Prof. Dr. George STEGEMAN​

George Stegeman, Emeritus Professor of Optics, Physics & ECE, CREOL at the University of Central Florida, is visiting the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy as a Visiting Professor in September 2013. During his stay he will give two lectures.

George Stegeman graduated from Engineering Physics, received his PhD in 1969 from the University of Toronto, and became a Professor there in 1980 before moving to the Optical Sciences Center of the University of Arizona. Since 1990, he has been the Cobb Family Chair in the College of Optics and Photonics/CREOL at the University of Central Florida. He retired in 2008 and became Professor Emeritus. His research interests were focused on various aspects of Nonlinear Optics, including acoustooptics, light scattering, all-optical switching and signal processing, material nonlinearities, discrete optics, and solitons. He received the Hertzberg medal of the Canadian Association of Physicists, the Wood Prize of the Optical Society of America, and the Professor Bluto Award of the Photonics Society of Poland, as well as various teaching and research awards at the University of Central Florida. He has received honorary degrees from INRS and INAOE. Since his retirement he has become interested in extreme nonlinear optics, about which he has published a graduate textbook.

Lecture 1: The Liberation of the Electron: Extreme Nonlinear Optics

Time: September 24, 2013, 10:30
Place: Lecture hall 3, Helmholtzweg 3, 07743 Jena

The preponderance of ultrafast nonlinear optics has originated from electronic transitions between the energy levels of atoms and molecules. The field induced motion of such bound electrons in strong electromagnetic fields is usually very small, of the order of the fraction of an Angstrom and the nonlinear polarization can be expressed in terms of an expansion in terms of the products of the electromagnetic fields which converges with increasing field product. Recently experiments with fields large enough to produce ionized electrons have showed much stronger nonlinearities due to "free" electrons with displacements of 100s of Angstroms, leading to the field of "extreme nonlinear optics.

Lecture 2: Entanglements with Falk Lederer: 1980s To Present

Time: September 27, 2013, 14:00
Place: Lecture hall 2, Helmholtzweg 5, 07743 Jena

There have been fruitful collaborations over the years with Professor Falk Lederer's group and my own which I will briefly describe here on the eve of his retirement. Some of the interesting soliton physics that we discovered together will be summarized.

Additional note 

George I. Stegeman passed away on 2 May 2015. George was an icon in the area of nonlinear optics and published more than 700 papers during his career.He was Emeritus Professor of Optics, Physics & ECE at CREOL, College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central FloridaExternal link (UCF). George was an active OSA volunteer having served on the OSA Board of Directors (1986-89) and as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Optical Society of America B in 2001.