Skip to main content

Memorial Tributes Volume 19 (2015) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:

JAMES P. GORDON
Pages 137-142

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 138...
... In his article "Reflections on the First Maser," published in the May 2010 issue of Optics and Photonics News, he recalls a 1954 lunch meeting with Townes and Arthur Schawlow in which they created the name maser for the new device as an acronym for "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." Before long, Schawlow joked that the acronym stood for "money acquisition scheme for expensive research." Gordon's thesis project was a very sophisticated experiment involving a vacuum chamber, a beam of ammonia molecules, 139
Read the entire page →
From page 139...
... , high-capacity optical fiber transmission systems providing the backbone of the Internet, the generation of ultrashort attosecond pulses, frequency combs for precision time keeping, LIDAR and atmospheric sensing, the reading of compact discs and DVDs, laser pointers, quantum information sciences, and the beginnings of energy generation using laser fusion. Jim Gordon made important fundamental contributions to the growth of several of these new fields and essentially tutored many of his colleagues at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he was a research scientist from 1955 until his retirement in 1996.
Read the entire page →
From page 140...
... Having joined Arthur Ashkin's efforts to manipulate microparticles with laser beams in the 1970s, Gordon wrote the first theory describing radiation forces and momenta in dielectric media. Later, he and Ashkin modeled the motion of atoms in a radiation trap, which they published in Physical Review A in May 1980.
Read the entire page →
From page 141...
... . His seminal work with Hermann Haus on what is now called the GordonHaus effect identifies and provides the understanding for the most important bit-rate-limiting effect in soliton transmission due to the random walk of coherently amplified solitons ("Random Walk of Coherently Amplified Solitons in Optical Fiber Transmission," Optics Letters 11(10)
Read the entire page →
From page 142...
... In platform tennis he won the US National Championships in men's doubles in 1959, and in mixed doubles in 1961 and 1962. Jim married Susanna Bland Waldner, a graduate of Vassar and former Bell Labs computing expert, in 1960.
Read the entire page →

Key Terms

  • bell labs
  • optical fiber
  • optical fibers
  • quantum information
  • polarization mode

  • diffraction losses
  • coherently amplified
  • fundamental contributions
  • optics letters
  • mode dispersion

  • amplified solitons
  • radiation forces
  • conducting advanced
  • molecular oscillator
  • resonator types

  • continued work
  • subsequent texts
  • review letters
  • described analytically
  • charles townes

  • wave functions
  • skilled tennis
  • maser oscillators
  • charles hard
  • jim coauthored

  • fiber communication
  • highly skilled
  • fiber transmission
  • labs computing
  • laser science


    • This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
    More information on Chapter Skim is available.