Czech physicist Václav Hanus, a research fellow of the Ultrafast Nanooptics 'Momentum' Research Group at the Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics of the HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, has won a USD 20,000 grant that can aid the further development of ultrashort pulse lasers.
The Optica Foundation connects researchers in optics and photonics with industry players such as Coherent Inc. to accelerate the application of new technologies. The Couillaud Prize, which includes a USD 20,000 grant, is awarded to an early-career researcher working on developing ultrashort pulse lasers.
According to the recent decision, the Foundation supports Václav Hanus's project proposal on the study and commercial applications of femtosecond lasers through the award. Ultrafast femtosecond laser pulses enable researchers to track and control the fastest processes of electrons in a wide range of physical and chemical systems. Ferenc Krausz's 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics affirms the cutting-edge nature of this research field.
“Thanks to their shortness, the field in the pulse can be highly asymmetric, thereby imposing a certain direction on the processes it induces. The asymmetry of the field is also known as carrier-envelope phase (CEP). Such pulses are already routinely generated by contemporary technology, and field asymmetry control is possible utilising CEP stabilisation. Although the pulse-to-pulse change is known and defined, the pulses vary significantly from one point in space to another. This spatial inhomogeneity hinders large-scale experiments, posing a real challenge for potential applications of laser-matter interaction. Therefore, I developed an easy-to-implement scheme to measure the spatial distribution of the CEP,” explained Václav Hanus, summarising the essence of his research.
The Czech physicist joined Péter Dombi's Ultrafast Nanooptics 'Momentum' Research Group (femtolab.hu) as a postdoctoral researcher in 2019. He played a leading role in developing an optical chip that allowed researchers in Budapest to create the world's first three-dimensional map of ultrashort laser pulse phases. Their paper was published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.