This lecture series is designed to combine physical science, the promotion of high-tech (optical) industries and social activities under one roof. It would touch upon many aspects of life. The central theme of this lecture series is life.
On the physics side, I shall try to give a glimpse into the development of the vast field of ultrafast intense laser science as I experienced it personally. The story starts from the very beginning of the field when intense and ultrafast laser was invented in the beginning of the 1960’s. I was lucky to have started my research work in the field of multiphoton ionization, a totally new concept at that time. I was lucky to be able to prove experimentally that it was not so difficult to observe such so-called rare physical events. Afterwards, it took me 15 years to overcome a huge physical hurdle in the field of multiphoton physics; i.e. nobody (or almost) believed that tunnel ionization à-la-Keldysh could be observed. I succeeded in observing (proving) experimentally the signature of tunnel ionization for the first time, unknowingly beating competitors from France and the Soviet Union. The existence of tunnel ionization changed the mentality of everyone in the field. It opened the door towards a new era of laser physics, namely attosecond laser science. Meanwhile, the advancement of intense femtosecond laser technology gave rise to a hitherto difficult-to-observe phenomenon which we called filamentation. It is essentially the combination of various well-known phenomena in intense laser physics, namely, nonlinear laser pulse propagation together with multiphoton and tunnel ionization and plasma physics. Together with other pioneers, I was very lucky to have been involved in developing and leading this new sub-field of nonlinear optics right from the beginning in the middle of the 1990’s. I called it filamentation nonlinear optics. This field covers a lot of practical applications some of which are almost out of our imagination. These are the generation of strong light source of different tunable frequencies, generation of very broadband light source, generation of very short few cycle laser pulses, remote sensing of pollutant, remote generation of THz pulses, lightning control and even rain and snow making, chemical element separation, etc.
In between the above mentioned activities, I have also invented the single-shot photo-acoustic detector that was linked to laser isotope separation in the latter part of the 1970’s and the early 1980’s. The powerful TEA-CO2 laser was involved in the work. This was also the laser that enabled us to prove the existence of tunnel ionization. There was some interesting story about a promise of some multi-million-dollars support for deuterium separation which was never realized.
All the above mentioned personal research activities were realized through collaboration with many scientists in Canada and around the world. I consider myself to be very, very lucky in this endeavor. Thus, throughout the series of lectures, I like to give a glimpse of the life of the scientists, my collaborators, living in Canada and in different countries and in different cultures and systems around the world. Many photos will be shown just to give a human touch of what I shall talk about. I have in my mind a central but dormant question whenever and wherever I visited them or interacted with them.
‘Could science and technology make a society prosperous, strong, peaceful and harmonious?’
I shall not attempt to give any answer to this question because I have no answer yet.
However, in my professional life in Laval University, I have tried to partially answer the above question unknowingly through my promotion of high-tech (optical) activities and industries in Quebec City. This story began in the early 1980’s when I was the director of the then Laboratory for Research in Optics and Laser (LROL) which became the current Center for Optics, photonics and Laser (COPL) after the success of the LROL. Essentially, I was lucky to be able to stimulate some students in LROL to create their own optical (high-tech) industries successfully and push for the establishment of the National Optics Institute (NOI) in the Quebec City region. NOI in turn was spinning off a number of optical industries in the Quebec City region. We could claim that the Quebec City region is now the most important center in Canada specialized in optical activity.
In this series of talks, I shall also give a glimpse of the research life of myself, of researchers in Canada and in other places outside China. The system of research support in some countries will be pointed out. Such systems influence the outcome of research and consequently, the national strength in science and technology. I shall try to discuss those research systems I know partially through my personal experience, visits, interaction and collaboration; i.e. those in Canada, USA, Germany, France, Japan, Russia, etc.
Questions and answers would be the most important yet most difficult part of this lecture series. To relax the atmosphere in the lecture hall and to show that this professor is not a serious-face square-headed guy, I propose to show off a two-minute ballroom dance with my wife either at the beginning of a lecture or in the middle or at the end. Hopefully, through this musical activity, it would induce the audience to carry out more discussions.
The lectures will be given in Chinese (mandarin). PowerPoint slides will be a mixture of both Chinese and English. You can ask your questions or give your comments in any language you care to use.
