1999 DAMOP Thesis Award to Jens U. Nöckel Max-Planck Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Dresden (Germany) for research in "The emission properties of asymmetric dielectric resonators with chaotic ray dynamics"

Background: Born and raised on the German island of Helgoland, Dr. Nöckel had his first encounters with science through summer jobs at Helgoland's ornithological and marine biology labs. Dr. Nöckel enrolled in physics at Hamburg University in 1986. After five semesters, he went to Oregon State University in Corvallis as a graduate exchange student for one year. He then completed his German Diplom degree in Hamburg with a thesis on magnetotransport in semiconductor microstructures, supervised by H.Heyszenau. In 1992, he began PhD studies with A.D.Stone at Yale University. With a Pierre Hoge Endowed Fellowship from Yale, Dr. Nöckel initially worked on electronic transport theory before micro-optics in deformed dielectrics became the focus of his thesis work in early 1994. This led to a patent he holds jointly with A.D.Stone and R.K.Chang. For the thesis, Dr. Nöckel received the Henry Prentiss Becton Prize for Exceptional Achievement in Engineering and Applied Science when he graduated from Yale in 1997. As a staff member at the Max-Planck Institute in Dresden, he continued to investigate microresonators. This resulted in a second patent together with Yale and Bell Laboratories. Since 2000, Dr. Nöckel is the senior design engineer in the InP optoelectronics group at Nanovation Technologies, Evanston (IL).

Contact Information: Address: Jens Uwe Nöckel Department of Physics University of Oregon 1371 E 13th Avenue Eugene, OR 97403, USA. Phone: ++1-541-346-5210 Fax: ++-541-346-5861 email: noeckel@www.uoregon.edu website: www.uoregon.edu/~noeckel

Abstract of the research Miniaturization in optical resonator development has reached a point where technological progress can profit from novel physical methods. The strong mode confinement in microresonators makes nonlinear and quantum electrodynamic effects accessible [1,2,3,4], and is furthermore a prerequisite for opto-electronic integration. Of central importance in these developments are waveguiding techniques that confine the light to an optically dense medium with the help of total internal reflection. Combining this approach with the use of structures in which light rays move chaotically, we develop a theory of asymmetric dielectric resonators in the transition regime between ray and wave optics. A 1500 word description of the research can be found here

noeckel 04/15/99