Advanced Research · West Linn, Oregon
A research company building the simulation, control, and diagnostic tools that turn laser-induced plasma physics from trial-and-error into reproducible measurement science.
"Researchers today tune these experiments by trial and error and manage safety margins informally. We think that should be a solved problem."
Rolice Labs — Research Mission Statement
The Problem
When a femtosecond pulse propagates through air at sufficient intensity, it doesn't just illuminate — it transforms the medium. The nonlinear interaction between the optical field and neutral air molecules produces a self-guided plasma channel: a column of ionized gas tens of centimeters to meters in length, conducting, transient, and exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions.
The physics are well-understood at the textbook level. The open problem is control: tuning a system with nanosecond-scale plasma lifetimes, shot-to-shot variability, and four coupled actuator dimensions, in real time, without a tested simulation framework to design from.
No one has solved that yet. That's the gap Rolice Labs exists to close.
What's At Stake
What We Build
Three interlocking capabilities, each useful on its own, that together form the foundation for a new class of plasma diagnostic tooling.
A physics-grounded reduced-order surrogate calibrated to the operating regime of research-grade Ti:Sapphire systems — 800 nm, sub-35 femtosecond pulses, 7 millijoules per pulse. The model predicts channel onset position, effective length, peak intensity, and normalized conductivity from four actuator inputs, with mean absolute error under 20 centimeters across the full envelope. Built for high-throughput uncertainty campaigns, not single-shot demos.
The published literature has no closed-loop control architecture for laser-induced plasma channel parameters. We built one: a gain-scheduled PID controller with blended objectives — channel length tracking plus soft penalties on onset position and peak intensity — regulating the channel in real time. A neural surrogate trained on PID rollouts offers a compact learned alternative. Both stay inside the safe operating envelope by construction, not by hope.
Real laser systems don't run in ideal conditions. Atmospheric drift, shot-to-shot noise, thermal effects, and gas composition shifts all erode repeatability. This framework propagates those sources through the full simulation and returns calibrated confidence intervals on every observable — turning a promising result into one a peer reviewer can actually check.
The Larger Picture
Every group running ultrafast laser plasma experiments needs answers to the same questions: what happens when I change the chirp? How does humidity shift my onset position? What is the real uncertainty on my conductivity measurement? Today those questions get answered empirically — expensively, and sometimes dangerously.
We want them answered computationally first, with the experiment as confirmation rather than discovery. The downstream uses span civilian, scientific, and national-security domains; we don't speculate about specifics, and we build the tooling to be rigorous and safe regardless of which domain ends up using it.
The Team
Two people, by design. The work calls for depth of expertise over headcount — every person here owns outcomes, not tasks.
Research & Technical
Leads all scientific and technical work: ultrafast laser physics, plasma diagnostics, closed-loop control systems, and the underlying scientific software.
Operations & Compliance
Leads business operations, financial management, and federal compliance. Majority owner and controlling member of Rolice International, LLC; primary signatory on banking and contracts.
Let's Talk
We read every message ourselves.
We welcome inquiries from federal program officers, agency scientists, and potential collaborators. If you're a program manager trying to understand what we're doing and whether it fits your portfolio, write in — we'll make time to talk it through.