This course is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students having some previous exposure to the field of optics, and wishing to become knowledgeable in the basic principles that govern the operation of lasers and the light-matter interaction effects collectively known as nonlinear optics.

After this course you should be able to understand and operate many different kinds of laser systems, and also to design and build one. Next, you will be able to understand and analyze the nonlinear optical effects that laser beams induce in transparent materials and that are of the second order and of the third order in the optical electric field. If faced with a new phenomenon or effect, you should be able to analyze it with the tools presented in this course and understand its origins and implications.

This course treats those parts of quantum mechanics that lead to the description of a particle in a potential, of atoms, and of molecules. The concepts introduced and discussed will be the Schrödinger equation, wavefunctions, eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, spin, angular momentum, and Pauli's principle. The course is a basic introductory course that develops the formalism based on the Schrödinger equation and other Eigenvalue/Eigenfunction equations using the (differential) operators that represent physical observables, and then goes on to use it for a few physical systems, starting from one dimensional potential problems and then going on to the behavior of a particle in a central potential, atoms, and the simplest molecules.

This is a seminar course that reviews current topics of research in the wide field of light-matter interaction.

Topics for the seminars will be discussed in an organizational meeting, taken from contemporary literature or research activities. Students will then prepare a paper and a presentation for two different topics. We will discuss in general in general the best ways to communicate scientific results, and how abstracts, papers, and other materials must be produced, including choices of software. After each presentation, there will be a question and answer session, and a discussion about the quality of the presentation and of the paper, and about how they can be improved.

In this course you will learn about current research activities, but you will also learn how to create good scientific presentations for conferences and seminars, and how to write good scientific papers. We put lots of value in both understanding and in-depth discussion and criticism of the materials that are presented as well as in improving the ability of the individual presenter to communicate scientific results in oral, graphical, and/or written form.