Margaret Murnane
STROBE Director, CU Distinguished Professor, JILA Fellow
Margaret Murnane is a Fellow of JILA and OSA and a faculty member in Physics at the University of Colorado. She runs a trans-disciplinary research group with her husband, Henry Kapteyn. She received her B.S and M.S. degrees from University College Cork, Ireland, and her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. She joined the faculty at Washington State University in 1990. In 1996, she moved to the University of Michigan and in 1999 to the University of Colorado. Henry and Margaret also co-founded KMLabs, the first laser company to commercially offer 10fs Ti:sapphire lasers as well as coherent high harmonic systems.
She has served on the Society's Board of Directors and Strategic Planning Council. She has been active in several topical meeting program committees, the Frontiers in Optics Program Committee, and was an editor for Optics Letters. She was awarded the 2017 Frederic Ives Medal and the 2010 R.W. Wood Prize.
Research Description
Ultrafast laser and x-ray science, ultrafast femtosecond-to-attosecond dynamics in molecular and materials systems, development of tabletop coherent x-ray sources and their application in science and technology.
Nonlinear optics has revolutionized laser science by making it possible to efficiently convert laser light from one wavelength into another. My research exploits the extreme nonlinear optical process of high-harmonic generation, whereby light from an ultrafast laser can be coherently upshifted, resulting in a tabletop laserlike (coherent) light source in the soft x-ray region. The x-ray bursts generated during high-harmonic generation represent the fastest strobe light in existence, fast enough to capture electron dynamics in atoms, molecules, and materials. Exciting applications of attosecond science and technology include capturing and controlling the coupled motions of electrons and atoms in molecules, high-resolution imaging, nanoscale heat transport, and ultrafast element-specific dynamics in magnetic materials.