EDITOR’S NOTE: The location of this event has been moved to Brock’s Sean O’Sullivan Theatre in Thistle Complex.

From eye surgery to smartphones, lasers now play a major role in everyday life.

The groundbreaking research that led to revolutionary laser applications will be the focus of an upcoming public talk by the first Canadian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Donna Strickland, an optical physicist and pioneer of ultrafast and high-intensity lasers, will discuss how her Nobel Prize-winning research resulted in a new understanding of laser-matter interactions during a public talk at Brock University later this month. This work has led to innovative laser applications in eye surgery, advanced imaging, fibre optic telecommunications, and micromachining techniques that are used in creating the glass screens used in smartphones.

Strickland’s talk, Generating high-intensity, ultrashort optical pulses, will take place at Brock on Thursday, Sept. 19 from 7 to 8 p.m. in Sean O’Sullivan Theatre.

The Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo received the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Gérard Mourou for developing chirped pulse amplification (CPA). They first published their Nobel-winning research in 1985 — when Mourou was Strickland’s PhD supervisor — and have since paved the way toward the most intense laser pulses ever created.

The pair essentially developed a “laser hammer” that delivers short, intense pulses of light to knock electrons off their atoms, says Strickland.

“Think about using your hand to try and drive a nail into a piece of wood. You can push with all your might and it won’t go in. But if you hit the nail quickly with a hammer, it goes in. It’s not only about how much force or energy you put in,” she says.

A well-known CPA application is cataract surgery, during which a person’s eye lens is removed and replaced with an artificial one. The lens thickens and loses flexibility with age, making it stiff and difficult to remove through a tiny laser-cut hole.

The laser hits the clouded lens within the eye allowing it to then be removed through the hole, she says.

Another common application is micromachining glass for smartphone screens. Normally, the light from a laser would go through glass rather than being absorbed and turned into thermal energy, or heat, that could be used for cutting, says Strickland.

“CPA allows us to work directly on the glass. Through laser hammering, we can either change the refractive index of the glass to slow the speed of light travelling through it or we can cut it,” she says.

“We use cellphones, TV displays and computer monitors every day, but few of us appreciate that these precise screens are delicately cut by an ultrafast and ultrahigh intensity laser,” says Jianbo Gao, Brock University Associate Professor of Chemistry, who invited Strickland to speak and was inspired by her work when he was a PhD student.

As lead for Brock’s Ultrafast Photophysics of Quantum Materials Lab, Gao investigates ultrafast laser interaction with advanced materials, leading to novel applications of solar cells, photodetectors and light-emitting diodes (LED).

“Donna’s work has impacted scientific fields beyond physics, such as chemistry, materials science and biology,” he says.

Strickland’s talk is one of several lectures planned as part of Brock’s 2024 Faculty of Mathematics and Science (FMS) Research Colloquium Series, Research at the Speed of Light, funded in part by the FMS Dean’s Office and the Office of the Vice-President, Research.

“The talks we have planned this year centre on the unique applications of photons —particles of light — in applications such as lasers and materials characterization techniques, such as imaging,” says Peter Berg, FMS Dean and Professor of Physics. “We will also learn about the principle of causality — if event A can influence event B, B should not influence A — and whether modern physics obeys this principle. This is intimately tied to the concept of time travel, which is often equated to travelling faster than the speed of light.”

Anyone interested in attending Strickland’s free public lecture is asked to register in advance.

Brock community members can reserve their seat through ExperienceBU. Those without a Brock email account are asked to email Justin Steepe, FMS Strategic Planning and Operations Manager, at jsteepe@brocku.ca to reserve a space.