Ferenc Krausz is a director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and a professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. During the visit, Krausz toured ATAP’s BELLA Center and met with Lab Director Mike Witherell and Deputy Laboratory Director for Research Carol Burns.

Krausz was awarded the prestigious 2023 Nobel Laureate in Physics—which he shared with the physicists Pierre Agostini and Anne L’Huillier—for his groundbreaking experiments with attosecond (one billionth of a billionth of a second) pulses of light. These pulses, which can be used to track the movements of individual electrons, not only provide fundamental insights into the behavior of electrons in atoms, molecules, and solids but also hold the potential to speed up the development of electronic components significantly. He is considered one of the most visionary leaders in this area of science.

Ferenc Krausz meets with ATAP researchers at the BELLA Center. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)

The U.S. Department of Energy has long supported attosecond and ultrafast intense laser science as key areas for breakthroughs in the fundamental and applied sciences, from revealing the most fundamental electronic processes of chemical reactions to developing revolutionary new accelerator technologies.

Krausz’s visit to the Lab was a significant recognition of the leading work conducted in ultrafast, intense laser science at BELLA. It also provided an excellent opportunity to foster our connections to some of the brightest minds and cutting-edge efforts in this field.

Oliver Gessner, a senior scientist in the Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division, and Jens Osterhoff, a senior scientist and deputy director for projects and applications at BELLA and a former Ph.D. student under Krausz, organized the visit.

For more information on ATAP News articles, contact caw@lbl.gov.