A Tour through the Chronister Labs

Apparatus for picosecond photon echo spectroscopy under variable high pressure and variable low temperature conditions.

Graduate student Mike McIntire performing a photon-echo experiment.

Apparatus for transient acoustic grating studies of materials and surfaces under extreme high pressure and high temperature conditions.

Argon ion laser for high pressure Raman spectroscopy, argon ion pumped femtosecond Ti:Sapphire laser, and diode pumped YAG seeding of picosecond mode-locked, Q-switched YAG laser.

Nitrogen pumped narrow band scanning dye laser and spectrometer used for spectral hole-burning studies of doped sol-gel glasses.

Sol-gel clad fiber optic chemical sensing with time-resolved detection.

Confocal Raman Microscopy apparatus for spatial characterization of materials, phase separated minerals, and particles.

Raman microscopy of a 40 mm x 40 mm surface section of a metamorphic rock.  The false color peaks represent the Raman intensity at 1330 cm^-1 corresponding to microdiamond inclusions.

Background: High Resolution (~0.001 cm^-1) FTIR (Bruker HR120) for vibrational lineshape studies of molecular crystals. Far IR capabilities (down to 15 cm^-1) also enable low frequency studies in semiconductors and glasses.

Foreground: IR microscope for high pressure diamond anvil cell studies and IR microscopy of materials, and particles.