ICFO’s Post

Granted: Not everyone gets excited about particle accelerators. But as a leading research center for accelerator physics, we want to congratulate and celebrate our colleague Rob Shalloo, who has been selected by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - German Research Foundation) for the prestigious Emmy Noether Programme, which enables outstanding early career researchers to qualify for university professorship by leading an independent research group. Rob's group focuses on controlling ultra-compact accelerators and advancing this exciting technology (really!) by accurately tailoring the structure of the plasma within the accelerator. The ultimate goal: Developing compact, maybe even mobile accelerators for applications in hospitals for detailed medical imaging to assessing structural damage in infrastructure to name two examples. More info: https://lnkd.in/erBqi57e #acceleratorphysics

After a long journey, a delayed flight, and staying awake for 25 hours, I finally arrived in Philadelphia yesterday evening. Now, I’m rested and ready for the 3rd International MXene Conference at Drexel University!   Today I took the liberty (pun intended!) to visit a very important place and it put me in a reflective mood about how important freedom is in every aspect of our lives, including science. I must admit that it is easy to forget about being grateful for my workplace Łukasiewicz - Institute of Microelectronics and Photonics where I have all the freedom I need to pursue my scientific experiments. The beginning of the #SIMS experiments on #MXene samples was nothing like the Liberty Bell which cracked early and was repaired several times. For the first few months, I did not even have any cracks in my results, I literally had nothing at all! And yet nobody forced me to abandon the idea of reaching the atomic depth resolution for these samples and focus on easier tasks. I persisted and now SIMS results are presented in several journals, including those from Nature family and more will come soon! And here I am, presenting the SIMS technique during the MXene conference organized at its birthplace, A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute!   During the panel “The Place of MXenes in the Nanomaterials World” I will present my perspective as a scientist who is focused on characterization. I always had a feeling that analysis had to catch up with our abilities to produce various nanomaterials. We can produce them but how can we see them? There is no and will never be a single universal technique that can tell us everything. But even combining several of these methods will not give us a full picture, hence there is a constant need to develop new techniques that can bring us closer to fully comprehending the structure of these innovative materials!   The take-home message from my talk? We got used to calling MXenes transition metal carbides, nitrides, and carbonitrides. Up to date, I analyzed more than 4500 different samples from all around the world, produced in different laboratories and more than 99% (that's right! More than ninety nine percent!!!) of these samples are actually oxycarbides, oxynitrides, and oxycarbonitrides! Yes, we can produce them but can we really see what they are?

INNOVATION AND INSPIRATION: INTERVIEW WITH ANDREAS TÜNNERMANN For our institute director, Andreas Tuennermann, 2023 is a year of anniversaries: The internationally renowned laser scientist not only celebrated his 60th birthday this summer. He is also looking back on 25 years now as chairholder and professor at the Institute of Applied Physics at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, as well as 20 years as director of Fraunhofer IOF. In more than two decades he has thereby significantly shaped and contributed to #Jena as a location for optics and photonics. In a two-part interview with Professor Tünnermann we consequently take a look back, and at the same time shed light on the future. 💬 Find out more about Andreas Tünnermann's first successes in #Jena and about the special "spirit" of the traditional optics location in this first part: https://lnkd.in/enQdnFg3 💬 Moreover, learn about why it can be worth it to continue pursuing areas of research outside of the "mainstream" and what the mid-19th century California "Gold Rush" has to do with quantum technologies in the second part of the interview: https://lnkd.in/eyYbqP6V Dear Andreas,  thank you for your unique impulses, through which you have made a significant contribution to strengthening the national and international attractiveness of the region over the past two decades. We are looking forward to further exciting research topics in the future, which will be initiated under your guidance and supervision! 💡   #anniversary #research #optics #photonics #laser #quantumtechnologies

Start planning your submission, and do your best to attend this promising workshop!!

Oxford Researchers Secure Top Award at International Optics Conference Researchers from the Department of Engineering Science have won the Best Paper Award at the 2024 SPIE Photonics West conference held in San Francisco, USA. DPhil student Yifei Ma received the Best Paper Award for his work titled “Polarization Adaptive Optics for Enhanced Stokes Vector Measurement” within the Polarized Light and Optical Angular Momentum for Biomedical Diagnostics section. This paper introduces an innovative methodology for evaluating the efficacy of polarization adaptive optics (P-AO) in correcting aberrations within optical systems, utilizing optical Skyrmions[1]. This breakthrough not only propels the frontier of adaptive optics but also unveils a compelling application of Skyrmionic beams. https://lnkd.in/eSP9349p

Read the new paper by Alrik Durand, Yoann Baron, Félix Cache, Tobias Herzig, Mario KHOURY, Sebastien Pezzagna, Jan Meijer, Jean-Michel HARTMANN, Shay Reboh, Marco Abbarchi, Isabelle Robert-Philip, Jean-Michel Gérard, Vincent Jacques, Guillaume Cassabois, and Anaïs Dréau studying single 𝐺 centers in carbon-implanted silicon. 👉 https://lnkd.in/epAVaWxf Single color centers recently isolated in carbon-implanted silicon with an emission line at 1.28 𝜇m have so far been identified as a well-known defect called the 𝐺 center. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that these single defects are actually divided into two distinct families, each with specific single-photon properties. On one side are the genuine G centers, and on the other, the faux G centers, which belong to a different defect labeled the G⋆ center.  These results provide a safeguard against future defect misidentifications, which is crucial for the further development of quantum technologies relying on the quantum properties of G or G⋆ centers. This work is the result of a collaboration between the University of Montpellier, Leipzig University, IM2NP CNRS UMR 7334, CEA-Leti, SOLNIL, and the NPSC - Nanophysics and Semiconductors team of PHELIQS - Quantum Photonics, Electronics and Engineering. #researchpaper #quantumphotonics #photonics #nanotechnology #siliconphotonics CEA-Irig, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble INP - UGA

🤝 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘂𝗺: ▶ University of West Attica (𝗨𝗪𝗔) ‼ We're thrilled to highlight 𝗨𝗪𝗔 in our #MeetTheConsortium series for the #QPIC1550 project ‼ 🔹 As a dynamic hub for innovation in photonics and optical communications, UWA is playing a pivotal role in the QPIC1550 project. 💡Their expertise in neuromorphic and quantum photonics is crucial in ▶ advancing quantum metrology and clock synchronization ▶enhancing quantum security and ▶driving forward quantum technology. 🤓 This collaboration is pivotal in driving the innovations at the heart of our quantum technology advancements. 👉 Discover how UWA is shaping the future of quantum applications and contributing to the project's success:  🔗 https://lnkd.in/dJMGfX3f 👉 The 𝗤𝗣𝗜𝗖𝟭𝟱𝟱𝟬 consortium 𝗶𝘀: QTI SRL Eindhoven University of Technology Politecnico di Milano DTU - Technical University of Denmark University of West Attica Martel Innovate LIGENTEC Wroclaw University of Science and Technology University College Cork National University of Ireland #QuantumTechnology #Photonics #Innovation #quantumcommunication

🎉 Congratulations to Antonio Lacerda Santos Neto for the successful defense of his PhD Thesis entitled "Predictive modeling of nanoelectronic devices". The work was supervised by Xavier Waintal and Christoph Groth. This PhD thesis is a cotribution to the control of quantum-mechanical systems in condensed matter, advancing our understanding and development of full-fledged quantum technologies. Their work focused on creating a comprehensive simulation stack, ranging from the microscopic modeling of individual quantum bits and flying qubits to the treatment of many-body correlations with automatic Feynman diagrams calculations, and exploring the collective behavior of multi-qubit devices and quantum error correction codes. A notable achievement of this research is bridging the gap between abstract quantum models and actual physical systems, essential for understanding quantum entanglement and decoherence dynamics. Antonio developed innovative algorithms that simplify models from their microscopic counterparts using renormalization group theory, applied to quantum nanoelectronics and semiconductor circuits. This work addresses long-standing issues like the 0.7 anomaly and modern challenges in building flying qubit architectures. Thanks to Anton Akhmerov, Fabienne Michelini, Rodolfo Jalaber and Hermann Sellier for their participation to the jury. #phdthesis #quantum #quantumtechnologies #quantumcomputing CEA-Irig, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble INP - UGA

I presented a poster at SPIE Photonics West 2024 (January 27th - February 1st) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California! My research focuses on laser processing with femtosecond laser pulses, and I participated in the "Laser-based Micro- and Nanoprocessing XVIII" session within the LASE conference. My poster, titled "Formation of Homogeneous LIPSS on ZnO by Two-Beam Interference of Femtosecond Laser Pulses," explored a novel method for creating highly periodic Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures (LIPSS).

Submit your abstract now! The abstract is to be submitted no later than 23rd February 2024 in the conference registration and submission portal: https://lnkd.in/gSVXKn76 The Optics and Photonics Days 2024 academic conference program consists of submitted contributions as well as invited talks, plenary speakers, panel discussions and other related activity. Academic sessions include oral presentations and poster presentations for which you may submit your abstract for review by the program committee and additional expert reviewers.   The conference will cover all aspects of Optics and Photonics, however, the main topics for sessions are: ·       Ultrafast optics ·       Spectroscopy and imaging ·       Quantum photonics ·       Photonic materials and structures ·       Fundamental photonics ·       Industrial applications ·       Others Photonics Finland Tampere University University of Eastern Finland Aalto University VTT #opd2024