4:10 PM - 4:55 PM
[PL-01] Passion Extreme Light
Extreme-light laser is a universal source providing a vast range of high energy radiations and particles along with the highest field, highest pressure, temperature and acceleration. It offers the possibility to shed light on some of the remaining unanswered questions in fundamental physics like the genesis of cosmic rays with energies in excess of 1020 eV or the loss of information in black-holes. Using wake-field acceleration some of these fundamental questions could be studied in the laboratory. In addition extreme-light makes possible the study of the structure of vacuum and particle production in "empty" space which is one of the field’s ultimate goal, reaching into the fundamental QED and possibly QCD regimes.
Looking beyond today’s intensity horizon, we will introduce a new concept that could make possible the generation of attosecond-zeptosecond high energy coherent pulse, de facto in x-ray domain, opening at the Schwinger level, the zettawatt, and PeV regime; the next chapter of lasermatter interaction.
[Biography]
Gérard Mourou is Professor Haut-Collège at the École polytechnique. He is also the A.D. Moore Distinguished University Emeritus Professor of the University of Michigan. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Grenoble (1967) and his Ph.D. from University Paris VI in 1973. He has made numerous contributions to the field of ultrafast lasers, high-speed electronics, and medicine. But, his most important invention, demonstrated with his student Donna Strickland while at the University of Rochester (N.Y.), is the laser amplification technique known as Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA), universally used today. CPA revolutionized the field of optics, opening new branches like attosecond pulse generation, Nonlinear QED, compact particle accelerators. It extended the field of optics to nuclear and particle physics. In 2005, Prof. Mourou proposed a new infrastructure ; the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI), which is distributed over three pillars located in Czech Republic, Romania, and Hungary. Prof. Mourou also pioneered the field of femtosecond ophthalmology that relies on a CPA femtosecond laser for precise myopia corrections and corneal transplants. Over a million such procedures are now performed annually. Prof. Mourou is member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and a foreign member of the Russian Science Academy, the Austrian Sciences Academy, and the Lombardy Academy for Sciences and Letters. He is Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur and was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics with his former student Donna Strickland.
Looking beyond today’s intensity horizon, we will introduce a new concept that could make possible the generation of attosecond-zeptosecond high energy coherent pulse, de facto in x-ray domain, opening at the Schwinger level, the zettawatt, and PeV regime; the next chapter of lasermatter interaction.
[Biography]
Gérard Mourou is Professor Haut-Collège at the École polytechnique. He is also the A.D. Moore Distinguished University Emeritus Professor of the University of Michigan. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Grenoble (1967) and his Ph.D. from University Paris VI in 1973. He has made numerous contributions to the field of ultrafast lasers, high-speed electronics, and medicine. But, his most important invention, demonstrated with his student Donna Strickland while at the University of Rochester (N.Y.), is the laser amplification technique known as Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA), universally used today. CPA revolutionized the field of optics, opening new branches like attosecond pulse generation, Nonlinear QED, compact particle accelerators. It extended the field of optics to nuclear and particle physics. In 2005, Prof. Mourou proposed a new infrastructure ; the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI), which is distributed over three pillars located in Czech Republic, Romania, and Hungary. Prof. Mourou also pioneered the field of femtosecond ophthalmology that relies on a CPA femtosecond laser for precise myopia corrections and corneal transplants. Over a million such procedures are now performed annually. Prof. Mourou is member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and a foreign member of the Russian Science Academy, the Austrian Sciences Academy, and the Lombardy Academy for Sciences and Letters. He is Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur and was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics with his former student Donna Strickland.