The project IT4I/MORILLE has been granted. It consists in providing a computational time of 3.5 M core-hours to implement the Marie Curie ATLANTIC project we obtained with HiLASE and with a number of partners. The PI is Dr T. J.-Y. Derrien, and the project includes the training of several people at HiLASE, plus the hosting of the incoming researchers of the ATLANTIC project.

Thanks to this project, HiLASE has now access to all the scales of machines that are necessary to prepare efficient HPC simulation codes.

• BIATRI-SRV to prepare codes for shared memory architectures (OpenMP).
• MetaCentrum to prepare codes for distributed memory architectures (MPI) and GPU simulation.
• IT4I to execute codes on distributed memory architectures and GPUs.

The Marie Curie project ATLANTIC has now its own website: http://www.atlantic-rise.eu/

QuantumLaP.eu has nicely provided the software frame for the project starting. The management, the project info and the mailing lists are from now transferred to the new official website.

Our paper titled “LIPSS on thin metallic films: New insights from multiplicity of laser-excited electromagnetic modes and efficiency of metal oxidation” has been published in Applied Surface Science (IF 4.4).

The paper explains the period of Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures (LIPSS) on thin Cr film, with accounting for the influence of the substrate. It also provides a convincing model of HSFL formation where the role of metal oxidation is dominant.

It can be downloaded here.

Today, the ATLANTIC consortium got a bad surprise. One key beneficiary of the Marie Curie RISE project “ATLANTIC” learnt from their headquarters, linked with the French Ministry of Defense, that their right to participate into the ATLANTIC project was withdrawn. The ATLANTIC consortium will soon take decision on the way to mitigate the consequences of this “Force Majeure” case. All the secondments linked to the CNRS-CELIA will be rerouted and reaffected after negociation with Management Committee.

On this day of initially planned Brexit, the Visegrad 4 consortium organized a day of training on Marie Curie Actions in various representative houses of the EU commission.

In that occasion, T. Derrien was invited to provide a feedback from his experience with the Horizon 2020 Marie Curie Actions on Individual Fellowship, and RISE program.

Final program of the training is available here.

The ATLANTIC project of the European Commission stands for developing an “Advanced theoretical network for modeling light matter interaction”.

Since March 1st 2019, the ATLANTIC project, which aims at developing an international network and regular exchanges between theoreticians of laser materials interaction all around the world, has started. The international consortium is composed of 11 countries including 6 members of the EU (Bulgaria, Ireland, Czech Republic, France, United Kingdoms and Germany) along with 5 non-EU countries (Japan, Russia, Bielorussia, Argentina and Uzbekistan) for a total of 13 participants. The Bulgarian group is coordinator of the project.

Purpose of the project is to exchange researchers (permanents, post-docs and PhD students) between teams that have been pioneering various methods of numerical modeling for the description of interaction of laser light with materials. The project is funded by the European Commission, under the Horizon 2020 Marie Curie Actions, “Research and Innovation Staff Exchange” program, and comprises prestigious theoretical groups such as the groups of:

• Prof. Eric Suraud (CNRS Toulouse),
• Prof. J. Kohanoff (Queen’s University of Belfast),
• Prof. Tchavdar Todorov (Queen’s University of Belfast),
• Prof. Kazuhiro Yabana (Tsukuba University),
• Prof. Cristian Sanchez (Mendoza, Argentina),
• Prof. Nadezhda M. Bulgakova (HiLASE Centre, Institute of Physics, Prague, Czech Republic),
• Prof. Andrew Horsfield (Imperial College London, UK),
• Prof. Anton Husakou (Max Born Institute, Berlin),
• Prof. Mikhail Fedoruk (Novosibirsk State University),
• Prof. Olga Fedotova (Minsk, Bielorussia),
• Prof. Guillaume Duchateau (CNRS Bordeaux, France),
• and Prof. Tzveta Apostolova (New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria), coordinator of the project.

The project looks forward to ensuring highest standards in term of scientific quality, ethics and diplomacy in view of training future generations of scientists with the best human and scientific standards.

The consortium will meet at the New Bulgarian University (Sofia, Bulgaria) this week, for the project kickoff meeting.

A new website will be opened for the ATLANTIC project soon.

Today, I submitted my application for ERC starting grant! Of course, I won’t disclose the topic for now, but it is exciting to have applied !

If granted, I would get 2 PhD students and 2 post docs over 5 years. Finger crossed!

Going back to writing the pending publications.

Application for permanent position

In early January 2018, I applied for a CNRS Junior Researcher position (Section 04/03: atoms, molecules, plasmonics) and reached the last stage of selection: oral presentations. Over 88 submitted applications, 33 people were interviewed. Only 10 people were kept in the priority list, where only 1 person got permanent position at CNRS.

Accepted MSCA RISE project proposal

In early 2018, I participed in drafting a RISE Marie Curie proposal named ATLANTIC. It has been selected for funding on June 18th. We are preparing the Grant Agreement phase. The project counts 13 partners in the world and an average budget of 950,000 € including 100,000 € for Hilase Centre for training young scientists in advanced theoretical modeling for laser-matter interaction. More details will be given when Grant Agreement will be signed.

Submitted a Czech proposal

In April 2018, we submitted jointly with Prof. Gurevich (RUB, Germany) and Dr. Yoann Levy (HiLASE Centre, Czech Republic) a joint DFG/GAČR proposal where both Prof. Gurevich and Dr. Derrien are principal investigators.

Accepted conference proceeding

In June 2018, a joint conference proceeding on the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons in lossy materials was accepted for publication in Journal of Physics: IOP conference series (IOP).

Accepted publication with Jena University

In July 2018, we submitted a joint research publication with Dr. Stephan Gräf from Jena University. This publication was promised in the MSCA QuantumLaP final report.
It is now accepted for publication in Materials, Impact factor 2.7.

Preparation of several publications

Several publications promised in the final report are under preparation. Stay tuned!

Future plans

Preparation of ERC starting grant is on the way.