Federico Capasso

Federico Capasso (born 1949, Rome, Italy), a prominent applied physicist, was one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University. He has co-authored over 300 papers, edited four volumes, and holds over 50 US patents.

Federico Capasso received the doctor of Physics degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Rome, Italy, in 1973 and after doing research in fiber optics at Fondazione Bordoni in Rome, joined Bell Labs in 1976. In 1984, he was made a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff and in 1997 a Bell Labs Fellow. In addition to his research activity Capasso has held several management positions at Bell Labs including Head of the Quantum Phenomena and Device Research Department and the Semiconductor Physics Research Department (1987–2000) and Vice President of Physical Research (2000–2002). He joined Harvard on January 1, 2003.

He has contributed to semiconductors and devices. He and his collaborators demonstrated and developed the quantum cascade laser, which concept was proposed in 1971 by Rudolf Kazarinov and Robert Suris (Kazarinov, RF; Suris, RA (April 1971). "Possibility of amplification of electromagnetic waves in a semiconductor with a superlattice". Fizika i Tekhnika Poluprovodnikov 5 (4): 797–800))

His current research in quantum electronics deals with the design of new light sources based on giant optical nonlinearities in quantum...
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