Overview Academic/Research Interest Areas

Inverse problems: This is the study of systems such as the spectacularly successful CAT scan (computed axial tomography). A description of my work can be found here.

Light interaction on the nanoscale: There is much recent interest in investigating the interaction of light with objects much smaller than the wavelength (typically objects with size comparable to a nanometer). A description of this work can be found here.

Coherence theory and propagation of partially coherent beams: It has been shown that beams with randomly fluctuating phase fronts have some advantages over their fully coherent counterparts, in such applications as propagation through turbulence and reduction of speckle effects. A description of this work can be found here.

Singular optics: At points where the intensity (brightness) of a wavefield is zero, the phase of the wavefield is undefined and said to be singular. Around these zero points, the field tends to 'circulate', and they are typically referred to as 'optical vortices'. Fields which contain optical vortices possess many interesting mathematical and physical properties.

Recent Publications

G. Gbur and E. Wolf, "Sources of arbitrary states of coherence that generate completely coherent fields outside the source", Opt. Lett. 22 (1997), 943.

G. Gbur and P.S. Carney, "Convergence criteria and optimization techniques for beam moments", Pure Appl. Opt. 7 (1998), 1221.

M. Berry, J.T. Foley, G. Gbur and E. Wolf, "Nonpropagating string excitations", Am. J. Phys. 66(2) (1998), 121.

G. Gbur and E. Wolf, "Phase conjugation with random fields and with deterministic and random scatterers", Opt. Lett. 24 (1999), 10.

G. Gbur, D. James, and E. Wolf, "Energy conservation law for randomly fluctuating electromagnetic fields", Phys. Rev. E 59 (1999), 4594.

Educational Background

B.A., Physics (with honors), University of Chicago, 1993

M.A., Physics, University of Rochester, 1996

Ph.D., Theoretical Physics, University of Rochester, 2001