Adaptive control of lasers and their interactions with matter

Summary form only given. We present several results obtained in our laboratory on the use of adaptive feedback methods in controlling lasers and their interactions with matter. First, we describe a genetic algorithm-based feedback loop for optimizing laser pulses in a femtosecond pump-probe experiment. In particular, we study the effectiveness of feedback control under a variety of experimental conditions. We find that for simple control experiments, feedback can achieve the desired goal even in the presence of experimental noise. Second, we describe experiments in which feedback is used to control the motion of charge carriers in quantum wells. Finally, we describe experiments in which adaptive feedback is used to compensate phase dispersion in chirped pulse amplifiers by monitoring the ionization rate of molecules in a spectral blueshift experiment