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Jeffrey Moses

Assistant Professor
Applied and Engineering Physics

Biography

Jeff Moses joined the faculty in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University in 2014. Before that, he worked at MIT as a research scientist and principal investigator of federally sponsored research programs in ultrafast nonlinear optics, attosecond sources and physics, and molecular and chemical physics. Moses received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 2007, and his B.Sc. from Yale in 2001, with both degrees in applied physics. He is currently leading programs funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the Office of Naval Research.

Research Interests

Jeff Moses’ research group focuses on capturing “ultrafast phenomena” in real time (i.e., capturing events so brief as to be barely detectable by state-of-the-art technology), and on developing the light-pulse and time-resolved spectroscopic technologies for doing so. We focus on using laser pulses analogously to strobe lights, in order to view brief moments during the coordinated motions of electrons and coupled particles. Current systems of interest include light-activated biophysical systems, such as DNA and the human vision response, and highly correlated materials such as perovskite crystals that can be modified with light on ultrafast timescales.

We are also developing concepts for producing extremely broadband light sources, for efficiently amplifying intense pulses of light, for changing the color of quantum light, and for the establishment of a stroboscope emitting femtosecond pulses covering the electromagnetic spectrum from THz to extreme ultraviolet frequencies. Our techniques fall under the category of ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy, and within the purview of the broad field of nonlinear optics.

The shortest laser pulses today, lasting only femtoseconds or attoseconds (millionths or billionths of billionths of seconds) are faster than electronic motion, and can be used to capture the ultrafast events that fundamentally change electronic behavior. Several related questions motivate our work: How fast are the fastest events that serve an important function in the behavior of a material? Can we see them happen? Can we determine the conditions under which these ultrafast motions are important and engineer new systems that take advantage of their useful properties?

By endeavoring to connect ultrafast phenomena to real-timescale systems, our work naturally seeks to connect atomic level dynamics to complex chemical and biological processes, and, likewise, to connect quantum mechanical behaviors to phenomena traditionally expected to act classically. The dynamics of photo-excitable systems are one of our main targets, as these are important in processes as widespread as DNA photo-damage and the initial steps of charge separation in photovoltaics. Moreover, by learning how these mechanisms work, we hope to gain insights into natural behaviors that can be used to engineer better technologies.

Selected Publications

  • P. Krogen, H. Suchowski, H. Liang, N. Flemens, K.-H. Hong , F. X. Kärtner, and J. Moses, “Generation and Multi-Octave Shaping of Mid-Infrared Intense Single-Cycle Pulses,” Nature Photonics 11, 222–226 (2017).
  • E. Bahar*, X. Ding*, A. Dahan, H. Suchowski, and J. Moses, “Adiabatic four-wave mixing frequency conversion,” Opt. Express 26, 25582-25601 (2018).
  • X. Ding, Md. S. Habib, R. Amezcua-Correa, and J. Moses, “Near-octave intense mid-infrared by adiabatic down-conversion in hollow anti-resonant fiber,” Opt. Lett. 44, 1084-1087 (2019).
  • X. Ding, D. Heberle, K. Harrington, N. Flemens, W.-Z. Chang, T. A. Birks, and J. Moses, “Observation of Rapid Adiabatic Passage in Optical Four-Wave Mixing,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 153902 (2020).
  • J. Moses,  N. Flemens, and X. Ding “Back-conversion suppressed parametric frequency conversion for ultrawide bandwidth and ultrahigh efficiency devices”, Proc. SPIE 11264, Nonlinear Frequency Generation and Conversion: Materials and Devices XIX, 112640B (2 March 2020)

Selected Awards and Honors

  • NSF CAREER Award 2020
  • Dorothy & Fred Chau Award for Undergraduate Research Project Supervision 2019
  • Young Investigator Program Award (Air Force Office of Scientific Research) 2013
  • William Nichols Findley Prize 2007

Education

  • BS (Applied Physics), Yale University, 2001
  • Ph D (Applied Physics), Cornell University, 2007

Websites