Research at the Florida Tech’s ULMP laboratory is devoted to the study of material processing using ultrafast lasers featuring pulse duration in the picosecond to femtosecond range. This processing regime is characterized by a minimum of thermal impact induced to the material. On the other hand, high-repetition laser sources with ultra-short pulse durations can be utilized to accumulated heat in the bulk of transparent materials with a very high spatial localization. Application areas of ultrafast lasers include high-precision cutting, drilling, micro-welding and patterning of various materials, including sensitive parts and materials like biological matter, thin-walled structural parts, foams and meshes.

Development of time- and space-resolved process diagnostics is another important research aspect of ULMP. Due to the very short pulse duration of the laser sources, a variety of laser processes including additive manufacturing can be studied with a sub-100 fs temporal resolution.