Dr.

Philip Howard Bucksbaum

Stanford University
Physicist; Educator; Academic research institution administrator and scientist
Area
Mathematical and Physical Sciences
Specialty
Physics
Elected
2012
Stanford University, Stanford, California ~Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science; Professor of Physics; Professor of Applied Physics; Director, Stanford pulse Institute for Ultrafast Energy Science; Chair, Stanford Photon Physics Faculty, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Pioneered the use of ultrafast, high-power laser pulses to study the fundamental interaction of light with matter. Early work on above-threshold ionization of atoms established the role of ponderomotive forces in laser-electron interactions through studies of electron surfing in ultrafast laser pulses, the high-intensity Kapitza Dirac Effect, and the first observations of sub-picosecond strong-field ionization. Discovered and first explained the mechanism of bond-softening in strong-field molecular dissociation. Development of broadband coherent THz radiation (so-called half-cycle pulses) led to his studies of impulsive ionization of Rydberg atoms, which helped create the field of ultrafast THz spectroscopy. Uses ultrafast lasers to study problems in quantum information, coherent control of atomic and molecular dynamics, and, most recently, strong-field coherent X-ray atom physics at X-ray free-electron lasers.~
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