James Van Howe

Associate Professor of Physics

• Phone: 309-794-3403
• Email: JamesVanHowe@augustana.edu
• Office: Hanson 205

Professor van Howe began his physics career as an undergraduate at Augustana College in 1996 but finished his B.A. in physics at University of Chicago in 2001. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in  physics from Cornell University in 2005 and 2007 respectively. He was a visiting scientist at Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique in Montreal, QC  in the summer of 2012 and 2016 for work on ultrafast optical signal processing. Currently, he is on professional leave until the fall of 2020 at INRS in Montreal to research quantum optical signal processing.

In addition to teaching and developing curriculum for undergraduate physics courses and laboratory, he directs research and maintains a laboratory in experimental optics.

Research interests

Optical signal processing, ultrafast optics, nonlinear optics, fiber optics, laser sources, photonics, and quantum optics.

Recent publications

J. Jeon, R. Maram, J. van Howe and J. Azaña, “Programmable Passive Waveform Amplifier based on the Temporal Talbot Effect,” Opt. Exp., Vol 26, No. 6, pp. 6872-6879, 2018.

R. Maram, M. Seghilani, J. Jeon, X. Li, J. van Howe, L.R. Cortés and J. Azaña, “Demonstration of input-to- output gain and temporal noise mitigation in a Talbot amplifier,” IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 665-668, 2018.

R. Maram, L.R. Cortes, J. van Howe and J. Azaña, “Energy-preserving arbitrary repetition-rate control of periodic pulse trains using temporal Talbot effects,” J. of Lightwave Tech., Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 1-11, 2017.

R. Maram, J. van Howe, M. Li and J. Azaña, “Lossless Fractional Repetition-Rate Multiplication of Optical Pulse Trains,” Opt. Lett, Vol. 40, No. 5, pp. 375-377, 2015.

 R. Maram, J. van Howe, M. Li and J. Azaña, “Noiseless intensity amplification of repetitive signals by coherent addition using the temporal Talbot effect,” Nat. Comm., Vol. 5, Article No. 5163, 2014.

 M. Durst and J. van Howe, “All-fiber, Wavelength and Repetition-Rate Tunable, Ultrafast Pulse Generation in the 2.0 micron Region Without Mode-locking,” J. of Lightwave Tech., Vol. 31, No. 23, pp. 3714-3718, 2013.

Complete list of publications

Recent colloquia

“Optics in Space and time,” Middlebury College Department of Physics, Spring 2019.

"Ultrafast Optical Signal Processing using Space-time Duality," University of Iowa Optical Science Technology Center, Spring 2016.

Specializations: Optical signal processing, Ultrafast optics, Nonlinear optics, Fiber optics, Laser sources, Photonics, Quantum optics