation

Investigation of Hollow Laser Beams Generated by Coherent Fiber Bundles [LTC] - Guy Sisalli proposes several different methods of investigating several strange behaviors of a particular coherent fiber cable donated to the Laser Teaching Center, which are as of yet unexplained. Is it just an odd defect, or a new discovery about the behavior of coherent fiber cable?

NA of the Single Mode Fiber [LTC] - A study by Wang Jing of the Numerical Aperture of single mode fiber

Technology and Tools Used

CCD Camera Information Primer [LTC] - informational primer on the use and technology of CCD cameras, by Jose Mawyin

Schott US - makers of most of the coherent cable used in my experiments

Scion Corporation - makers of Scion Image, a powerful image manipulation and analysis tool

Totally UN-Related

GuitarGeek - I love this site! Check out what gear different guitarists use.

The Onion - If you don't know The Onion, get to know it.

Stuyvesant High School - I go here.