Home

Welcome to the Lightweight Optics Lab. With the proliferation of aerial and space platforms (for example, satellites and drones), lightweight and cost-effective optical systems are becoming increasingly critical to advance the use of these platforms for societal benefit.  We develop technology to enable lightweight and cost-effective optical systems, with a particular focus on using advanced manufacturing techniques like ultrafast laser processing. Our research areas span from basic science aimed at understanding residual stress arising from ultrafast laser pulses, to applied research and technology development aimed at solving specific problems for civil and defense applications.

Check out our latest publications:

K. A. Laverty and B. D. Chalifoux, “Ultrafast laser stress generation landscape in fused silica,” Opt. Express, OE 33, 24787–24799 (2025). https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-33-12-24787

The ratio of equibiaxial to antibiaxial stress components remains constant in fused silica, within a wide ultrafast laser processing parameter space, and only changes significantly upon melting due to thermal accumulation.

 

C. C. Hokin and B. D. Chalifoux, “Stability of Ultrafast Laser-Induced Stress in Fused Silica and Ultra-Low Expansion Glass,” Photonics 12, 778 (2025). https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics12080778

The surface figure of fused silica and Corning ULE wafers, imparted with ultrafast laser-generated stress, show negligible change even up to 200 C, suggesting that the stress is likely extremely stable at room temperature, consistent with our other work.

 

 

Congratulations to Dr. Hayden Wisniewski!

Hayden defended his PhD dissertation (Optical Sciences) on precision metrology techniques for difficult-to-measure surfaces. Hayden will soon be working as a metrology engineer at ASML, helping make the next-generation chips possible.

Photo: (left to right) Dr. Mark Schattenburg (MIT, co-advisor and committee member), Dr. Hayden Wisniewski, and Dr. Brandon Chalifoux.

7/27/2023

 

Congratulations to Alex St. Peter!

Alex defended his Masters thesis (Optical Sciences) on birefringence imaging to estimate stress states in ultrafast laser-modified fused silica.

4/27/2023

 

Check out our latest publication: https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.456679

We present a promising new method of accurately figuring thin mirrors, called Ultrafast Laser Stress Figuring.

5/9/2022

 

New paper by MIT and Chalifoux: https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.445379

This paper describes a precise method of creating Stress Tensor Mesostructures, which are lithographically-patterned film structures that produce a desired state and distribution of stress for accurately shaping thin substrates.

4/14/2022