Combatants
We have invited world-leading early to mid career researchers to take part in our battles, whose biographies are provided below
Battle 1 - Chirality, Symmetry and Tailored Fields
Kathryn Hamilton
Kathryn Hamilton is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado at Denver. Before this, she was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where she worked alongside Prof. Klaus Bartschat on applying R-Matrix methods to treat a variety of atomic physics problems. She obtained her PhD in 2019 under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Brown and Prof. Hugo van der Hart at Queen’s University Belfast with a thesis entitled “R-Matrix calculations for ultrafast two-colour spectroscopy of noble gas atoms”. Her current research focusses on observing and controlling multielectron dynamics in atoms exposed to external laser fields, and electron collisions with atomic species. When she is not running code on supercomputers all over the world, she likes to play traditional Irish music and domesticate feral cats. Both activities produce very similar sounds.
Ofer Neufeld
Ofer Neufeld obtained his PhD in 2020 from the Technion Physics Department in Israel. In his thesis, he developed theory to understand the importance and role of symmetries in nonlinear light-matter interactions between intense laser pulses and molecules, and for detecting molecular chirality. This included some main achievements such as formulating a group theory for the symmetries of laser-matter driven systems, proposing novel descriptions for the intrinsic chirality of light, and suggesting new methods for detecting chirality using tailored light. Prior to his PhD, Ofer completed an MSc in the Technion’s Grand Energy Program with a thesis utilizing quantum chemistry calculations for optimizing energy harvesting from photoelectrochemical cells.
Ofer is currently a postdoc in Angel Rubio’s group in the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg, where he is an active Schmidt Science Fellow, and a former Humboldt Fellow. His research explores the intersection of strong-field physics and condensed matter, aiming to understand phenomena such as high harmonic generation in solids and liquids and their potential applications for ultrafast spectroscopy, time- and angle-resolved photoemission in the strong-field regime, as well as highly nonlinear ultrafast magnetization dynamics. His work employs state-of-the-art numerical methods including real-time time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), in tandem with model methodologies, which together allow uncovering the underlying physics of ultrafast light-induced dynamics in condensed phases. |
Dino Habibović
Dino Habibović is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Science, University of Sarajevo and a member of the SAMOPHYS research group led by the Academician Prof. dr. Dejan Milošević. His main research interest is about the strong-field processes such as high-order harmonic generation and high-order above-threshold ionization induced by the linearly polarised or tailored laser fields. When linearly polarised field is used to induced the process, there are only limited number of parameters which can be used as control parameters. On contrary, the tailored laser fields provide us with much more parameters which can be used as control knobs. A particularly interesting example of a situation where tailored laser fields are beneficial is the generation of elliptically polarised high-order harmonics. Specifically, due to the symmetry properties of the system which consists of the atomic or molecular target and the driving field, the emitted harmonics can be linearly or elliptically polarised. The high-order harmonics with controllable ellipticity can successfully be generated by employing tailored laser fields the examples of which are an orthogonally polarised two-colour laser field and a bicircular field. In the former case, the field consists of two linearly polarised components with commensurable frequencies and mutually orthogonal polarisations, while in the latter case, the components are circularly polarised. Another example accounts for the situation in which the strong-field ionization is modified by the THz pulse. The time delay between this pulse and the driving laser pulse represents additional control parameter. The photoelectron spectra are significantly altered by the presence of the THz pulse in a way that the photoelectrons with energy larger than in the absence of the THZ pulse and significant emission rate can be generated.
Besides his scientific work, Dino Habibović has nearly ten years’ experience as a teaching assistant for a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses. Laura Rego
Laura Rego obtained her PhD in 2021 at the University of Salamanca (Spain) under the supervision of Prof. Luis Plaja Rustein and Dr. Carlos Hernández García. During her PhD, she performed theoretical simulations of high-order harmonic generation with structured laser pulses (vortex beams or pulses with tailored polarization). In 2022, as a postdoctoral researcher, she moved to Prof. Jon Marangos’ group at Imperial College London, where she worked with Dr. David Ayuso in the application of structured light to investigate chirality. Since January 2023, she works at Prof. Fernando Martin’s group at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where she aims to study the photoionization of small molecules using tailored fields |
Battle 2 - Attoscience in solids
Javier Rivera-Dean
Javier Rivera-Dean is a last-year PhD student in the Quantum Information Theory Group at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Antonio Acı́n and Prof. Dr. Marcelo Ciappina. In 2018, he obtained his Bachelor degree in Physics at Universidad de La Laguna (ULL). In 2019, he obtained a Master in Photonics at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), during which he started working on quantum optical aspects of strong-laser field physics when doing his master thesis at the Quantum Optics Theory Group at ICFO, supervised by Dr. Emilio Pisanty and Prof. Dr. Maciej Lewenstein. In January 2020, he started his PhD, where he has continued studying quantum optical and quantum information properties of strongly driven laser-matter interaction processes, for systems under a gaseous and solid phases. In parallel, he has also worked on other applied topics of quantum information science such as quantum key distribution, and optimization of variational quantum algorithms.
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Stefano Cavaletto
Stefano Cavaletto investigates schemes of time-resolved X-ray spectroscopy for accessing the ultrafast dynamics of molecules and solids excited by short laser pulses. During his PhD in the Theory Division of Christoph H. Keitel at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, he studied X-ray quantum optics and spectroscopy of atoms and highly charged ions. As a recipient of a Feodor Lynen postdoctoral fellowship of the Humboldt Foundation, he has been working in the group of Shaul Mukamel at the University of California, Irvine, developing schemes of nonlinear X-ray spectroscopy for monitoring ultrafast dynamics in molecules. He is now working as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow in the group of Lars Bojer Madsen at Aarhus University, Denmark, where he investigates time-resolved spectroscopy of strong-field-driven solids.
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Francisco Navarrete
Francisco Navarrete obtained his Ph.D. in 2016 from Balseiro Institute, National University of Cuyo (Argentina), after which he started a position in 2017 as a Research Associate at the group of Prof. Dr. Uwe Thumm at the Department of Physics of Kansas State University in the US. He conducts his research since 2020 at the Quantum Theory and Many-Particle Systems group of Prof. Dr. Dieter Bauer at the Institute of Physics, University of Rostock in Germany.Francisco has dedicated his career to studying diverse topics in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics. Among these contributions, we can mention the prediction and analysis of quantum vortex rings in atomic collisions. He also studied the decisive role of projectile coherence in ion-atom ionization collisions. Furthermore, his work on the crystal momentum resolved electron dynamics of high-harmonic generation in solids has provided a detailed understanding of this mechanism in materials of different compositions driven by monochromatic and bichromatic fields.
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More coming soon...
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Battle 3- How Quantum is Atto?
Lidice Cruz Rodriguez
Lidice Cruz Rodriguez is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, in the group of Professor Carla Faria. She obtained her Bachelor’s in Physics in 2011 from the Physics Faculty at the University of Havana. Then, she joined the Faculty as a Teaching assistant and simultaneously started her Master's degree in the field of Quantum Electrodynamics. She completed her Master's in 2013 and became an Assistant Professor at her former faculty. In 2015 she started her PhD in a joint project between the University of Havana and the University Paul Sabatier, in Toulouse. Her PhD thesis was focused on trajectory-based approaches to model ultrafast quantum dynamics, with a particular interest in the applications of Bohmian Mechanics. Currently, she is working on strong-field attosecond physics, focused on developing path-integral methods to model photoelectron holography.
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Diptesh Dey
Diptesh Dey is a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University, where he is researching along with Prof. George C. Schatz on the interaction of light with plasmonic nanoparticles and nanoparticle structures from a classical electrodynamics' perspective. He received his PhD degree in 2017 from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata under the supervision of Prof. Ashwani K. Tiwari with a thesis entitled "Quantum and classical dynamics for certain elementary gas-phase reactions". From 2017 to 2019, he was an H. C. Ørsted (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Cofund) fellow at the Technical University of Denmark with Prof. Niels E. Henriksen with a project entitled "Laser induced control of molecules and chemical reactions". From 2020 to 2022, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellow at University College London with Prof. Graham A. Worth with a project entitled "Simulating intramolecular charge migration on attosecond timescales". Outside work, he enjoys hiking, biking, swimming, cooking, and watching good movies.
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Antonia Freibert
Antonia Freibert is a PhD student jointly supervised by Nils Huse (CFEL, University of Hamburg, Germany) and Oriol Vendrell (Heidelberg University, Germany). She obtained two independent Master’s degrees in Mathematics (University of Hamburg and Kiel University) and Chemistry (Kiel University and University College London). As a doctoral student she conducts research at the interface between mathematics, physics and chemistry focusing on ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy. She studies the ultrafast dynamics of photo-excited solvated molecules with transient X-ray spectroscopy theoretically and experimentally. She further develops full time-domain descriptions of time-resolved X-ray absorption and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering in order to unravel the mechanism behind light-induced molecular behavior.
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Philipp Stammer
Philipp Stammer obtained his Master degree at the Technical University Berlin, and is currently a PhD student in the Quantum Optics Theory group of Maciej Lewenstein at ICFO in Barcelona. The matters pertaining in his research are the notions of Photons and Information. The concept of the photon enters when working on the quantum optical description of intense laser driven systems, and information is studied in the context of data compression.
Information can then be used to estimate the possibility of how things will evolve in the future with some probability. But, we do not know how it evolves until it has evolved. Exactly at this point roots the misconception about laws of nature for him. Namely, to believe, that we know how things will evolve. Although everybody knows, that we can not know, and tomorrow morning the sun can explode, and all the misconception was a waste of time. When he is not doing science, he enjoys drinking cold beer in the sun. |
