James A. Piper

James A. (Jim) Piper (1 January 1947 – 20 July 2023) was a New Zealander-Australian physicist, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and Professor of Physics at Macquarie University.

Piper studied physics at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and received a B.Sc. (Hons) in 1968. His post-doctoral research was on metal-vapour lasers, with Colin Webb at Oxford.

Laser research in Australia

Following his arrival to Macquarie University in the late 1970s, from Oxford, Piper established one of the first laser research centres in Australia. Initially he directed his research toward gas lasers, continuous wave metal ion lasers, cyclic pulsed metal vapour lasers, and metal ion recombination lasers. He also added a laser development program on high-power tunable dye lasers for various applications including atomic vapor laser isotope separation. In this area of research he is co-author, with Frank Duarte, of a number of papers on tunable laser oscillator physics.

Piper's primary research interests were in solid-state lasers. In particular, diode-pumped solid-state lasers and related thermal engineering, mid-infrared solid state laser materials, solid state Raman lasers, and novel self-frequency-doubling laser materials.