FWF Projekt ZK 91 "Isolated Strong Optical Magnetic Pulse Spectroscopy"On 29th of September, 2024, some members of iStOMPS went for a hike into the vineyards of Vienna. Although some iStOMPies could not make it, we got reinforcements from the González and Baltuska groups where iStOMPS is located.
On 24.05.2024, the Lange Nacht der Forschung (Long Night of Research) commenced in Austria. Lorenz, Rahul, and Sebastian from iStOMPS participated in this fantastic event with an exhibit at the main building of the University of Vienna. Together with members of the Backus group (laser spectroscopy), they presented a hand-built, do-it-yourself-style absorption spectrometer for visible light. We (and the visitors) had lots of fun in discovering how colors work. There even was a detective story about the ominous Prof. U. V. Vis for the kids to solve!
The spectrometer consists of easily available parts: an LED torchlight, a reading lens, two playing cards, a simple optical grating, a strip of white paper, and a webcam. The parts are arranged on a plywood frame with some 3D-printed mounts and contained in a black cardboard box that can be closed. When the torchlight is turned on, its light falls on the grating and is split into a rainbow on the paperstrip. The webcam sends pictures of the rainbow to a connected laptop that visualizes the absorption spectrum of colorful foils or table scatter gemstones.
During spring 2023, Alessandra applied with a challenging project proposal to the Extreme Light Infrastructure specialised on Attosecond Light Pulsed Sources (ELI-ALPS, Szeged – Hungary), which after evaluation got awarded with a 4-week beam time in February 2024. In December 2023, Ali was invited to give a seminar lecture at the ELI User Meeting where she talked about her project objectives, focussing on the various electron dynamics channels available in graphitic surfaces. The workshop focussed on a large variety of scientific subjects, ranging from the Physics & Chemistry of atoms and molecules, to surface science phenomena, extending also towards magnetic and chiral systems, Ali engaged Liza to embark with her on this Hungarian adventure. Ali wanted to show Liza how such big facilities look like and to offer her the possibility to get inspired to possibly apply for a project herself in the proximate future.
We both enjoyed the scientific talks and lab visits at ELI-ALPS and benefited from our networking activities, fostering possible new collaborations. Let us see what 2024 will bring us!
From 21 to 27 November 2023, I visited Dr. Xinhua Xie, one of our project collaborators, at PSI (Switzerland). On the one hand, during that week I participated in an experiment on X-ray-induced Augen ionization of molecules. On the other hand, I learned a lot of background information about free electron lasers (FELs). In addition to academics, the SwissFEL and SLS tour guided by Dr. Xinhua was also very impressive.
During Summer 2023, at a gathering at the Institute of Applied Physics (TU Wien) Ali learned about the joining of a new professor, who is an expert in both the tailoring of complex 3D magnetic nanomaterials and in the characterization of their physical, optical, and electronic properties. During the welcome reception of Prof. Amalio Fernández-Pacheco, she immediately reached out to him to discuss possible common interests and collaboration perspectives. After a first in-person meeting during August 2023, Ali invited Amalio to one of our iStOMPS seminar to introduce him to the whole consortium, which was held on November 24th, 2023. Liza and Lorenz nicely introduced our iStOMPS project objectives to Amalio, and conversely he told us about all the techniques of fabrication and characterization that he and his team can offer in their laboratories. Our intention is to join forces during 2024, especially in finding out together a suitable procedure to fabricate samples to characterise the strengths of the oscillating magnetic fields obtained at the centre of a tightly-focussed azimuthally polarised beam, as the one created in Liza’s laser setup.
On July, 12th our team enjoyed a beautiful sunny summer day going hiking in one of the last pieces of the original Viennese Woods – that is the Lainzer Tiergarten (or Zoo), located on the outskirts of the city. Equipped with some good sandwiches and a lot of fun and joy, we made a “big round” in this special recreational area. Since Ale lives in Hütteldorf, as a local, she proposed the following route (highlighted below), entailing some nice panoramic view points, such as the “Hubertuswarte” (see first picture below) and the “Kaiserwiese” (second picture).
The Lainzer Zoo offers a unique natural landscape with a wealth of flora and fauna — e.g., there are generally lots of wild boars — as well as cultural-historical exhibitions in the Hermesvilla. In other words, it is a place that offers relaxation, experience in nature and education and, as you can judge from our smiles, our iStOMPS team enjoyed this excursion very much!
iStOMPS on top of the “Hubertus Warte”
Panoravic viewpoint of the “Kaiserwiese”
From 7.2.2023 to 22.2.2023 I was performing a research stay in the group of our collaborator Prof. Carlos Hernández-García at the University of Salamanca (Spain). Together with Rodrigo Martín-Hernández, a PhD student of his photonics group, I was performing further scans for the magnetic field enhancement and electric field suppression of different aperture shapes. Besides science, I also had the opportunity to do little sightseeing tours in the marvellous city of Salamanca and try out my (basic) Spanish speaking skills.
Gracias por la agradable estancia a mis queridos colegas Carlos y Rodrigo y a iStOMPS!
Lorenz
The ACS Photonics article published by Edgar Kaksis and Valentina Shumakova about stimulated Raman scattering for the production of XUV radiation produced quite a lot of Media attention. Have a look for yourself at the News page of the TU Wien Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology!
More Media echo can be found at Altmetrics.
On 29.9.2022, Lorenz, Rahul, and Sebastian were joining the European Researchers Night in Vienna and showed young and old guests of the public how to build and use a simple spectrometer to split up visible light and understand the colors of gems and crystals.
Today, Edgar Kaksis defended his thesis titled “Scaling of peak and average power in femtosecond ytterbium amplifiers” and obtained his PhD with distinction. Congratulations to Edgar!
