Professor Ferenc Krausz, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching, and Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, both Germany, has been awarded the Otto Hahn Prize from the German Chemical Society (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker; GDCh) and the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (German Physical Society; DPG).
The award includes a prize of € 50,000 and is named after the 1944 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It is awarded every two years, with the winners coming alternately from physics and chemistry. This year’s prize was presented at a ceremony in St. Paul’s Church, Frankfurt, Germany, on November 20.
Ferenc Krausz is recognized for his work on ultrashort-pulse laser technology, high-field physics, and, in particular, attosecond physics. An attosecond is one trillionth of a second. By using chirped multilayer mirrors, his group made intense light pulses, called attosecond pulses, comprising merely a few wave cycles available for a wide range of applications. More recently, he has used this technology to study electron motion in atoms, molecules, and nanostructures and to control electrons.
After studying theoretical physics at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, Krausz went to Technical University of Budapest, where he gained an M.S. in electrical engineering in 1985. In 1991, he obtained his Ph.D. in quantum electronics from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria. He stayed at this institute for his Habilitation and in 1998 joined the Department of Electrical Engineering as an Associate Professor. He became Full Professor in the same department in 1999. In 2003, he was appointed Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. Since 2004 he has also been Professor of Experimental Physics at the Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, Germany.
Selected publications by Ferenc Krausz:
- On the small divergence of laser-driven ion beams from nanometer thick foils,
J. H. Bin, W. J. Ma, K. Allinger, H. Y. Wang, D. Kiefer, S. Reinhardt, P. Hilz, K. Khrennikov, S. Karsch, X. Q. Yan, F. Krausz, T. Tajima, D. Habs, J. Schreiber,
Phys. Plasm. 2013, 20, 073113,
DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2013.156 - Compact high-repetition-rate source of coherent 100 eV radiation,
I. Pupeza, S. Holzberger, T. Eidam, H. Carstens, D. Esser, J. Weitenberg, P. Rußbüldt, J. Rauschenberger, J. Limpert, T. Udem, A. Tünnermann, T. W. Hänsch, A. Apolonski, F. Krausz, E. Fill,
Nature Photon. 2013.
DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2013.156 - Optical-field-induced current in dielectrics,
Agustin Schiffrin, Tim Paasch-Colberg, Nicholas Karpowicz, Vadym Apalkov, Daniel Gerster, Sascha Mühlbrandt, Michael Korbman, Joachim Reichert, Martin Schultze, Simon Holzner, Johannes V. Barth, Reinhard Kienberger, Ralph Ernstorfer, Vladislav S. Yakovlev, Mark I. Stockman, Ferenc Krausz,
Nature 2013, 493, 70–74.
DOI:10.1038/nature11567
