To accomplish these goals, multidisciplinary teams from diverse technical areas assemble to pursue specific development projects. Optical and electronic laboratory facilities support research efforts complemented by departmental programs, drawing on the combined expertise of Spectrum Lab personnel and affiliated faculty. A 32-processor SGI Origin 2000 supercomputer, shared with the CCB, provides superb scientific modeling capability.
Several projects are ongoing.
One application consists of identifying patterns in multiple-probe data from neural bundles to establish their adaptive cooperative function. More generally, this correlator can contribute to iterative computation, used in adaptive imaging. Application of this concept extends to buffer memory for data routing in communication networks. Frequency references for spectroscopic measurement and clocks have been demonstrated in compact implementations, and their application in precision-timing measurement instruments is under development. The common thread throughout these projects is the exploitation of the spectral attributes of optical fields to provide either immense bandwidth in information processing or exquisite precision in oscillator stability.