Aram Gragossian, OSE PhD candidate, wins heat at UNM Shared Knowledge Conference

Departmental News

Posted: April 19, 2017

The sixth consecutive Shared Knowledge Conference (SKC) was held in the SUB on UNM's main campus on Thursday, April 6, 2017. The SKC is described as the university’s premier venue to showcase student research. Held with the support of the Office of the Vice President for Research, Honors College, and the Graduate and Professional Student Association, the SKC featured four rounds of "LoboBITES" competitions, during which presenters distilled their thesis into a three-minute explanation. In addition, poster presentations on research were displayed by students from programs across campus.

Optical Sciences & Engineering (OSE) Ph.D. candidate Aram Gragossian was a winner in one of the LoboBITE rounds for his presentation, "Joggling Electrons in a Jiffy." His presentation explained the use of ultrashort laser pulses to manipulate the motions of electrons. Ultrashort pulses have enough energy to move electrons away from atoms and guide them in a certain direction. A wide range of ultrashort electromagnetic radiation can be created by controlling electron motion; making it possible to study a variety of ultrafast events.

Gragossian is advised by Dr. Mansoor Sheik-Bahae, Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy and OSE General Chair. He is part of the Ultrafast Optics, Optical Refrigeration and Radiation-Balanced Lasers research groups.

Recently, Gragossian was included in a UNM Newsroom article featuring Professor Sheik-Bahae's research, "Optical physicists record lowest temperature ever in solids using laser cooling." Photography of Gragossian testing lasers illustrated the use of lasers in a technique called optical refrigeration to reach cryogenic temperatures. The research, titled Solid-state optical refrigeration to sub-100 Kelvin regime, was published in the journal of (Nature) Scientific Reports 6. The article was chosen as one of the UNM Top 10 Research News Stories of 2016.

Source:

Lobo research shines at Shared Knowledge Conference, UNM Newsroom

Aram Gragossian tests lasers in Sheik-Bahae lab at UNM Physics & Astronomy building