Students can choose among four separate available modules.

Nonlinear optics:
The module is focused on the application of laser pulses in glass microfabrication techniques.
- Use of pulsed laser beams (from fs to ps) for glass microfabrication using Bessel beams
- Techniques of alignment of the laser beam through the use of mirrors, lenses, telescopic systems
- Generation of Bessel beams through axicon and diagnostics with imaging techniques
- Alignment of the set-up of microfabrication
- Use of the software to program glass writing
- Glass cutting techniques
- Tests on different types of glass in different experimental conditions (varying energy, depth of the laser beam in the sample, duration of the laser pulse)
- Diagnostics of glass samples through a optical microscope and SEM.

Light Scattering:
The module provides an introductory phase on Light Scattering techniques, with particular reference to the experiments to be performed and to the instrumentation to use. Later, the students are divided in groups of 2 or 3 units and will perform, starting from the creation of the optical setup, one of the experiments reported below:
- Heterodyne Near Field Scattering (HNFS).
- Low-Angle Elastic Light Scattering (LAELS)
- Wide-Angle Elastic Light Scattering (WAELS)
- Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS)

Quantum Optics:
The module includes the construction and the use of some optical setup for measuring the quantum aspects of radiation. To this aim, some introductory lectures will be given on quantum description of light, detectors and on the possible types of measurement. Then the students can choose from one or more of the following issues, will install the experimental setup and perform the necessary measures:
- Measurement of the distribution of the number of photons in continuous fields with single photon detectors
- Measurement of coincidences for classical light split at a beam splitter
- Generation of conditional states of light
- Random number generation
- Violation of Bell inequalities by quantum correlated fields.

Optical spectroscopy:
The module includes the study of the properties of molecular systems in solution by means of spectroscopic techniques (absorption measurements, time-integrated and time-resolved fluorescence emission). A few introductory lessons will be held on the properties of physical systems to be investigated and on the experimental techniques to be used. Then the students will perform one of the following experiments:
- Measurement of ultrafast transients in molecular systems having high photoreactivity and low fluorescence efficiency
- Study of the structure and conformational dynamics of biomolecules, in particular of DNA sequences
- Study of fluorescence of single molecules in confocal geometry (FCS, PCH, antibunching).