Since August 16th 2021, a new Master student joined the group of Ultrafast Photonics. Originating from Masaryk University, Kristyna Gazdova started working on continuation of our submitted TDDFT works under guidance of Thibault JY Derrien. After having successfully integrated the group and handed new working tools, preparation of a first draft with HiLASE affiliation has been initiated.
HPC project IT4I/FLAMENCO: second period fully granted with 3.8 millions core-hours
After submission of our first TDDFT-baked publication, national facilities of IT4I.cz kindly provided the full requested time for our second period of the FLAMENCO project. This amount of computational time must be used by 9 months, up to March 2022.
A PhD student position aimed at supporting the development of TDDFT activities at HiLASE is open and will give opportunity to ambitious and talented student to make his/her steps in high power computation for laser processing.
The list of active collaborations articulated around the TDDFT activities is available.
PhD position for 2021-2024 is now open
A PhD position is open in the group of Ultrafast Photonics, on quantum modeling of laser-matter interaction with solids. It consists in numerical modeling using high power computations.
The offer is available at the top here: https://www.hilase.cz/en/list-of-ph-d-thesis-topics/
To apply, just contact me by email [ d e r r i e n (arobase) f z u . c z ], or Twitter (@tjyderrien), or by reply to this post.
Looking forward to meeting new curious people!
Thibault JY Derrien
Python repositories: reshaped & packaged.
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.
We are now a research group of the Department of Scientific Laser Applications (Institute of Physics)
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 theoretical prediction of necessary experimental conditions for reaching highly-regular LIPSS has now been realized on Cu
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.
New award: Web of Science “Highly Cited” paper “in the Top 1% of the academic field of Physics”
Our paper in Scientific Reports became the first “Highly Cited” paper of HiLASE Centre. Nice achievement! 
HPC project IT4I “FLAMENCO” granted (2.3 millions core-hours)
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.
Our first citation from the music industry!
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!
How COVID is affecting our activity
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.