Our Python repositories Octopus-slabs and SPP-extended-theory are going through a makeover!

• Transition to Python3 was finally made.
• Then the codes were packaged for Conda and Pip.
• Our codes can now be distributed and used in any environment.
• Latest version of Octopus-slabs is v2.2 and SPP-extended-theory is v5.0.

From Friday 5th of February 2021, QuantumLaP.eu becomes the Group of Ultrafast Photonics, led by T. J.-Y. Derrien. The group is a part of the Department of Scientific Laser Applications led by prof. Bulgakova, and is hosted by the HiLASE Centre (T. Mocek), part of the Institute of Physics.

A press communication was released on LInkedIn in April 2021 to announce this modification.
The website of HiLASE has been modified on June 23rd 2021 with the up-to-date position of group leader.
Note that website of FZU.cz could not yet be modified by the PR team due to IT safety reasons.

The group is presently kindly funded by Horizon 2020 project Center of Excellence (T. Mocek), and by the National Excellent BIATRI project (prof. Bulgakova).

The group is presently counting 1 PhD student MSc. Krystof Hlinomaz who has been focusing at laser-irradiated thin films. The group is meant to grow in the next months with:

• Hiring a new PhD student focusing on TDDFT in 2021,
• Applying to ERC consolidator grants (deadline 20th April 2021).

The group is heading towards developing the processing of materials using ultrashort laser pulses, being fully assisted by first principle simulations and condensed matter physics. More details will be disclosed along the year.

Note that the updates of the corresponding websites is taking months due to the number and availability of people involved in the chain.

Our predictions of optimal wavelength for preparing Highly-Regular Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures (HR-LIPSS) on metals [Sci. Rep. (2017)] have been confirmed experimentally for the case of Cu at 515 nm. The proof is visible in Fig. 4 in Nanomaterials (MDPI).

The concept and the laser process have been subjected to EU protection, a patent that was granted recently to the Institute of Physics (HiLASE Centre), available at this address.

Our paper in Scientific Reports became the first “Highly Cited” paper of HiLASE Centre. Nice achievement!

On July 31st 2020, we have requested several millions of core-hours computational time at the IT4I.cz computational infrastructure:

• to support the group of prof. Bulgakova at the HiLASE Centre, with simulation based on the time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT);
• to support the Horizon 2020 Marie Curie project RISE named “ATLANTIC“.

The computational project is meant to provide computational support and the development of the activities based on first-principles modeling at the HiLASE Centre and at the Institute of Physics.

Update: On September 2020, the first phase of the project has been provided with 2.3 millions core-hours. Due to very high demand, all projects have been subjected to computational time reduction.

As a drummer, music producer and laser scientist, I can only be delighted to see that our paper in Scientific Reports has recently been cited in a publication of the Audio Engineering Society. to write vinyl disks using laser light.

Unfortunately, the paper is quite unreachable (I even emailed the authors – no answer). I would have access to it, I would be glad to discuss it with you!

Our activities are touched by the situation with COVID. Of course, we continue to honor simulation requests the best we can meanwhile.

However, all workshops, seminars and conferences have been canceled since March, and still at the time of writing these lines. Therefore, no conference will be attended before Oct. 2020, at minimum.

List of seminars affected by the reduction of gathering activities.

• Postponed to 2021 – High Power Laser Ablation conference, Santa Fe (USA).
• Canceled – Visit at University of California, Merced (USA).
• Postponed – 1 month stay at University of Mendoza (Argentina) for Atlantic project.
• Postponed – Invited talk at the Advanced Lasers Technologies conference, Bordeaux (France).
• Remote – 2 invited talks in Ultrafast Light 2020, Moscow (Russia).

We hope that the crisis will be resolved soon, enabling a smooth return to scientific exchanges.

Following our publication on highly-regular periodic surface structures in metals, a fruitful collaboration driven by Dr. Petr Kovaricek (UCT Prague), Dr. Inam Mirza (HiLASE FZU Prague) and prof. N. M. Bulgakova (HiLASE FZU Prague) was born and was recently published in Nano Research (Springer), IF 8.5.

I’m happy to have contributed to the numerical simulation part using a phenomenological model we have developed in the frame of MSCA “QuantumLaP” project.

Manuscript can be found behind paywall here.