Ferenc Krausz (born 17 May 1962 in
Mór
Mór (german: Moor) is a town in Fejér County, Hungary. Among the smaller towns in the Central Transdanubia Region of Hungary, it lies between the Vértes and Bakony Hills, in the northwestern corner of Fejér County. The historic roots of th ...
,
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
) is a Hungarian-
Austrian
Austrian may refer to:
* Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent
** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen, see Austrian nationality law
* Austrian German dialect
* Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ...
physicist, whose research team has generated and measured the first
attosecond
An attosecond (symbol as) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 1×10−18 of a second (one quintillionth of a second). For comparison, an attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 31.71 billion years. light pulse and used it for capturing
electron
The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family,
and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...
s’ motion inside atoms, marking the birth of
attophysics
Attosecond physics, also known as attophysics, or more generally attosecond science, is a branch of physics that deals with light-matter interaction phenomena wherein attosecond (10−18 s) photon pulses are used to unravel dynamical processes in ...
.
Academic career
Krausz studied
theoretical physics
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...
at
Eötvös Loránd University
Eötvös Loránd University ( hu, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, ELTE) is a Hungarian public research university based in Budapest. Founded in 1635, ELTE is one of the largest and most prestigious public higher education institutions in Hung ...
and
electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
at the
Technical University of Budapest
Technical may refer to:
* Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle
* Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data
* Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...
in Hungary. After his
habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
at the
Technical University of Vienna
TU Wien (TUW; german: Technische Universität Wien; still known in English as the Vienna University of Technology from 1975–2014) is one of the major universities in Vienna, Austria. The university finds high international and domestic recogn ...
, in Austria, he became professor at the same institute. In 2003 he was appointed director at the
Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics
The Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics (abbreviation: MPQ; german: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik) is a part of the Max Planck Society which operates 87 research facilities in Germany.
The institute is located in Garching, Germany, w ...
in Garching and in 2004 became chair of
experimental physics
Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and ...
at the
Ludwig Maximilians University
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...
in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
. In 2006 he co-founded the
Munich-Centre of Advanced Photonics (MAP) and began serving as one of its directors.
Research
Ferenc Krausz and his research team were the first to create and measure a light pulse lasting less than one
femtosecond
A femtosecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10 or of a second; that is, one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth, of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second as a second is to about 31. ...
. The researchers used these attosecond light pulses to make the inner-atomic movement of electrons observable in real time. These results marked the beginning of
attosecond physics
Attosecond physics, also known as attophysics, or more generally attosecond science, is a branch of physics that deals with light-matter interaction phenomena wherein attosecond (10−18 s) photons, photon pulses are used to unravel dynamical proc ...
.
In the 1990s, the groundwork for this landmark was done by Ferenc Krausz and his team with a large number of innovations
to the further development of the femtosecond laser technology to its ultimate limits – towards light pulses which carry the major part of their energy in one single oscillation of the electromagnetic field. An indispensable prerequisite for the generation of such short light pulses is the high-precision control of the delay of the different color components of broadband (white) light over one entire octave. Aperiodic multi-layers (chirped mirrors) emerging from a collaboration of Ferenc Krausz and Robert Szipöcs
made such a control possible and are indispensable in today's femtosecond laser systems.
In 2001, Ferenc Krausz and his group were able for the first time not only to generate but also to measure
attosecond
An attosecond (symbol as) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 1×10−18 of a second (one quintillionth of a second). For comparison, an attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 31.71 billion years. light pulses (of extreme
ultraviolet light) by means of intense laser pulses consisting of one to two wave cycles. With this, they were shortly thereafter also able to trace the movement of electrons on the subatomic scale in real time.
The control of the wave form of the femtosecond pulse
demonstrated by Ferenc Krausz and his team and the resulting reproducible attosecond pulses enabled the establishment of the attosecond measuring technique
as the technological basis for experimental attosecond physics today. Over the past few years, Ferenc Krausz and his coworkers succeeded with these tools to control electrons in molecules
and – for the first time – observe in real time a large number of fundamental electron processes such as tunneling,
charge transport,
coherent EUV emission,
delayed photoelectric effect,
valence electron movement
and the control of the optical and electrical properties of dielectrics.
These results have been achieved with international cooperations with groups of scientists such as Joachim Burgdörfer,
Paul Corkum,
Theodor Hänsch, Misha Ivanov, Ulrich Heinzmann, Stephen Leone, Robin Santra, Mark Stockman and Marc Vrakking.
Krausz and his attoworld-team are now using femtosecond laser technology, which served as the basis for attosecond measurement technology, to further develop infrared spectroscopy for biomedical applications. Biological samples excited with ultrashort infrared laser pulses emit infrared waves. By scanning the electric field of these waves, minute changes in the molecular composition of the samples under investigation can be detected by measuring the so-called "electric-field molecular fingerprint (EMF)." The aim of the research collaboratio
"Lasers4Life"an
consisting of laser physicists, mathematicians, physicians and molecular biologists, is to use the measurement of the EMF of blood samples to track the health of people ("health monitoring") and to detect diseases at an early stage ("disease detection").
Prizes
* In 2006, he was awarded the
Royal Photographic Society
The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, commonly known as the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), is one of the world's oldest photographic societies. It was founded in London, England, in 1853 as the Photographic Society of London with ...
Progress medal and Honorary Fellowship,
* In 2013 he was awarded the
Otto Hahn Prize
* In 2016 he became a member of the
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...
.
* In 2019 he was awarded the Vladilen Letokhov Medal.
* In 2022 he received the
Wolf Prize in Physics
The Wolf Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine and Arts.
The ...
.
References
External links
Portrait at the Deutsche ForschungsgesellschaftHomepage of Ferenc KrauszHomepage of the group of Ferenc KrauszMunich-Center for Advanced Photonics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Krausz, Ferenc
20th-century Hungarian physicists
Science teachers
Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners
People from Mór
Hungarian expatriates in Germany
TU Wien alumni
Academic staff of TU Wien
1962 births
Living people
Hungarian nuclear physicists
Theoretical physicists
Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
Max Planck Institute directors