Title of dissertation: INTERACTION OF INTENSE LASER PULSES WITH GAS FOR TWO-COLOR THZ GENERATION AND REMOTE MAGNETOMETRY Luke A. Johnson, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation directed by: Professor Thomas Antonsen Departments of Physics and Electrical & Computer Engineering Professor Phillip Sprangle Departments of Physics and Electrical & Computer Engineering The interaction of intense lase...

We investigated the atomic geometry, electronic band structure, and optical absorption of nitrogen hyperdoped silicon based on first-principles calculations. The results show that all the paired nitrogen defects we studied do not introduce intermediate band, while most of single nitrogen defects can introduce intermediate band in the gap. Considering the stability of the single defects and the ...

Nitrogen embedded ZnO : N films prepared by pulsed laser deposition exhibit significant ferromagnetism. The presence of nitrogen ions contained in ZnO is confirmed by the secondary ion microscopic spectrum and by Raman experiments, and the embedded nitrogen ions can be regarded as defects. According to the experimental results, a mechanism is proposed based on one of the electrons in the comple...

We investigated the effect of helium and nitrogen pressures on the dynamics of molecular species formation during laser ablation of carbon. For producing plasmas, planar carbon targets were irradiated with 1064 nm, 6 ns pulses from an Nd:yttrium aluminum garnet laser. The emission from excited C2 and CN molecules was studied using space resolved optical time-of-flight emission spectroscopy and ...

Porous structure of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) plays an important role in developing flexible graphene-based devices. In this work, we report a novel methodology for reduction of freestanding graphite oxide (GO) sheet by picosecond pulse laser direct writing in liquid nitrogen. Non-agglomerate and porous structure of rGO is fabricated successfully due to frozen effect during laser processing....

We report on strong backward stimulated emission at 337 nm in nitrogen gas pumped by circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses at 800 nm. A distinct dependence of the backward UV spectrum on pump laser polarization and intensity is observed, pointing to the occurrence of backward amplified spontaneous emission inside filaments. We attribute the population inversion to inelastic collision be...

We studied the spatial and temporal distributions of ionic, neutral, and molecular species generated by femtosecond laser produced plasma under varying ambient nitrogen gas pressures. Plasmas were generated by irradiating planar graphite targets using 40 fs pulses of 800 nm radiation from a Ti:Sapphire laser. The results show that in the presence of an ambient gas, the molecular species spatial...

Graphitized nanodiamonds were conveniently prepared by the laser irradiation of colloidal solution using various solvents. The nanodiamonds were converted into a fully graphitized onion-like structure, which became a cage-like mesoporous structure by the degradation of graphitic layers. Alcohols, acetone, and acetonitrile are more efficient solvents for the graphitization compared to water and ...

A laser initiation and radio frequency rf sustainment technique has been developed and improved from our previous work to create and sustain large-volume, high-pressure air and nitrogen plasmas. This technique utilizes a laser-initiated, 15 mTorr partial pressure tetrakis dimethylamino ethylene seed plasma with a 75 Torr background gas pressure to achieve high-pressure air/nitrogen plasma break...

We carry out a combined theoretical and experimental investigation on the population distributions in the ground and excited states of tunnel-ionized nitrogen molecules at various driver wavelengths in the near- and midinfrared range. Our results reveal that efficient couplings (i.e., population exchanges) between the ground N_{2}^{+}(X^{2}Σ_{g}^{+}) state and the excited N_{2}^{+}(A^{2}Π_{u}) ...