Christoph Heyl, research group leader at the Helmholtz Institute Jena and DESY, has been awarded a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant, providing him with funding of 2 million euros over five years for his research project ‘Gas Phase Sonophotonics’ - GASONIC. With the highly competitive Consolidator Grants, the European Research Council (ERC) supports excellent scientists in further expanding and consolidating their innovative research and to pursue their most promising scientific ideas. Christoph Heyl leads the Ultrafast Photonics Research and Innovation group at DESY. His work focusses on the development of ultrafast optical methods and technologies with applications e.g. for ultrafast science, particle accelerators and industry.
The GASONIC project builds on recent pioneering works by Christoph Heyl and his team, demonstrating the deflection on intense laser pulses directly in air using intense ultrasound waves. Heyl was recently honoured with the DESY Innovation Award for this. The ERC project is intended to leverage gas-phase light control mediated by intense ultrasound waves to other optical devices and adaptive control schemes, broadening the variety of applications of the innovative concept. These range from efficient light modulators and switches to all-gas-phase adaptive waveguide-like systems shaped by intense acoustic waves. Ultrafast optical switches and modulators are able to change key properties such as intensity and phase of ultrafast laser pulses. Thus, they are important building blocks for today’s laser systems employed e.g. for welding, machining, surgery and for scientific applications. Similar to a shutter in a camera which controls the exposure time of the camera chip, optical switches are used to control ultrafast laser pulses, however, typically at much higher optical intensities than any camera shutter would ever see. Likewise, optical waveguides, also known as optical fibres are key elements for modern laser technology. They enable to transport and are used to amplify intense laser pulses. In many laser systems and applications, these optical elements suffer from performance limitations at high intensities: intense laser pulses can easily destroy optical components made of glass or other solid-state materials. The GASONIC project addresses these limitations by building solid-state free optical components which can sustain much higher light intensities.
By providing a direct link between advanced optics and electronics mediated by gas-phase acoustics, sono-photonic methods are expected to open up new degrees of freedom for light control reaching beyond laser pulse switching and guiding at high intensities but including in particular adaptive control schemes.
The GASONIC project will start in 2025 and will be carried out on the DESY campus in Hamburg. Collaborations are planned e.g. with the group of Mario Kupnik, professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt, providing support on ultrasound transducer development.
(Original Press Release by DESY)
