Wolfgang Kaiser (physicist)

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Wolfgang Kaiser (born July 17, 1925 in Nuremberg ) is a German experimental physicist who dealt with solid-state physics as well as laser physics and laser spectroscopy .

career

Kaiser received his doctorate in Erlangen in 1952 , then was a post-doc at Purdue University , from 1954 at the US Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories in Fort Monmouth and from 1957 to 1964 at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill. From 1964 he was Professor of Experimental Physics at the Technical University of Munich , where he set up an internationally renowned working group on laser physics and laser spectroscopy in the 1960s and retired in 1993 . Together with Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, he was one of the initiators of the profound restructuring of the TUM Faculty of Physics into a department and its move to Garching .

research

Kaiser is best known for his work on laser spectroscopy with ultrashort light pulses, which he used in solid-state physics as well as in biophysics and chemistry (e.g. photochemistry of bacteriorhodopsin in photosynthesis , time-resolved spectroscopy of the reactions of organic molecules). He is a laser pioneer from the very beginning and was involved in the early development of the ruby laser at Bell Labs from 1960 , where he and C. G. B. Garrett discovered two-photon absorption, which was predicted by Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1931 and an important element thereafter the laser spectroscopy was. With his working groups in Munich, he also investigated stimulated Raman and Brillouin scattering , the lifetime of phonons in solids from time-resolved Raman spectroscopy , and self-focusing effects in non-linear optics.

In the 1950s he dealt with semiconductors, where he also achieved pioneering achievements, among other things in the infrared spectroscopy investigation of valence band structures of doped semiconductors or the investigation of the photoconductivity of doped germanium semiconductors, later the basis for infrared detectors based on them. In addition, in 1954 he clarified the role of diffusing oxygen in the growth of silicon and germanium single crystals and was thus significantly involved in the development of semiconductor technologies that began at that time.

Honors and memberships

Wolfgang Kaiser holds multiple honorary doctorates (including Purdue University 1993) and is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and the Academia Europaea .

Fonts

  • From short to ultra-short laser pulses. In: Physical sheets. July 1994, p. 661. doi : 10.1002 / phbl.19940500711 (speech on the occasion of the award of the Stern-Gerlach Medal).
  • as editor: Ultrashort Laser Pulses: Generation and Applications, Springer 1993
  • as editor: Ultrashort Laser Pulses and Applications, Springer 1988
  • The laser: Fundamentals and new results, treatises and reports, Deutsches Museum 1967

literature

  • Donald Nelson, Robert Collins, Wolfgang Kaiser: Bell Labs and the Ruby Laser. In: Physics Today. January 2010.

Web links

References

  1. ^ History of the Physics Department of TUM. ph.tum.de, accessed on April 16, 2019 (English).
  2. ↑ 50 years of the Physics Department: six Nobel Prize winners have researched here. In: Münchner Merkur. July 23, 2015, accessed April 16, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Photo gallery Ceremony 50 years of the Physics Department. TUM, July 22, 2015, accessed on April 16, 2019 (with numerous photos).
  4. ↑ R. J. Collins, D. F. Nelson, A. L. Schawlow, W. Bond, C. G. B. Garrett, W. Kaiser: Coherence, Narrowing, Directionality, and Relaxation Oscillations in the Light Emission from Ruby. In: Physical Review Letters. 5, No. 7, 1960, p. 303, doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevLett . 5.303 .
  5. ↑ C. G. B. Garrett, W. Kaiser: Two-Photon Excitation in CaF 2 : Eu 2+ . In: Physical Review Letters. 7, No. 6, 1961, pp. 229-232, doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.7.229 .
personal data
SURNAME Kaiser, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg