Robert Levis Email & Phone Number

My laboratory in the Center for Advanced Photonics Research at Temple University focuses on understanding the photochemistry and photophysics of molecules interacting with ultrafast, ultra-intense laser pulses. Ultrafast means laser pulses that are only a few millionths of a billionth of a second, our shortest pulses approach just 5 femtoseconds in duration. Ultra-intense means laser fields approaching the fields binding electrons within molecules. The combination of these two properties creates environments and interactions that are unique in the universe and thus new phenomena arise. Since 1991 we have been discovering and understanding such new phenomena, an area that we call strong field chemistry.The current areas of research in the Center for Advanced Photonics Research involve laser vaporization of condensed phase systems, laser filamentation in air, laser generation and processing of nanomaterials in the solution, solid, and gas phases, the control of chemical reactions using shaped laser pulses, the elucidation of laser plasma evolution and investigations and control of the strong field, time-dependent Rabi oscillation. These efforts are leading to new ways to diagnose disease, map cellular components, detect improvised explosive devices, classify tissues and phenotype, classify explosives for forensics analysis, and to synthesize monodispersed nanomaterials.The Center for Advanced Photonics Research is a multidisciplinary organization that includes eight faculty actively collaborating from disciplines including physical, analytical and inorganic chemistry, and theoretical and experimental physics. Graduate and undergraduate students are drawn from all areas of science to form research teams.