Dr. Thibault J.-Y. Derrien, the Leader of the Group of Ultrafast Photonics (Department of Scientific Laser Applications)attended the “Workshop on Frontiers in Excited State Electronic Structure Methods: from Spectroscopy to Photochemistry”, held at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste (Italy) from May 16^th to May 19^th. The workshop gathered the researchers of the field of the first-principle modeling chemistry community.

Dr. Derrien presented results of his group on the excitation of solids upon excitation by intense laser light, developed in the context of the WP1-WP2 of the project BIATRI: No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000445 and WP3-WP5 of Marie Curie RISE ATLANTIC project No. 823897 (www.atlantic-rise.eu).

The Workshop provided an excellent opportunity to meet several members of the theoretical network in the frames of the project “ATLANTIC” of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) (Horizon 2020) who also attended the workshop:

– Dr. Carlos Bustamante (now hosted by Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg),
– Prof. Cristian Sanchez (University of Cuyo, Argentina) and his PhD student Andrés I. Bertoni.
– Prof. Damian Scherliz (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina),
– Prof. Jorge Kohanoff (Queen’s University of Belfast, North Ireland, and Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain).

Inflation in the Czech Republic between 2017 and 2023 has increased from 2% to 16.3% year to year [1,2]. In average, if one wins/pays 100 Kc in 2017, an equivalent value in 2023 should be 148 Kc, mostly due to debt induced by COVID and to inflation induced by war in Ukraine. Previsions for next year run around some predicted return to 2% [2].

Situation would have been fine if salaries would have followed this major trend. But they didn’t follow in the public sector, while they were increased in the private sector.

This is suggested by conjunction of two indicators. The average salary in the Czech Republic in that period did increase by 27.8% [3], and in this inflating context, the annual budget for the Institute of Physics by the Academy of Sciences has been … reduced by 43% between 2022 and 2023 [4].

In view of adapting to this problematic situation, the proposed alternative should be to apply for funding through European and national projects, but the success rate of these is close to 10% overall. One can plan to write 10 of them per year (writing 1 project takes 250h of work for 1 person) – but deploying such amount of energy is not given to all.

An alternative is to capitalize on the previously patented technologies. Or to reshape the developed competences as a service, and to sell it to whom would be interested.

Science and technology in the public sector seem to become less and less sustainable in the Czech Republic. Setting the strategy to fund permanent positions of public sector on management costs of projects brought by motivated scientists should not be considered as a sustainable scheme, since the funds invested in training people are big. The developed competences and know-how cannot be thrown away from the Czech Republic like that. It must be re-invested. Solutions must be proposed, such as creating a private activity from the developed skills. Given the rate of the inflation, this appears to be a rather urgent measure so that salaries can from now on be indexed on inflation, an expected measure that could help the life of many workers.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CZE/czech-republic/inflation-rate-cpi

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/369876/inflation-rate-in-czech-republic/

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268010/czechia-average-monthly-gross-wage/

[4] https://www.fzu.cz/sites/default/files/2023-05/Rozpo%C4%8Det%20provozn%C3%ADch%20n%C3%A1klad%C5%AF%20a%20v%C3%BDnos%C5%AF%20rok%202023_podeps%C3%A1no.pdf

The book of “Ultrafast Laser Nanostructuring” (Springer) is now available for purchase. The book is composed of 3 parts:

• Fundamentals Processes
• Concepts of Extreme Nanostructuring
• Applications

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-14752-4

We are delighted to have contributed to it with the large community of laser processing of solids.

Our chapter is introducing the 3 volumes and provides an overview of physical and chemical phenomena taking place during the laser-matter interaction, complemented with understanding gained from quantum ab-initio approaches employed and developed in the group of Ultrafast Photonics.

The department of Scientific Laser Applications (SLA) is hosting prof. Cristian Sanchez for 2 months, thanks to the Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions (MSCA) Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) program “ATLANTIC”.

The stay started with a tour of the femtosecond laboratory of prof. Bulgakova and with first scientific discussions with the group of Ultrafast Photonics led by T. Derrien.

Classes of materials that are able to support surface plasmon polaritons has been historically narrow. By experience, researchers and engineers had rather been investing in heterostructures that can carry plasmon polaritons on long distances (using gold, silver, platinum, aluminum, …).

In 2016, we published a study that proposed a new class of materials that support lossy modes of surface electromagnetic wave propagation (plasmon polaritons) [1]. In this study, the particular case of Nb was identified as one of the most borderline materials that should be supporting the effect upon visible light.

A new study just appeared [2], that realizes a microscope using Nb contacts, a choice that challenges our theory [1]. In their study [2], the authors have developed a Raman microscope using the material that, according to our theory, should be supporting plasmon polaritons, while established theories had rejected it.

This realization opens a second field of applications for our “extended plasmonic” theory, that already demonstrated its use in increasing the regularity of light-induced nanostructures [3], a work that has generated a Top1% highly-cited publication in Scientific Reports, and a European patent [4] for covering metals using highly regular nanostructures at industrially competitive production velocities.

This new success is a great demonstration of the possibilities offered by bridging fundamental knowledge with novel innovative fields of nano-photonics, and of the importance of developing basic theory for enabling new innovations.

Another envisioned application can be a guided choice of materials for miniaturization of photonic components in integrated circuits.

[1] Derrien, T. J.-Y.; Krüger, J. & Bonse, J. Properties of surface plasmon polaritons on lossy materials: lifetimes, periods and excitation conditions. Journal of Optics, 18, 115007 (2016)
[2] F. Telesio, F. Mezzadri, M. Serrano-Ruiz, M. Peruzzini, F. Bisio, S. Heum, F. Fabbri, Propagation of Visible Light in Nanostructured Niobium Stripes Embedded in a Dielectric Polymer, Materials for Quantum Technology, 2, 045003 (2022).
[3] Gnilitskyi, I.; Derrien, T. J.-Y.; Levy, Y.; Bulgakova, N. M.; Mocek, T. & Orazi, L. High-speed manufacturing of highly regular femtosecond laser-induced periodic surface structures: physical origin of regularity. Scientific reports, 7, 8485 (2017)
[4] Gnilitskyi, I.; Orazi, L.; Derrien, T. J.-Y.; Bulgakova, N. M. & Mocek, T. Method and system of ultrafast laser writing of highly-regular periodic structures, European Patent Office, No. WO18010707, 2016.

On Thu 2nd March 2023, I gave 45 min seminar at the Theory group of Condensed Matter department of the Charles University (Prague). Announcement of the seminar can be found here.

In preparation of next proposals, the list of communications made in 2022 has now been updated.

In 2022, our group of 2.2 FTEs has:

• contributed to 3 publications (average IF 6.44) and to 1 chapter for Springer (as 1st author, 1st chapter),
• attended 7 conferences,
• given 3 invited oral presentations in international conferences,
• obtained a 50,000 CZK award from the Czech Academy of Sciences for the best submitted proposal to European Research Council,
• traveled to USA, Argentina, Austria, France and UK,
• consumed 8 millions core-hours at PRACE Portugal and IT4I Czech Republic.

This partially-funded-year, the group of Ultrafast Photonics will participate in the following conferences:

• April 17th-18th: 5th BIATRI workshop will take place on these dates. This year, collaborators from BIATRI & ATLANTIC projects will be invited to the workshop, in addition to few external people. See announcement here.
• April 26th: T. J.-Y. Derrien will present an invited lecture on bulk and surface polaritons from classical and quantum points of view at the University of Chemical Technologies (UCT). Stay tuned!
• May 29th – June 2nd: T. J.-Y. Derrien will chair one session at European Materials Research Society (EMRS) Strasbourg, France, and present one oral contribution on symmetry breaking in laser processing.
• June 13th-16th: Laser Precision Microfabrication (LPM) Japan, where TJY Derrien is honored to be co-organizer for a Special Symposium on Machine Learning in Laser Processing with Prof. Ishikawa (University of Tokyo) and Dr. Otobe (QST National Institute for Quantum Science and Technology).
• June 13th-16th: A poster contribution for the LPM conference with prof. Bulgakova on bridging TDDFT and large-scale modeling using machine learning, a task related to the ATLANTIC project.
• June 26th-30th: A contribution was submitted to CLEO Europe (Munich), on the observation of symmetry breaking in processing silicon at sufficiently high intensity. The work is supported by experimental results from Dr. Yoann Levy’s group at HiLASE, and is also related to a deliverable of the ATLANTIC project.

Other possibilities:

• April 23rd-27th: SPIE Photonics 2023 will be hosted in Prague. We did not submit an abstract this year, but one may attend at last moment in consultation mode.

Dr. Thibault J.-Y. Derrien, leader of the Group of Ultrafast Photonics of Department of Scientific Laser Applications of the HiLASE Centre, met with the groups of Dr. Matias Berdakin, Dr. German Soldano and Dr. Raul Bustos in Universidad Nacional de Cordoba (UNC, Argentina).

Scientists exchanged on mutual interests and initiated joint collaboration on common thematics.

Strengthening the diplomatic relations and the scientific programs between the Czech Republic and Argentina would be of great benefit for both countries.

This visit was supported by Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions (MSCA) for Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) “ATLANTIC”, a program of the European Union (grant agreement no. 823897).