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Robert J. Levis

Professor
Director, Center for Advanced Photonics Research
​Senior Associate Dean, CST
Physical/Analytical
Office: Beury 244
Phone: 215-204-5241
Send an email
​Visit website

Biography

1988-1990

​
1988

1984

Selected Awards
Postdoctoral researcher, Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, University of Colorado, Boulder

Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University

B.S. La Salle College

National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award.  National Institutes of Health Research Career Development Award. Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. Fellow American Physical Society

Interests

The Levis laboratory focuses on understanding the photochemistry and photophysics of molecules interacting with ultrafast, ultra-intense laser pulses. Ultrafast means laser pulses that are only a few millionths of a billionth of a second. Ultra-intense means laser fields approaching the fields binding electrons within molecules. We investigate laser vaporization of condensed phase systems, laser filamentation, laser generation of nanomaterials, and the control of chemical reactions using shaped laser pulses. These efforts are leading to new ways to diagnose disease, map cellular components, detect improvised explosive devices, classify tissues and phenotype, classify explosives for forensics analysis, and to synthesize monodispersed nanomaterials. 

Select Publications

Ultraviolet Surprise: Efficient Soft X-Ray High-Harmonic Generation in Multiply Ionized Plasmas
Dimitar Popmintchev, Carlos Hernández-García, Franklin Dollar, Christopher Mancuso, Jose A. Pérez-Hernández, Ming-Chang Chen, Amelia Hankla, Xiaohui Gao, Bonggu Shim, Alexander L. Gaeta, Maryam Tarazkar, Dmitri A. Romanov, Robert J. Levis, Jim A. Gaffney, Mark Foord, Stephen B. Libby, Agnieszka Jaron-Becker, Andreas Becker, Luis Plaja, Margaret M. Murnane, Henry C. Kapteyn, Tenio Popmintchev
Science 350:1225 (2015)
DOI: 10.1126/science.aac9755
 
Nonresonant, femtosecond laser vaporization and electrospray post-ionization mass spectrometry as a tool for biological tissue imaging
Fengjian Shi, Jieutonne J. Archer, Robert J. Levis
Methods (104), 79–85 (2016)
DOI: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2016.02.016
 
Elucidating Strong Field Photochemical Reduction Mechanisms of Aqueous [AuC14](-): Kinetics of Multiphoton Photolysis and Radical-Mediated Reduction
Katharine Moore Tibbetts, Behzad Tangeysh, Johanan H. Odhner, Robert J. Levis
Journal of Physical Chemistry A 120 (20), 3562–3569 (2016)
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.6b03163
 
Controlling the Dissociation Dynamic of Acetophenone Radical Cation Through Excitation of Ground and Excited State Wavepackets
Katharine Moore Tibbetts, Maryam Tarazkar, Timothy Bohinski, Dmitri A Romanov, Spiridoula Matsika, Robert J Levis
Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics 48, 164002 (2015)
DOI:     10.1088/0953-4075/48/16/164002
 
High-energy Non-collinear Optical Parametric Amplifier Producing 4-fs Pulses in the Visible Seeded by a Gas-Phase Filament
Johanan H. Odhner, Robert J. Levis
Optics Letters 16 (40), 3814-3817 (2015)
DOI: 10.1364/OL.40.003814
 
Filament-Assisted Impulsive Raman Spectroscopy of Ozone and Nitrogen Oxides
Erin T. McCole Dlugosz, Reginald Fisher, Aleksey Filin, Dmitri A. Romanov, Johanan H. Odhner, Robert J. Levis
The Journal of Physical Chemistry A 119 (35), 9272–9280 (2015)
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.5b06319
 
Triangular Gold Nanoplate Growth by Oriented Attachment of Au Seeds Generated by Strong Field Laser Reduction
Behzad Tangeysh, Katharine Moore Tibbetts, Johanan H. Odhner, Bradford B. Wayland, Robert J. Levis
Nano Letters 15(5), 3377-3382 (2015)
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b00709
 
Direct Analysis of Intact Biological Macromolecules by Low-Energy, Fiber-Based Femtosecond Laser Vaporization at 1042 nm Wavelength with Nanospray Postionization Mass Spectrometry
Fengjian Shi, Paul M. FlaniganIV, Jieutonne J. Archer, Robert J. Levis
Analytical Chemistry 87 (6), 3187–3194 (2015)
DOI: 10.1021/ac502563c
 
Strong Field Adiabatic Ionization Prepares Selective Launch State for Coherent Control
Timothy Bohinski, Katharine Moore Tibbetts, Maryam Tarazkar, Dmitri A. Romanov, Spiridoula Matsika, Robert J. Levis
The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 5 (24), 4305–4309 (2014)
DOI: 10.1021/jz502313f
 
Optical Spectroscopy using Gas-Phase Femtosecond Laser Filamentation
Johanan Odhner, Robert Levis
Annual Review of Physical Chemistry (65), 605-28 (2014)
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-physchem-040513-103708

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF chemistry

Department of Chemistry
Temple University
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Philadelphia, PA 19122-6081
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