The AEgIS collaboration on Wikipedia
2024.02.22 PRL by L. Glöggler et al., “Positronium Laser Cooling via the 13S−23P Transition with a Broadband Laser Pulse”.
First demonstration of positronium laser cooling achieved by the AEgIS collaboration published in PRL! I worked on this project for the last six years with a leading role in the laser development, in particular with financial support from NFR (project PsCool). This result was awaited since 1988. It is a milestone in antimatter research opening the road for precision spectroscopy to test bound state Quantum Electro-Dynamics and the gravitational red-shift on antimatter. This achievement got a lot of attention in the media with several interviews in international press organs. Here below is a press review of articles covering this work.
Physics (APS) by Erin Knutson “Laser-Cooling Positronium”. 22.02.2024.
CERN by CERN press office “AEgIS experiment paves the way for new set of antimatter studies by laser-cooling positronium”. 22.02.2024.
Agenparl by Bureau de presse du CERN: “L’expérience AEgIS ouvre la voie à une nouvelle série d’études sur l’antimatière en refroidissant du positonium par laser”. 22.02.2024.
AlphaGalileo by CERN “AEgIS experiment paves the way for new set of antimatter studies by laser-cooling positronium”. 22.02.2024.
Youtube “AEgIS experiment at CERN cools positronium with laser light for the first time”. 22.02.2024.
Youtube in Hindi
AEgIS by AEgIS “First demonstration of the laser cooling of positronium atoms”. 22.02.2024.
Australia
Mirage news by Mirage news “AEgIS Experiment Enables New Antimatter Studies Via Laser-Cooling”. 23.02.2024.
Austria
Ö1 by Robert Czepel “Durchbruch bei Herstellung von Antimaterie”. 23.02.2024.
France
Le Monde by David Larousserie “ Des lasers refroidissent une particule furtive mi-matière, mi-antimatière ”. 23.02.2024.
LAC by Paul “Refroidissement laser réussi du positronium". 22.02.2024
CNRS by Communication CNRS physique “Refroidissement laser réussi du positronium !". 23.02.2024
India
Times of India by Chethan Kumar “In a 1st, CERN team, including Indian scientist, achieves laser cooling of exotic atom”. 22.02.2024.
Deccan Herald by R. Krishnakumar “ Laser cooling of Positronium, breakthrough in advance antimatter research”. 23.02.2024.
The Indian Express by Anjali Marar “In a first, CERN scientists carry out laser cooling of Positronium”. 24.02.2024.
TheHindu by The Hindu Bureau “International collaboration of physicists demonstrates laser cooled Positronium”. 23.02.2024.
DailyYojana (blog) by .“भौतिकविदों का अंतर्राष्ट्रीय सहयोग लेजर कूल्ड पॉज़िट्रोनियम का प्रदर्शन करता है”. 23.02.2024
Italy
INFN by INFN “CERN: primo raffreddamento laser di una nuvola di atomi di positronio”. 22.02.2024.
Ansa by Enrica Battifoglia “ Dall’antimateria fredda una rivoluzione nella fisica ”. 23.02.2024.
Meteoweb by Francesca Zavettieri “Dall’antimateria fredda una rivoluzione nella fisica”. 22.02.2024.
LastataleNews by LastataleNews “Realizzato il primo raffreddamento laser di una nuvola di atomi di positronio”. 22.02.2024.
RAI by Alessia Mari “Positronio, l'atomo leggerissimo raffreddato al Cern: servirà per misurazioni ad alta precisione”. 23.02.2024.
Adnkronos by Redazione Adnkronos “Nuova scoperta sull'antimateria, apre a tecnologie innovative di diagnostica per immagini”. 22.02.2024
Politecnico di Milano magazine by Politecnico di Milano “Positronium laser cooling”. 23.02.2024
Wired.it by “Antimateria, un raggio laser ha raffreddato per la prima volta il positronio”. 23.02.2024.
Norway
Titan.uio.no by Hilde Lynnebakken “Nytt antimaterie resultat vekker begeistring”. 23.02.2024.
Poland
WNP by PAP “Fizycy z Politechniki Warszawskiej zmodernizowali system sterowania eksperymentem nad antymaterią”. 22.02.2024.
IFPAN by Tomasz Sowinski “Laser cooling of atoms containing antimatter”. 22.02.2024.
Switzerland
BNN (Switzerland) by BNN correspondents “Groundbreaking Leap at CERN: Laser Cooling of Antimatter Unlocks New Realms in Physics”. 22.02.2024.
UK
BBC by Palab Ghosh “Antimatter: Scientists freeze positronium atoms with lasers”.
PhysicsWorld. 22.02.2024.
BBC news Mundo by Palab Ghosh. “El experimento con antimateria congelada que abre una nueva era para entender el origen del universo”. 24.02.2024
USA
MSN daily wrap by KLT “Scientists advance antimatter research in breakthrough CERN experiment”. 23.02.2024.
2023.10.03 Nobel prize in physics for attosecond science! Congratulations to Pierre Agostini, Anne L'Huillier and Ferenc Krausz. Read about it in Norwegian from forskning.no and titan.uio.no.
2023.09.27 The ALPHA collaboration at CERN measures that antihydrogen falls down! Read more about it in Norwegian and in English.
2023.09.14 AEgIS: the fall of antimatter. I am holding the physics department Felleskollokvium! Come and listen to what we know on antimatter at a general audience level.
2023.02.21 My PhD work on Quantum-Path Resolved Attosecond High-Harmonic Spectroscopy is now published in PRL with a viewpoint highlight by Mette Gaarde. See the related article published in Titan.
2023.01.24 Research with the Ohio State University on the validity of the Kramers-Kronig relation in XUV attosecond transient absorption is now published in Optica. This work makes use of a phase grating element for stable XUV interferometry.
2023.01.23 The annual report of the AEgIS collaboration is online.
2022.08.05 A new inertial sensor developped in the AEgIS collaboration is presented in Measurement Science and Technology.
2022.01.13 The annual report of the AEgIS collaboration is online.
2021.08.18 The PhD work of Christian Zimmer on the possibility to laser cool positronium in a magetic field is now published in PRA.
2021.05.07 Morphologically tuned nanochanneled silicon targets developed by the AEgIS collaboration are reported to efficiently produce thermalized positronium in J. Phys. B.
2021.03.02 My PhD work on multidimentional XUV attosecond spectroscopy is doing the cover of the Optica 2021 March issue!
2021.02.08 We (the AEgIS collaboration based at CERN) report the first pulsed production of antihydrogren using a charge exchange reaction between Rydberg positronium and a cold plasma of antiprotons in Communications Physics.
2021.18.01 How long does it take a core excited ion to relax to its ground state? Our work at the LCLS X-ray free electron laser (X-FEL) on Clocking Auger electrons is now released in Nature Physics.
2021.11.01 The annual report of the AEgIS collaboration is online.
Academic interests
I am a laser physicist currently involved in the positronium activities of the AEgIS collaboration located at the antiproton decelerator at CERN. The goal of AEgIS is to study the effect of the Earth's gravitational field on antihydrogen using antimatter wave interferometry.
Background
I graduated my PhD from Paris Sud XI University in the attosecond physics group of SPAM (IRAMIS/CEA-Saclay) under the supervision of Pascal Salières and Thierry Ruchon. During my PhD, I introduced the use of Diffractive Optical Elements to shape femtosecond pulses and realize a simple, robust and very stable XUV interferometer. I used this interferometer to study electronic dynamics in aligned molecules with attosecond time resolution and Angstrom spatial resolution.
After my PhD, I joined the DiMauro-Agostini group at the Ohio University University (Columbus, OH) for a 3 years postdoctoral stay. There I took part in mid-infra red driven high-order harmonic generation for in-situ molecular spectroscopy. I was given the opportunity to continue my own research line on Diffractive Optical Elements for shaping mid-infrared femtosecond pulses. I initiated collaborations with other groups to study Fano resonances in Neon, generate femtosecond beams carrying OAM (Orbital Angular Momentum) from Difference Frequency Generation and the transfer of OAM during High-order Harmonic Generation. Finally, I took part in a time-resolved Auger decay experiment at SLAC using the X ray Free Electron Laser LCLS facility.
At the end of my postdoctoral stay, I was awarded a 3 years COFUND fellowship from CERN and the Marie Curie 2020 actions program. I joined the AEgIS collaboration based at the antiproton decelerator. There I took part in the antihydrogen production runs of 2017 and 2018. In AEgIS, a charge exchange mechanism is used to produce antihydrogen. It consists in transferring a positron from a Rydberg state positronium to an antiproton. Nanosecond lasers are used to populate the positronium Rydberg states. I took part in experimental efforts related to the development of a position sensitive imaging of positronium atoms and to the production of a metastable 23S beam of positronium.
In the news
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Awards
- 2019: FRIPRO Young Research Talent grant (Laser cooling of positronium).
- 2014: EDOM PhD award (Multidimensionnal Phase Spectroscopy of the Attosecond Molecular Emission)
Positions held
- May 2020 - now: researcher, UiO (Oslo, Norway)
- Nov. 2019 - Apr. 2020: MSCA visiting scholar, UiO (Oslo, Norway)
- May 2017 - Oct. 2019: COFUND fellow, AEgIS, CERN (Meyrin, Switzerland)
- Feb. 2014 - April. 2017: postdoctoral stay, in the Agostini-DiMauro group, OSU (Columbus, OH, USA)
- Sept. 2020 - Jan.2014: PhD, CEA-Saclay (Saclay, France)