Clara Saraceno holds the Chair of Photonics and Ultrafast Laser Science at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology.
ERC Grant Terahertz-Quellen Saraceno Spiegel Laser (EN)
RUB, Marquard
ERC Consolidator Grant 2024
Revolutionizing Plasma Control by Lasers
Clara Saraceno will use her ERC Consolidator Grant to develop new methods for adjusting air plasma composition using ultrafast lasers. This revolutionizes light generation, but also other areas.
Optical materials play a crucial role in science and technology and enable scientists around the globe to manipulate light at will and reach the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from X-rays to Terahertz (THz) waves. For this, plasmas are widely used as optical materials, however accessing their nonlinear response requires very high input light intensity, therefore normally very complex, high energy laser systems are needed.
EXPLORE proposes a new way of tailoring the plasma chemical composition using low energy, short pulses of light very closely spaced in time. This will result in new, improved and re-configurable plasma optical properties. In EXPLORE, the team aims to use these improved plasmas to generate and detect Terahertz radiation with performance that is currently impossible to achieve, and with very compact laser sources.
This would not only revolutionize the field of light generation and nonlinear optics but would also have tremendous impact in many fields where atmospheric plasmas are employed, for example in catalysis and atmospheric science.
ERC Grant Projects