Professor Quimby teaches courses and engages in research in the area of photonics, specializing in lasers, fiber optics, and the optical properties of materials. He particularly enjoys developing and teaching interdisciplinary courses that are relevant and interesting to both science and engineering students. Examples of courses he has developed at WPI include PH2501 Photonics, PH2502 Lasers, and PH2601 Photonics Laboratory. Professor Quimby also oversaw the renovation and equipping of Olin 205 as it was transformed into the IPG Photonics Laboratory, and currently serves as director of the laboratory. This lab supports not only the Photonics laboratory course but also many student projects, both graduate and undergraduate. Professor Quimby enjoys working in the lab with students, because it is, as he says, "light work."
Research Interests
Fiber Optics
Lasers
Optical Properties of Solids
Scholarly Work
R.S. Quimby and B.G. Aitken, J. Non-Cryst. Solids 320, 100 (2003), "Multiphonon energy gap law in rare-earth doped chalcogenide glass"
R.S. Quimby, Photonics and Lasers: an Introduction (Wiley, 2006) (published April 2006)
R.M. Martin and R.S. Quimby, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 23, 1770-1775 (2006), "Experimental evidence of the validity of the McCumber theory relating emission and absorption for rare-earth glasses"
R.M. Martin and R.S. Quimby, Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 221104 (2007), "Deviations from the reciprocity theory of McCumber at low temperature in Nd3+ doped glasses"
R.S. Quimby, N.J. Condon, S.P. O’Connor, S. Biswal, S.R. Bowman, Optical Materials 30, 827-834 (2008), "Upconversion and excited-state absorption in the lower levels of Er:KPb2Cl5"
R.S. Quimby, T.F. Morse, R. . Shubochkin, and S. Ramachandran, IEEE J. Select Topics in Quantum Electron.15, 12-19 (2009), "Yb3+ ring doping in high-order-mode fiber for high power 977 nm lasers and amplifiers"
