CFEL scientist Andrea Trabattoni receives ERC starting grant

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Andrea Trabattoni, a scientist at CFEL and DESY, a Starting Grant of 1.5 million euro. The ERC Starting Grants are meant as funding for early-career scientists to pursue special projects. Trabattoni’s project, called SoftMeter, aims to build a prototype tabletop setup for ultrafast imaging of processes occurring at the interfaces of two different materials. The grant will fund one postdoc and two Ph.D. positions, who along with Trabattoni will develop the project.

© CFEL

Trabattoni’s winning proposal focuses on the seminal concepts used in the excitation of matter using lasers. SoftMeter would use two weak electromagnetic fields – generated by combining an infrared and an ultraviolet ultrashort laser pulse – to excite electrons in molecules found at the boundary regions between two materials that are in the gas phase. The electrons, or the photons they release, would be picked up with novel spectrometers. The proposal uses the concept of self-diffraction – excited electrons literally scattering each other – to produce data down to the picometre (one trillionth of a metre) level. Additionally, short timescales down to the attosecond (one billionth of a billionth of a second) level could be reached.

“This entire setup will be novel,” says Trabattoni. “We would use the two colours of laser to illuminate targets in a noninvasive way.”

By noninvasive, Trabattoni is referring to how experiments in so-called strong field physics work. In strong-field physics, intense laser pulses image a sample, but the intensity of the light also causes the sample irrevocably to dissociate. The lasers in SoftMeter would be far less intense, meaning that samples would be left intact, while acquiring similar information. This means more complicated targets could be studied for the first time at high time resolution and at the picometre level – a method he calls soft-field spectroscopy.

“Soft-field spectroscopy would be a good complement to free-electron laser studies of complex molecules,” Trabattoni says. Studies proposed with the setup include investigations of processes at aerosol interfaces that could be relevant to catalysis and the harvesting of solar energy.

Compared to free-electron lasers, the SoftMeter setup would also be extremely compact. As a table-top interferometer, the setup is planned to be approximately one metre by three metres in size, with the ability to be interfaced to a variety of experiment setups.

“We are thrilled that Andrea has been awarded this grant,” says DESY Photon Science Research Director Edgar Weckert. “His proposal to develop technique for noninvasive laser studies of interfaces between materials will help expand not only the options for scientists to explore solid-state and electronic phenomena in novel ways, but ultimately the portfolio of what CFEL at DESY can offer to the photon science community.”

The Starting Grant is due to begin next year and will last for a total of five years.