The course provides an overview of the physics and applications of ultrashort laser pulses and ultrafast nonlinear dynamical processes in optics. Topics to be covered include:

• Methods for generating and characterizing ultrafast laser pulses;
• the physical processes affecting ultrashort pulse properties;
• Mathematical descriptions of ultrashort pulses including the time-frequency domain;
• Devices for manipulating ultrashort pulses including spectral phase shaping;
• Ultrafast nonlinear optics and nonlinear optics in fibers including pulse compression, solitons, self-similarity, and supercontinuum generation;
• The nonlinear Schrodinger equation description of ultrashort pulse propagation in waveguides and its numerical solution;
• The principles of nonlinear dynamics and applications in ultrafast photonics, including advanced topics in nonlinear delay-differential systems, machine learning etc.