David J Erskine

Since 1987 Dave has been an experimental physicist at Lawrence Livermore Nat Lab, developing optical diagnostic techniques for shock physics, astronomy, high resolution spectroscopy and high speed recording. Has invented many techniques in broadband interferometry and signal processing whereby ordinary white light is used in applications normally reserved for coherent laser illlumination. He is an expert in Fourier and interferogram analysis, and the use of heterodyning to improve the performance of scientific instruments.

In the early 1990's Dave demonstrated the shockwave conversion of graphite to crystalline diamond, and measured the high shock pressure behavior of sapphire and other materials.

Dave in 1995 with an interferometer he invented that can measure m/s Doppler velocities with ordinary white light from a lamp, not requiring a coherent laser.

In the late 1980's as a post doctoral researcher at UC Berkeley he measured the superconducting properties of silicon compressed in diamond anvil cells to high pressure.

In the early 1980's as a graduate student at Cornell Univ. he measured the high speed optical properties of semiconductors using femtosecond lasers and developed novel pulse correlation techniques.

Scientific publication list

His work in developing astronomical instrumentation

His musical side

His earliest work with fringes

Dave testing his Doppler planet search interferometer in 1999 at the 1 meter Lick Observatory telescope. The fiberoptic interface at the bottom of telescope sends starlight into the fiber, which leads to the interferometer on a table next to telescope.

Dave and Michael Feuerstein (peeking) installing an inteferometer in the slit room of the Lick Observatory in 2002. The hat warns of impending impact with many knife-sharp edges poking from every angle. Useful in darkness when tired at night.

In 1986, holding a diamond anvil cell compressing silicon to high pressures. The cell was put into the cryostat and lowered to liquid helium temperatures, and measured the superconducting transition. Silicon at room pressures is not a superconductor.

In graduate school at Cornell Univ. in the early 1980s Dave worked on this short pulsed dye laser studying semiconductors. Laser built by Nick Frigo.

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www.SpectralFringe.org site maintained by
David Erskine
erskine1@llnl.gov