Prof. Nurdogan Can

Currently my research interest
• involves exploring many aspects of the electronic energy level structure of rare-earth-activated optical materials and requires a wide variety of experimental techniques. The purpose of this work is to gain a complete picture of the electronic structure of these materials that includes understanding the relationships between the 4fN levels, 4fN–15d levels, and the host crystal's valence and conduction bands. This research is motivated by the need to improve our fundamental understanding of these materials as well as gain practical knowledge of immediate use in developing new rare-earth-activated optical materials for laser, phosphor, scintillator, and optical computing applications.
• A thorough understanding of both the static and dynamic properties of the electronic structure of rare-earth-activated optical materials is needed to guide the search for new materials that satisfy all of the requirements for phosphors, scintillators, and the many other rare-earth enabled optical technologies. To improve our understanding of these materials, a variety of experimental techniques are employed and coupled with theoretical modeling of the observed properties. Thus, high-resolution linear and nonlinear spectroscopy of the intraconfigurational 4fN to 4fN transitions, ultraviolet and excited-state absorption spectroscopy of the interconfigurational 4fN to 4fN–15d transitions, and photoionization and electron photoemission spectroscopy of the 4f electrons and host states are all employed to map out the energy levels and interactions that are crucial for technological applications as well as for a fundamental physical understanding of rare-earth-activated optical materials.

More recently I am interested in studying the correlation between optical and magnetic properties on oxide matrices. The main idea is to check the optical, magneto-optical and magnetic properties when the material is doped with some selected ions.