Laserlab-Europe Newsletter #31: Lasers Exploring the Nanoworld

With the advancement of technology over the last half-century, a new frontier has opened up: the nanoscale. Nanometre-scale materials and technologies have the potential to be fast, efficient and effective in unprecedented ways, from metamaterials to specialist chips to lithographic processes. Here we present some of the ways in which Laserlab-Europe’s researchers are exploring the science of light and matter at this small scale.

• Ultrafast transient holographic microscopy (POLIMI, Italy and ICFO, Spain)
• Ultrafast nanoscale electron transport in solids (LACUS, Switzerland)
• Exploring the stiffness of nano-objects (ICFO, Spain)
• Polarisation-resolved second harmonic generation imaging microscopy of 2D materials (FORTH, Greece)
• Femtosecond magnetisation dynamics for faster magnetic storage (LOA, France)
• Transient X-ray grating spectroscopy for nanoscale measurements (LACUS, Switzerland, LENS and FERMI, Italy)

• Twisting magnetisation with light – Laser pulses enable faster creation of skyrmions inmagnets
• A new type of miniature plasma particle accelerator
• APOLLON upgrade well underway
• Surface-sensitive nonlinear XUV-Spectroscopy
• Molecular chirality in broad daylight
• Laserlab-Europe for a better future – Position Paper published

Radiation properties of high-power laser generated supersonic jets and shocks

The experimental campaign performed at the Laserlab-Europe partner PALS was dedicated to the study of supersonic plasma jets and shocks, with particular focus on the radiative properties of their formation and evolution. The findings showed that the density and topology of the ambient plasma had a significant effect on the shock geometry, both by directly altering the plasma parameters in the interaction region, but also indirectly by its influence on the jet formation.

ERC Consolidator Grants for Jochen Mikosch (MBI) and Darrick Chang, Gerasimos Konstantatos and Leticia Tarruell (ICFO).

Editorial Team: Rebecca Davenport, Daniela Stozno, Julia Michel

office@laserlab-europe.eu