By jetting a pattern of lenses, you can increase the performance of the lasers. There are millions of other applications. Jim Tatum , a graduate student who recently received his doctorate in Electrical Engineering, worked in Dr. MacFarlane's lab on ultrafast characterization of semiconductor laser amplifiers. The measurements were demanding. They tell you how fast you can use the laser.
Designers learn how to do better devices.
It helps materials people understand the flow of charges and carriers in a device. That can lead to higher bandwidth and faster operating speeds. Dr. MacFarlane also is working on a filter that has performed digital calculations at 600 gigahertz. Digital signal processing requires being able to filter the series of ones and zeroes that make up the signal. The device, an optical lattice filter, was named by Eric Dowling , Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering , who has worked on the filter along with Dr. MacFarlane and graduate student Vishwa Narayan , who now works at Ericcson .