Irina T. Sorokina, is a professor of physics, the head of the "Laser Physics" group.

Irina is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) awarded in 2006 for "pioneering contributions to tunable and ultrashort-pulse lasers and their applications in spectroscopy, particularly based on novel materials in the near- and mid-infrared spectral ranges".

She was also awarded an IEE Snell Premium Award 2004  for “development of broadly tunable and microchip Cr:ZnSe lasers and their applications” and  and is a leading co-founder of an NTNU spin-off ATLA Lasers AS.

Irina's research interests are in the laser and nonlinear optics field, with an emphasis on ultrafast nonlinear optical phenomena and their applications. The group is focusing on the generation of intense, ultrashort optical pulses in the mid-infrared spectral region with time durations close to the shortest possible, consisting of only two or three optical cycles. Such pulses have extremely broad spectral bandwidth in the wavelength range where most of the molecule have their "fingerprints".

Generation of ultimately short pulses in the mid-infrared wavelength range is a challenging aim, but very desirable as this novel class of fiber-based lasers opens up a wide field of research and industrial applications. Indeed, the visible wavelength range corresponds to energy transitions of atoms, whereas mid-infrared range above 2 micrometers is where most of the molecules have their "fingerprints". As such, this class of lasers is particularly suitable for "real-world" applications. Such lasers have enormous potential for many applications of scientific, bio-medical and industrial importance. They can can be used for such applications as ultrasensitive gas analysis using, for example, double frequency combs, or for bio-imaging and time-resolved measurements as well as for THz generation, just to name a few.

For more information, visit the Laser Physics research group

Department of Physics - FINS