Research
Extreme and hitherto inaccessible conditions are created during the interactions of ultraintense and ultrashort laser pulses with matter. Research on high-field science has relevance to basic plasma physics and the development of novel compact ultrashort sources of either energetic photons or electrons.
Laser
Acceleration of Electrons
Experiment and theory are used to study laser
wakefields and relativistic nonlinear optics. 
X-Ray
Sources and Spectroscopy
The physics of ultrashort-pulse x-ray sources
and their applications to ultrafast science are investigated. Compact solid-state lasers can currently produce pulses with intensities in excess of 10^18 W/cm^2, corresponding to an electric field that exceeds 10^12 eV/cm. Since plasma electrons to oscillate in such a high field at relativistic velocities, nonlinear optics involving free electrons may now be studied. This includes harmonic generation, self-focusing, gigabar laser pressure (with applications to research into a concept for thermonuclear fusion called the fast ignitor), and wake-field plasma waves (with applications to novel compact particle accelerators).
The time duration of these pulses is extremely short, less than 10^-13 s, which is shorter than the time-scale of significant hydrodynamic motion. Consequently, solid-density matter may be heated from room temperature to a kilovolt without the usual change in density that accompanies long-pulse irradiation. A recent application of this research is a novel ultrafast broadband soft x-ray radiation source that potentially will have enormous impact on research of ultrafast dynamics in the fields of physics, chemistry and biology.