Laser Prize for Franz X. Kärtner

15 November, 2022

IEEE honored techniques for precision synchronization and their commercialisation

Dr. René-Jean Essiambre (r), President IEEE Photonics Society and Nokia Bell Labs, presented the award to Prof. Franz X. Kärtner at the IEEE Photonics conference in Vancouver. Credit: IEEE Photonics Society

DESY researcher Franz Kärtner has been awarded the Laser Instrumentation Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The group leader at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) at DESY is being recognized for his techniques for synchronizing large research facilities with femtosecond precision, the IEEE Photonics Society explained. A femtosecond is one billionth of a millionth of a second.

Kärtner and his team have developed laser technology that uses ultrashort laser flashes to synchronize large systems, such as X-ray lasers, to within femtoseconds, even over kilometers. This is important, for example, for recording movies of chemical reactions.
Since no film camera in the world is fast or sensitive enough to record a reaction live, researchers often use the flipbook method: This involves repeatedly restarting the reaction and photographing it at a slightly later time each time. The series of still images is then assembled into a movie.

Typically, such reactions occur in picoseconds or femtoseconds (a picosecond is one millionth of a millionth of a second). Therefore, the release delay must be controlled extremely precisely. The methods are also used in DESY's free-electron laser (FEL) FLASH and the European X-ray free-electron laser European XFEL. In order to make the synchronization systems available worldwide for other research laboratories and also other applications, the Kärtner group founded the spin-off company Cycle GmbH, which commercially markets the corresponding systems.

Kärtner heads the Ultrafast Optics and X-Rays (UFOX) group at CFEL and is also a physics professor at the University of Hamburg. The Laser Instrumentation Award is given to individuals or groups who have developed significant new laser measurement methods or techniques relevant to applications in industry and metrology. The award was presented at the IEEE Photonics Conference in Vancouver, Canada.

Reference
Further reading; Laser Instrumentation Award