Prof. Duncan Steel, Robert J. Hiller Professor of Engineering in the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Professor of
Physics, Professor of Biophysics, and Research Professor in the Institute of Gerontology, was awarded the 2010 Frank Isakson Prize for
Optical Effects in Solids from the American Physical Society.
Prof. Steel received this award, "For seminal contributions to nonlinear
optical spectroscopy and coherent control of semiconductor heterostructures."
His research has focused on the development and application of various
laser-matter interaction studies and quantum optics in fields including
plasmas, optical phase conjugation, atomic and molecular spectroscopy,
condensed matter physics, protein folding and quantum computing. This work
has generated over 4000 citations.
Duncan Steel received the AB in Physics from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1972, and from the University of Michigan he
received the M.S. in Electrical Science and Nuclear Science in 1973 and
1975, and the PhD in Nuclear and Electrical Science in 1976.
Prior to joining the faculty at U-M, he served as Senior Staff Physicist at
the Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, 1975-1985, working with a number
of well-known people including Ross McFarlane and Richard Lind, as
well as collaborating with Paul Berman, then at NYU, on optical phase
conjugation using four-wave mixing. It was at Hughes that he began to see
the power of probing the third order nonlinear optical response to
understand the physics of optical interactions in solids, as well as using
this response to obtain fundamental quantities in the material, such as decoherence
rates, and to use the optical response to control the quantum state of
solids.
He joined the University of Michigan in 1985 as an Associate Professor of
Electrical Engineering and Physics, and Associate Research Scientist in the
Institute of Gerontology. He served as Director of the Optical Science
Laboratory between 1988-2007, and Director of a new program in Biophysics
2007-08.
When he started research at Michigan, Prof. Steel initiated experiments in
solids, eventually focusing on understanding the nonlinear optical response
of the exciton in GaAs, in collaboration with Prof. Roberto Merlin. Working
first with frequency domain techniques rather than ultrafast methodologies,
Hailin Wang (now a professor at University of Oregon) in his group showed that the leading term in the nonlinear
optical response was due to physics, similar to collisional interactions
that lead to dephasing. Other students, including Steve Cundiff (now a
professor at University of Colorado) and Kyle
Ferrio, went on to use time domain techniques to understand other details
about the materials.
Currently, he has been collaborating with Dan Gammon at NRL, Lu Sham at UCSD, Luming Duan and Paul Berman to understand
the nature of optical interactions in quantum dots and to develop them for
applications to quantum computing. The first semiconductor quantum gate was
demonstrated in his lab by Xiaoqin Li (Assistant Professor at University of
Texas) and the first studies of the single electron spin in these systems
was done by Gurudey Dutt (Assistant Professor at University of Pittsburgh)
with gate operations near 200 GHz demonstrated by Erik D. Kim (post-doc at
Stanford University).
Prof. Steel is a Fellow of APS, IEEE, and the Optical Society of America,
and has extensive service activities in the professional community. He is
editor for the Encyclopedia of Modern Optics (2003), and is the
recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition to graduating 36 PhD
students, he has authored more than 350 published papers and book chapters.
In the area of teaching, Prof. Steel developed the full year graduate
course, Applied Quantum Mechanics, to emphasize problem solving in important
emerging areas in technology including nano-science, computing, and
communications. He also developed the graduate level
course, Quantum Optics, to teach the basics of laser physics, spectroscopy,
and quantum optics.
About the Award
The Frank
Isakson Prize was established in 1979 to recognize outstanding optical
research that leads to breakthroughs in the condensed matter sciences, with
preference given to work that has been published within the past 10 years.
The prize is awarded biennially in even-numbered years as a memorial to
Frank Isakson.
The Isakson Prize will be presented at the
APS Physics March
Meeting in Portland, OR, March 15-19, 2010, at a special Ceremonial
Session.
APS Physics Announcement of Prof. Steel's award
Posted: October 6, 2009 by
Catharine June
EECS/ECE Communications Coordinator
cmsj@umich.edu or 734-936-2965
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