About the Florida Attosecond Science and Technology (FAST) Group

Welcome to the Florida Attosecond Science and Technology (FAST) Group at CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics and Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida.

The group, founded in 2010, is directed by Dr. Zenghu Chang. We are working on the generation of attosecond (10-18 s) and zeptosecond (10-21 s) x-ray pulses. The shortest light burst is a powerful tool for freezing electron motions in atom, molecule and condensed matter. At the present time, we are focusing on the following areas:

1. High power carrier-envelope phase stabilized driving lasers. The carrier-envelope phase in our lab is stabilized using the “grating shaker” technique we invented.
2. Sub-cycle gating schemes for generating isolated attosecond pulses. The Double Optical Gating method is refined to generate shorter and stronger single isolated attosecond pulses with both few-cycle and multicycle lasers.
3. Attosecond pulse characterization. We are working on the PROOF method for characterizing ultrabroad bandwidth attosecond and zeptosecond pulses.
4. Attosecond correlated electron dynamics. We are applying the unique attosecond light source to study autoionization and other processes in atoms and molecules.

Our research is funded by Army Research Office, Department of Energy, and National Science Foundation.