08-12-2023 John Costello received the Richard O’Kennedy (Overall) Award for 2023. It is the highest honour that the Faculty of Science and Health bestows on a research active member each year.

16-11-2023 Seamus Cummins has a piece on the RTE Brainstorm website on lasers – an integral part of our SFI and SEAI/ESB supported projects. You can find it here.

17-10-2023 New paper by Seamus Cummins et al. published by Spectrochimica Acta B on LIBS with Machine Learning for contaminant detection on wind turbine blades. Download it here - the paper is free to download - gold open access.

01-10-2023 Aoife Butler has joined the group as an intern for her final year project. She will work with Stephen Durkan on spatially profiling the beam from a 13.5 nm (90 eV) light source comprised of a laser plasma with Mo-Si multilayer mirrors (MLMs).

05-09-2023 James and Seamus are presenting posters at the 12th Euro-Mediterranean Symposium on Laser-induced Breakdown Spectroscopy Conference (EMSLIBS2023), Porto, Portugal this week.

02-08-2023 Stephen and Lazaros (Ares) are presenting posters at the 15th Femtochemistry Conference (FEMTO 15), Berlin, Germany this week.

25-07-2023 25th Stephen and Ross have posters at the International Symposium on the Photochemistry and Photophysics of Coordination Compounds (ISPPCC 2023), Ulm, Germany this week.

18-07-2023 It was on the 18^th of July 2011 that the EACEA informed us that the EXTATIC EMJD was to be funded. With 30 alums from Africa, Asia and Europe (http://www.extatic.eu/profiles/alumni-profiles) my colleagues (http://www.extatic.eu/consortium) can be very proud of their achievements. The only sad note of the programme was the untimely loss of Prof. Alan Michette RIP, Kings College London, (https://www.euvlitho.com/2013/S54.pdf) who played a key role in seeding the idea and co-writing the proposal.

06- 03-2023 Seamus Cummins has a piece on the RTE Brainstorm website on our SEAI / ESB supported ‘laser blade cleaning’ project on wind turbines. You can find it here.

27-02-2023 Prof. Charles Clark, NIST and University of Maryland visited DCU while travelling from Merton College Oxford back to the USA. He gave a talk on Supernavigators and animal optical vision sto 100 Leaving Certificate school children followed by a talk on structured optical and neutron beams from his work at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland.

01-10-2022 Gemma Murray (PHA4), Jamie Somers (AP4) and Peter Moore (EST4) have joined the group to perform final year projects in EUV sources, quantum chemical calculations and remote imaging of wind turbine blades, respectively. We wish all three well in their project adventures with us.

09-09-2022 Intern Jamie Somers was featured in the Independent newspaper on his educational journey to DCU and his internship in the School of Physical Sciences on the SEAI RDD laser wind turbine blade project.

19-06-2022 to 09-09-2022 (in person):

25^th ICSLS, Caserta, Italy (June 19 – 24, 2022) - JC

14^th ECAMP, Vilnius, Lithuania (June 27 – July 1, 2022), Stephen & Ares

EU COST (CA17126), Crete, Greece (July 18, 2022) - JC

LIBS XII, Bari, Italy (September 5 – 9, 2022) – Séamus, James and JC

25-03-2022 Syedah Sadaf Zehra, Muhammad Bilal Alli and Hu Lu all graduated PhD today. Sadaf and Hu were awarded joint degrees from DCU and UniPD. Many congratulations to all three on their achievements. Picture of Sadaf and Muhammad at the DCU-SPS reception here.

09-12-2021 Invited seminar on VUV LIBS at CEITEC, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic.

29-11-2021 Plenary talk on VUV Dual Laser Plasma Photoabsorption Spectroscopy (DLPPS) or Transient Absorption-LIBS at the EMSLIBS conference in Gijon, Spain.

08-11-2021 Invited talk on VUV LIBS at the IFATI4 conference on Industry 4.0 in Japan.

20-09-2021 Iris Apale and Cian McGirr have joined as Year 4 project students. Iris will work on VUV photoabsorption of laser ablated diatomics like CsI using the dual laser plasma (DLP) technique. She will analyze ion spectra using the Cowan code suite. Cian will use the ORCA quantum chemistry code to study corresponding molecular spectra.

16-07-2021 Dr. Lazaros Varvarezos has published a paper in Chemical Physics Letters on Ionization–Dissociation of Methane with Conor Long (DCU) and SQS group at the European XFEL - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cplett.2021.138687

13-07-2021 Sadaf Syedah Zehra defended her thesis successfully this afternoon. Many congrats to her and many thanks to co-supervisors, Dr. Paddy Hayden, now Assistant Professor in UCD physics, and Prof. Piergiorgio Nicolosi of UniPD. Thanks also to external examiner Prof. Jose Vadillo of the University of Malaga, internal examiners Prof. Colette McDonagh and Prof. Giampiero Naletto and viva chair Assoc. Prof. Lampros Nikolopoulos.

21-06-2021 John Costello has been invited to deliver a plenary talk at the 11^th EMSLIBS in Gijón, Spain (Nov. 29^th to Dec. 2^nd, 2021). The talk will centre on Vacuum-UV Photoabsorption of Atoms and Ions with Laser Induced Plasmas.

11-06-2021 Muhammad Bilal Alli defended his thesis successfully this morning. Many congrats to him and his main supervisor, Dr. Paddy Hayden, now Assistant Professor in UCD physics. External examiner, Prof. Philip Martin, internal examiner, Assoc Prof. Paul van Kampen and viva chair, Assoc. Prof. Blanaid White.

31-05-2021 Irish Apale has completed her internship with the research group. She is moving to Twilio for the remainder of her ‘INTRA’ year. We thank Irish for her work with the group and wish her well in her new role in the private sector.

28-05-2021 We recently visited the ESB Wind Farm at Raheenleagh. There is a picture of the group here on Twitter. The DCU Physics and UCD Physics collaboration is funded by, and in collaboration with, the SEAI and the ESB.

25-03-2021 John Costello has received an ‘Outstanding Reviewer’ award from the IOP (Institute of Physics). The list of awardees can be found here.

24-03-2021 Sadaf Syedah Zehra submitted her thesis entitled “Time Resolved and Time Integrated VUV LIBS for the Detection of Light Elements in Metals” for examination in respect of the award of a joint doctorate between DCU and UniPD. Sadaf is part of the EU EMJD programme EXTATIC that was funded by the EU agency EACEA.

24-03-2021 Muhammad Bilal Alli submitted his thesis entitled “Vacuum Ultraviolet Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (VUV-LIBS) For Pharmaceutical Analysis” for examination in respect of the award of a PhD degree.

17-03-2021 John Costello has been designated a ‘Trusted Reviewer’ by the IOP (Institute of Physics). Details on the scheme are here.

26-02-2021 Dr. Lazaros Varvarezos has published a paper in the Physical Review A on non-linear ionization of Kr with the FLASH FEL collaboration - https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.103.022832

18-02-2021 Irish Apale has joined the research group as an intern. She is working on atomic structure calculations (using the Cowan suite of codes) for metal ions of potential interest in nanoparticle based EUVL resist materials.

18-01-2021 The latest paper from our collaboration at X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) was published in Nature Physics - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-01111-0. The background story to the work is at https://www.dcu.ie/commsteam/news/2021/jan/clocking-movement-electrons-inside-atom - The preprint is on ARXIV at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.10398

18-12-2020 The AAMOS20 online conference om AMO physics hosted by DSU, IIT&IISER Tirupati, in honour of Steve Manson’s more than 50 years of contributions to the field ended today. The full 5 days have been recorded and are available at the following Youtube links:

Session 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o5tDYT7wA0

Session 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPQgWYn5x_g

Session 3 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbCfzjTxi-s

Session 4 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsR0nFpcSME

Session 5 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2tSoixO0lE

15-09-2020 Hu Lu successfully defended his doctoral thesis on “UV and VUV Photoionization of Some Metal Atoms and Ions” today. The degree will be awarded jointly by DCU and UniPD. Hu Lu is part of the EU EMJD programme EXTATIC that was funded by the EU agency EACEA.

14-08-2020 Today the Centre for Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences and Technologies (CAMOST), IIT/IISER (Tirupati) was inaugurated by Dr. Arabinda Mitra, Scientific Secretary, Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to Government of India. The centre is the initiative of Prof. Pranawa Deshmukh and I’m delighted to be a member of its Scientific Advisory Board. The event was recorded - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4RnRs08PvI – the event starts about 10 minutes into the video.

13-07-2020 Just completed our beamtime at the FERMI Free Electron Laser at the ELETTRA facility in Trieste studying ultrafast photoion and photoelectron spectroscopy of impulsively aligned C2H2. Click here.

07-07-2020 I am delighted to announce that Stephen Durkan and Ross McGarry will join myself and colleague Associate Professor Mary Pryce as PhD students on a newly funded SFI Frontiers for the Future Programme (FFP) Project focused on EUV Lithography. Welcome Stephen and Ross.

07-07-2020 I am delighted to announce that James Campbell, Séamus Cummins and Ross Murray will join myself and UCD colleagues Prof Padraig Dunne and Dr Paddy Hayden as PhD students on a newly funded SEAI Research, Development and Demonstration (RDD) Project focused on laser ablation for wind energy generation. Welcome James, Séamus and Ross

17-06-2020 The MUT Council has today approved the DC recommendation that Lazaros Varvarezos be awarded the joint doctorate. Congrats Dr. Varvarezos.

10-06-2020 Lazaros Varavrezos has defended his doctoral thesis successful both in DCU and MUT as part of the EXTATIC joint doctorate programme. His name goes forward with a positive recommendation to IOE-MUT Council on Wednesday 17^th June, 2020. Congratulations to ‘Ares’ on his superb work, thesis, private and public defenses.

10-01-2020 Our SEAI funded project on Laser Ablation for Wind Turbine Blade Contaminant Classification, Quantification and Removal has started. We are seeking 3 highly talented and accomplished students to join the project to pursue PhDs. Download a presentation on the associated projects here.

05-12-2019 Many congratulations to 2018-2019 final year project student (and now B.Sc. graduate in PBM) Pierre Murchan.  The Instrument Society of America (Ireland) Honours & Awards committee have selected Pierre Murchan for this year’s 2019 Hon’s Degree Award. A superb achievement by Pierre who is now a Master degree student at NUI Galway.

20-11-2019 Today Minister Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Richard Bruton TD announced €11M for 50 cutting-edge research, development and demonstration energy projects at the SEAI Energy Conference. Our project on laser ablation applied to wind turbines was amongst them.

22-10-2019. We have been awarded beamtime at the FERMI Free Electron Laser at the ELETTRA facility in Trieste, Italy following a competitive process. Our bid consortium stretches from the US west coast to Japan and we thank the members for collaborating on this proposal. The proposal concerns “Open Loop Control in the Photo-isomerization of the Acetylene Dication”

10-09-2019 Ben Delaney submitted the final bound copies of his PhD thesis entitled “Imaging and Spectroscopy of Laser Produced Annular Plasmas” today. Ben will graduate at the November 7^th ceremony.

31-07-2019 The proceedings of the 24^th ICSLS conference have appeared in the IOP Journal of Physics Conference Series as Volume 1289. You can view all open access papers here. Editors John Costello (DCU), Paddy Hayden (UCD), Emma Sokell (UCD) and Peter van der Burgt (Maynooth Uni.).

11-06-2019 Prof. Vasudevan (Vengu) Lakshminarayanan, University of Waterloo, a fellow board member of the Journal of Modern Optics, gave a talk entitled “Biomedical Image Processing and Deep Learning for Ophthalmic Diagnosis” in the Adapt Centre today. Many thanks to colleague Prof. Andy Way for hosting the talk.

08-05-2019 Congratulations to Ben Delaney who successfully defended his PhD thesis today. Super work to demonstrate the generation of annular plasmas and how they can be used as a colliding plasma system. Wishing him all the best for his future career in lasers, optics and photonics.

12-03-2019 Take a look at the commentary published by Steve Manson and myself in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) today on X-rays putting molecules into a spin - https://www.pnas.org/content/116/11/4772.full

21-02-2019 Congratulations to Stephen Davitt who won the Chancellor’s Medal which was awarded at the Spring Conferring Ceremony in DCU today. Great achievement. The lead nominator was CASTEL Director Eilish McLoughlin.

21-02-2019 Congratulations to Stephen Davitt who graduated PhD at the Spring Conferring Ceremony in DCU today.

20-03-2019 Congratulations to Lazaros Varvarezos who won 1^st prize in the BOC sponsored poster competition in the DCU Physics Research Day. Lazaros is part of the EXTATIC Doctoral Programme. The early stage PhD student prizes were won by Adam Prior and Andrew Foremski, both students of colleague Dr. Lampros Nikolopoulos – a clean sweep for Laser and AMO physics.

02-03-2019 Congratulations to Ben Delaney who has secured a research engineer position in an EI funded project led by Dr. Fergal O’Reilly at University College Dublin. We wish Ben all the best in his new role.

01-02-2019 Congratulations to Stephen Davitt who has secured a postdoctoral position in an SFI funded project led by Prof. James Lunney and Dr. Rocco Lupoi at Trinity College Dublin. We wish Stephen all the best in his new role.

10-01-2019 Congratulations to Columb Doherty who has secured a scientist position in the State Forensics Laboratory. We wish him all the best in his new role.

27-09-2018 Congratulations to Stephen Davitt who has successfully defended his PhD thesis today on “Colliding Plasmas in Air”. Outstanding work to show how plasmas can be produced in air that have stagnation layer properties. His single shot Fourier Transform spectrometer for LIBS, based on the design of Miles Padgett and Andrew Harvey 20+ years ago, is also worthy of note. Wishing him all the best for his future career in lasers, optics and photonics.

11-09-2018 Congratulations to Columb Doherty who has passed all stages of the process for the award of M.Sc. by Research at DCU for his very nice thesis entitled “Effect of Target Geometry on Ion Distributions from Laser-Produced Colliding Plasma Stagnation Layers”. Superb work and Columb will formally graduate at the November Conferring. We wish Columb all the very best in his future career.

23-06-2018 We hosted the 24^th International Conference on Spectral Lineshapes (ICSLS 2018) at DCU – www.icsls2018.com - many thanks to all those in the IPC and LOC as well as all of the participants and the President of DCU, Prof. Brian MacCraith for opening the @icsls2018DCU – The Book of Abstracts can be downloads from the website.

18-06-2018 Hubertus Bromberger from Coherent Inc. is here this week installing a new Astrella femtosecond amplifier and harmonics beamline. He will install a pair of OPAs covering the UV-NIR and NIR – MIR in week 1 of July 2018. UTAS (Newport Spectra Physics) and 2D-IR (PhaseTech Spectroscopy) will be installed in October/November.

16-05-2018 Delegation from MUT visiting DCU to discuss projects and organise mobilities for Tejaswi Katravulapali and Lazaros Varvarezos.

01-04-2018 Sadaf Zehra and Hu Lu on mobility to EMJD EXTATIC partner University of Padua.

14-12-2017 Visited Kassel University to give a colloquium – “Stagnation layers at the collision front between counter-streaming plasma plumes: formation, properties and potential applications

18-09-2017 Getasew Wubetu has successfully defended his thesis at DCU and MUT Warsaw and will graduate with a joint doctorate from both universities, funded by the FP7 EACEA EXTATIC EMJD (0033-2012) on November 3 – 2017.

04-09-2017 William Hanks has passed the Masters by Research thesis examination and will graduate on November 3 – 2017.

04-06-2017 CONUL conference discussion on open access publishing. I joined the panel discussion which is available on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv1suXrmCaI

01-05-2017 At DESY with graduate student Lazaros Varvarezos to study angular distribution of electron emission in two photon-two colour ionization in XUV FEL fieldsusing Velocity Map Imaging (VMI) spectrometer built by Max Planck ASG.

07-04-2017 We hosted a Management Committee meeting for EU

COST MP1208, chaired by Prof. Dimitri Batani, at DCU today. The Action website is here.

05-04-2017 We are nearing finalizing the equipment list for an SFI Infrastructure funded Ultrafast Laser and Spectroscopy laboratory at DCU. Many thanks to Dr. Noel Moore, friend of DCU, on helping us optimize specifications for physics, chemistry, biology, photonic, quantum science and engineering technologies.

28-03-2017 Well done Nicky Walsh on securing a position in Accenture Innovation Dublin. We greatly appreciate what Nicky did here as a PhD student and Postdoc and more to come from Mossy and Nicky on their work together…..

03-03-2017 Great talk by research visitor Prof. Nigel Mason OBE of the Open University, UK on laboratory Astro-Chemistry in DCU today. Nigel has many connections in the EU and India. See his Foundation established in his father’s honour. Great initiative.

28-02-2017. Dr. Pramod Pandey returns to a staff position at IITK. We wish Pramod well in his new role and look forward to continuing to collaborate with him.

23-02-2017 John Costello was awarded the President’s Research Award for Science, Engineering and Health fro 2017 - https://www.dcu.ie/news/2017/feb/s0217r.shtml

16-01-2017 Start of our EXTATIC Welcome Week in the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy where we welcomed the 5^th cohort of students. We wish all new and new students well in the EU H2020 EACEA Doctoral studies well.

14-11-2016 Dr. Sudhakar Reddy from the group of Prem Bisht at IIT Madras is currently visiting us. He is working with Lazaros on femtosecond excitation of graphene and graphene composites.

07-11-2016 Tejaswi Katravulapally from IIT Madras (M.Sc) and LNMIIT Jaipur B.Sc) has joined EXTATIC to pursue a PhD under the supervision of Dr. Lampros Nikolopoulos and myself. We wish Tejawsi well here.

03-11-2016 Wolfi Helmi from the group of Reini Kienberger at the TU-Munich gave spoke in the School of Physical Scoences today on the topic of Towards attosecond X-ray experiments at free-electron lasers.

19-09-2016 Columb Doherty will join the group to study for a MSc by Research working on ion emission from colliding plasmas using the Sector Analyser he developed under the guidance of Dr. Mossy Kelly in collaboration with the group of Prof. James Lunney at TCD.

15-09-2016 Congrats to Stephen Davitt who won the Award for Best Poster at the LIBS 2016 Conference, in Chamonix, September 12 – 16, 2016.

08-09-2016 Congrats to Columb Doherty who has won the Undergraduate Awards or UA (http://www.undergraduateawards.com) Maths and Physics category for Ireland 2016. Superb result for Columb and his former supervisor Dr. Mossy Kelly (now at Hull University, UK).

22-08-2016 Congratulations to Nicky Walsh who defended her PhD thesis on laser plasma formation in liquids successfully today – weel done Nicky. Nicky will graduate formally at the ceremony in the Helix, DCU on November 12^th 2016. We are looking forward to that day.

18-08-2016 Colm Fallon has left the group to pursue opportunities in the private sector. We wish Colm all the very best for the future and thank him sincerely for his very many signal contributions to the group over the past 8 years or so at DCU and in collaborations in China and India.

14-08-2016 Mossy Kelly has been appointed Lecturer in Physics at the Department of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Hull, UK. We wish Mossy all the very best for his future career and thank him for his huge contribution to laser plasma and AMO research at DCU over the past decade as well as his work in our FEL collaborations.

06-08-2016 Patrick Colley returned to the University of Notre Dame today to complete his studies. We wish Partick all the very best for his future career and thank him for his very valuable work done in collaboration with Ben Delaney and Mossy Kelly.

08-06-2016 Patrick Colley from the University of Notre Dame joined us today to work with Dr. Mossy Kelly on Resonant LIBS project with a twist…. Patrick won a Naughton REU fellowship to study at DCU. We wish Patrick great success at DCU this summer.

28-04-2016 Stephen Davitt took part in the Tell It Straight competition on the Drumcondra Campus – he was placed joint second - see his video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAEugpbqkZc

20-04-2016 Partick Colley, Notre Dame University, has been awarded a Naughton Summer Research Experience fellowship and will work with us this summer on R-LIBS.

11-04-2016 Stephen Davitt took part in Famelab Ireland – see his talk about 15 minutes into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SZBQ6YsOXY

31-01-2016 A Special Issue of the Journal of Modern Optics on Short Wavelength Free Electron Lasers edited by myself and colleagues Eugene Kennedy and Lampros Nikolopoulos can be viewed at http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/toc/tmop20/63/4

25-01-2016 Gave a SFI School’s Talk at Magh Ene College in Bundoran, Co. Donegal - http://maghsci.blogspot.ie

11-01-2016 We had our EXTATIC Welcome Week in the University of Southampton, hosted by Bill Brocklesby. Programme can be viewed here

07-01-2016 The PiccoloLuce Website can be viewed at www.piccololuce.com

01-12-2015 Our ‘PiccoloLuce’ spectrometer concept was shortlisted for a QS-times Wharton award

16-11-2015 Today we had a midterm review of our SFI IvP project on stagnation layers for analytical sciences. The review panel comprised world renowned scientists Janos Hajdu, Sandra Chapman and Bodo Hattendorf. We are grateful to SFI and key collaborators like Jason Greenwood (QUB), Ahmed Hassanein (Purdue) and Michael Meyer (XFEL GmbH) for their inputs to the review.

09-11-2015 Lazaros Varvarezos joined the group today to begin his EXTATIC doctoral studies on the interaction of intense multicolour fs pulses with atoms and simple molecules. His co-supervisor is Associate Professor Bill Brocklesby at the Optics Research Centre in the University of Southampton, UK.

03-09-2015 Stephen Davitt was awarded 1^st prize in the poster competition at the annual Photonics Ireland conference - http://photonicsireland2015.com. Many congrats to Stephen on this achievement.

03-09-2015 Aparna Neettiyath, formerly a visiting student from IIT Madras under the EU IRSES exchange programme ‘UPPI’, won the Best Poster award at the 13^th Conference on Laser Ablation (COLA 2015) in Cairns, Australia. Many congrats to Aparna on this achievement.

01-07-2015 We hosted that annual PIRE consortium meeting at DCU from July 1 – 3, 2015. PIRE is a NSF programme, and our project on Materials under Extreme Conditions is led by Prof. Ahmed Hassanein from Purdue University. Details can be found on the following link https://engineering.purdue.edu/CMUXE/index-pire.html

01-07-2015 Columb Doherty has joined as a summer intern working with Mossy Kelly on Faraday cup design. Columb has also been accepted onto the USTART young entrepreneur programme.

21-06-2015 Lazaros Varvarezos, currently at Ioannina University, Greece has accepted an offer to join the EXTATIC EMJD. He will be supervised by Dr. Bill Brocklesby (Southampton) and myself.

11-06-2015 Giuseppe Sansone, Milan, visited Lampros Nikolopoulos for scientific discussions and also to deliver a seminar on attosecond XUV sources and their applications.

01-06-2015 Robert Black, an undergraduate Physics students from Notre Dame University, has joined us for the summer. Robert is supported by the award of a Naughton Scholarship from ND and will work on Resonant LIBS supervised by Dr. Mossy Kelly and myself.

29-05-2015 Noel Araujo Moreira, an intern from the University of Sao Paulo has returned to Brasil to complete his studies. He was advised by Mossy Kelly while here. We thank Noel for his excellent work on getting us started on the multivariate chemometrics pathway.

24-04-2015 Syedah Sadaf Zehra, who studied at the Sir Syed University Of Engineering & Technology, Karachi, Pakistan has joined the EXTATIC EMJD to work on Time Resolved VUV LIBS. She will be supervised by Dr. Paddy Hayden, Prof. Giorgio Nicolosi (Padua) and myself.

24-03-2015 Our collaboration has had one further paper accepted in Nature Communications for work that has demonstrated the potential of non-linear XUV photoelectron spectroscopy to reveal structure arising from electron correlations in matter hitherto hidden by traditional linear photoelectron spectroscopy with synchrotrons. doi:10.1038/ncomms7799

20-01-2015 Another paper has appeared in Nature Communications from work on all optical synchronization of XUV and NIR laser pulses at the FLASH FEL – it is the first example of closed loop control at a SASE FEL and leads the way forward for all such FELs. The article is available here doi:10.1038/ncomms6938

26-11-2014 Reini Kienberger is quoted in Der Spiegel today on the Nature Photonics paper that appeared online a couple of days ago. You can read the Spiegel piece here and a news item in English appears on the DESY site here. the NP article is available at doi:10.1038/nphoton.2014.278

08-11-2014 Earlier this year our FEL collaboration had a paper accepted in Nature Communications [Nature Communications 5, 3628 (2014)] on polarization state measurements at the FERMI FEL. We have been informed that another paper arising from LCLS work on atomic streaking spectroscopy has just been accepted in Nature Photonics and will appear online soon.

10-10-2014 The EXTATIC Workshop and Welcome Week will take place October 20 – 24, 2014 in MUT, Warsaw organized by Prof. Henryk Fiedorowicz and one of his EXTATIC students, Inam Ul Ahad. Details on http://www.ztl.wat.edu.pl/zoplzm/extatic .

07-10-2014 Syedah Sadaf Zehra, currently at Sir Syed University Of Engineering & Technology, Karachi, Pakistan has accepted an offer to join the EXTATIC EMJD. She will be supervised by Paddy Hayden and myself.

02-10-2014 Ismail Abdalla Saber has arrived from the group of Chen Zhong Dong in North West Normal University, Lanzhou, China. He will be supervised by Lampros Nikolopoulos and myself and funded by the EXTATIC EMJD.

01-10-2014 Colm Fallon has rejoined us to focus on commercial aspects of the SFI IvP research programme.

01-10-2014 Muhammed Bilal Alli has joined us as a research student under the supervision of Paddy Hayden and myself. He will be funded by an SFI SIRG grant to Paddy.

18-09-2014 The Governing Authority of Dublin City University ratified the promotion of John Costello to Full Professor of Physics today.

16-09-2014 Ms. Aparna Neettiyath from the group of Prof. Nilesh Vasa, IIT Madras has joined us for 3 months to work on LIBS of copper contaminants in transformer insulation.

10-08-2014 Dr. Paddy Hayden has been awarded a SFI Starting Independent Researcher Grant, the first such award to DCU in this highly competitive scheme. Congratulations to Paddy and we look forward to his establishing his own group and programme here over the next four years.

10-07-2014 Irene Maria Carrasco from the group of Javier Laserna and Jose Miguel Vadillo has arrived to spend 3 months working on ion emission from colliding plasmas. We wish Irene well during her stay here.

4-07-2014. Dr. Suresh (IITM Research Office) and Prof. Balaji Srinivasan visit DCU 4 – 14 July 2014 for research administration (Suresh) and research collaboration in optical ngineering (Balaji) respectively.

30-06-2014 Dr. Pramod Pandey has started his EU funded fellowship at DCU. We wish Pramod well in his work here over the coming 2 years.

30-06-2014 Dr Paddy Hayden has been appointed to the open SFI funded postdoctoral position in laser ablation analytical sciences (LAAS). We wish Paddy well on his return to us from UCD.

26-05-2014 Sean Howard from the Notre Dame University has arrived to spend 10 weeks here working with Lampros Nikolopoulos on TDSE calculations under the ND Naughton Fellowship scheme. We wish Sean well for his visit here to DCU.

18-05-2014 PhD student Ben Delaney is participating in the An Post Ras cycle race this week. We wish Ben and his team members from the DUBLIN South Alimay club all the very best in this endeavour.

10-05-2014 Confirmation has been received from the EACEA on the 6 candidates who will join the EXTATIC Doctoral Programme on October 1^st 2014. The call for candidates for the October 2015 start will issue in Q4 of 2014.

1-05-2014 Shyam Gupta from the group of Professor Raj Thareja at IITK has arrived to spend three months with us working on colliding plasmas.

7-04-2014 Ravi Singh from the group of Professor Raj Thareja at IITK has arrived to spend one month with us working on colliding plasmas.

31-03-2014 Colm Fallon has completed his term in the group of Professor Prem Bisht at IITM. Colm is following up some of his own commercial interests while currently travelling in India. It is intended that he will embark on a commercialisation project with us in the Q3 of 2014.

30-03-2014 Hu Lu has arrived to take up his EACEA funded position in the EXTATIC joint doctoral programme. We wish Hu Lu well in his studies here.

20-03-2014 Sean Howard, Notre Dame University has been awarded a Naughton Fellowship to spend 10 weeks during the summer here working with our colleague Lampros Nikolopoulos on theoretical and computational aspects of FEL interactions with matter.

18-03-2014 Ben Delaney will spend 4 weeks at IIT Kanpur working in the laboratory of Professor Raj Thareja on LIBS under the SFI ISCA programme. Two students from IITK will spend one month (Ravi Singh) and three months (Shyam Gupta) respectively at our laboratory in DCU.

13-03-2014 Tommaso Mazza from the group of collaborator Michael Meyer, XFEL GmbH, gave a seminar today on non-linear interactions of FELs with atoms.

22-02-2014 Ben Delaney and Getasew Wubetu travel to Freemont California this week to attend a course on LIBS and LA-ICP-MS at Applied Spectra Inc. While there they will also visit the labs of Dr. Rick Russo at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Just to note our heartiest congratulations to Rick on winning the Lester W Strock award.

17-01-2014 Professor Harishankar Ramachandran of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Madras (http://www.ee.iitm.ac.in/facs_hsr) has completed a research exploratory visit to DCU NCPST, Physics and Elelctronic Engineering under the EU-IRSES UPPI project that links DCU, IITM and the ORC at Southampton.

16-01-2014 The call for applications for Oct 2014 entry to the EXTATIC PhD programme has closed.

06-12-2013 We have been invited to the negotiation stage for a FP7 Marie Curie IIF in respect of Dr. Pramod Pandey of IIT Kanpur and KAIST. The project acronym is SLI-LABAT. Congratulations to Pramod on this achievement. Pramod is a PhD alumnus from the group of Professor Raj Thareja at IITK.

15-11-2013 Colm Fallon will spend 4 months in IIT Madras with Professor Prem Bisht and his group as part of the EU FP7 IRSES Project UPPI – Ultrafast Photonic Processes and Interactions and SFI IvP Programme – Stagnation Layers in Laser Ablation Analytical Techniques.

11-11-2013 Professor Serge Haroche, Nobel Laureate in Physics 2012, delivered a public lecture at DCU today as part of the Maget Networks-DCU Nobel Series entitled: Shedding Light on Schroedingers Cat.

9-11-2013 Congratulations to Dr. Mossy Kelly and Dr. Colm Fallon who graduated PhD today in Faculty of Science and Health. A record 57 PhD students graduated today in Science and Health disciplines. The first Higher Doctorate (D.Sc.) was also awarded today to DCU PhD graduate, Dr. Kevin McGuigan. An Honorary Doctorate was conferred on Dr. Tony Scott, Emeritus UCD in recognition of his many contributions to teaching, research and the advancement of science, especially to high school students via the establishment of the Young Scientists Exhibition, now the BT YSTE.

30-09-2013 Sudhakar Reddy, PhD student of Professor Prem Bisht, returned to IIT Madras today after a 3 month research visit working on non linear optical effects in tailored materials.

25-09-2013 Gerard Meijer, President Nimjegen University delivered a talk entitled, Taming Beams of Neutral Molecules as part of the IOP Seminar Series at DCU today.

10-09-2013 Congratulations to Colm Fallon who today successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled, Optical Diagnostics of Colliding Laser Produced Plasmas: Towards Next Generation Plasma Light Sources. We wish Colm all the very best as he pursues his postdoctoral career.

5-09-2013 Congratulations to Mossy Kelly who today successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled, Ultrafast and intense laser interaction with gases and solids. We wish Mossy all the very best as he pursues his postdoctoral career.

5-08-2013 We welcome Sudharaka Reddy, PhD student of Professor Prem Bisht to DCU for a continuing collaboration on multiphoton spectroscopy and plasmonics. Sudharaka will remain for 3 months. The collaboration is funded under the FP7 EU IRSES programme. It links IITM in Chennai with the ORC in Southampton and DCU.

10-08-2013 Dr. Jiang Xi will join the group of Professor David Bleiner at the University of Bern in Switzerland from October 1^st 2013. We congratulate Jiang Xi and wish her all the very best in this next phase of her postdoctoral career. Her key paper on VUV LIBS can be read here.

12-07-2013 Ben Delaney of DIT has been shortlisted for an Irish Research Council PhD scholarship. Congrats to Ben and we anticipate that all will go well for his being confirmed with the award. Ben will focus on nanoparticle generation in colliding plasmas for LIBS and other light source applications.

10-07-2013 Stephen Davitt will joining the group in September funded by a Science Foundation Ireland research studentship. Stephen will focus on compact Fourier Transform spectrometry for applications in LIBS.

1-07-2013 We welcome Professor Prem Bisht and his PhD student Raman Namboodiri from IIT Madras to DCU for a collaboration on multiphoton spectroscopy and plasmonics. Raman will remain for 2 months. The collaboration is funded under the FP7 EU IRSES programme. It links IITM in Chennai with the ORC in Southampton and DCU.

20-06-2013 Getasew Admasu Wubetu (Ethiopia) and Hu Lu (China) have been confirmed as successful EACEA EMJD EXTATIC doctoral scholarship awardees to join us at DCU in mid September 2013. Getasew will focus on an exploration of colliding femtosecond laser ablation plasma plumes. Hu Lu will focus on single and multiphoton ionization processes in metal atoms and ions. Congratulations to both and we look forward to their joining the group here.

8-05-2013 Sad News: Professor Alan Michette, Kings College London passed away suddenly last night, May 8 2013 following a heart attack. Alan has been a global leader in X-Ray science for more than two decades and a uniting force in that community through his leadership of a number of apposite conferences, EU COST actions, the most recent of which, MP0601, led to the establishment of EXTATIC. His books are world renowned and his loss to EUV and X-Ray physics will be keenly felt in the years to come where we all know he had so much more to contribute. He had been a close friend to many of us in EXTATIC for more than two decades and a collaborator to all of us in EXTATIC since its inception. We express our heartfelt sympathy to Slawka on the loss of her beloved Alan.

1-03-2012 Paddy Hayden has moved to UCD to execute his SFI TIDA project on VUV sources. We wish Paddy well and thank him for his many contributions to our work over the past 5 ½ years. We will continue to collaborate to Paddy during his tenure in UCD.

12-02-2013 We have been awarded a SFI Investigator Programme grant for a study entitled Stagnation Layers in Laser Based Analytical Techniques. The proposal builds on the work of group members Mossy Kelly, Colm Fallon and Nicky Kelly, former members Jiang Xi, Padraig Hough, John Dardis, Hugo de Luna, Jofre Pedregosa, Subhash Singh and Kevin Kavanagh. Special thanks Paddy Hayden, now in UCD, and top-tier collaborators: DCU [Eugene Kennedy and Lampros Nikolopoulos], Purdue [Ahmed Hassanein and Sivanadan Harilal], QUB [Jason Greenwood], XFEL [Michael Meyer] and Applied Spectra [Rick Russo and Jong Yoo].

18-02-2013 A piece by John Holden on the potential applications of X-ray Free Electron Lasers appeared in the Irish Times today. It can be viewed here.

10-12-2012 We have published a paper in Nature Photonics in a collaboration with Adrian Cavalieri, Uni-Hamburg/Max Planck/CFEL on Single Cycle THz Photoelectron Streaking applied to the measurement of EUV and X-ray pulses from FELs with durations in the few fs to few 100fs range. The paper can be viewed here.

1-12-2012 Congratulations to Paddy Hayden who has been awarded a SFI TIDA grant to develop VUV sources for numerous industrial applications. Paddy will move to UCD to carry out this work but will continue to collaborate with us.

6-9-2012 Congratulations to Ms. Jiang Xi who today successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled - Dual-Pulse Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy in the Vacuum Ultraviolet with Ambient Gas: Spectroscopic Analysis and Optimization of Limit of Detection of Carbon and Sulfur in Steel. We wish Jiang Xi all the very best for her future career as Dr. Jiang Xi.

1-9-2012 We say goodbye to intern Conor Hand from NUI-Maynooth who completed a project on femtosecond laser beam focus characterisation using a Ronchi ruled grating technique. We wish Conor well in his final year studies at NUIM. Conor worked in the ultrafast laboratory with Mossy Kelly who conceived the project.

10-6-2012 DCU Schools of Physics and Electronic Engineering and associated NCPST and RINCE centres, in collaboration with the Optics Research Centre in the University of Southampton and the Indian Institutes of Technology in Delhi and Madras have been awarded a FP7 EU-IRSES grant in Ultrafast Photonic Processes and Interactions (UPPI).

8-6-2012 Congrats to Colm Fallon who won a merit award at this years Enterprise Ireland Think Outside the Box awards. Colm, in collaboration with another DCU physics PhD student Conor Coyle, developed a concept, HOWL, that will help people protect their home and valuables from break-ins. Congratulations to Colm and Conor on this important recognition for their innovation.

24-5-2012 Professor Paul Corkum, University of Ottawa & National Research Council of Canada gave an IOP in Ireland seminar at DCU entitled: Attosecond Science: What we learn by transforming many photons into one

21-4-2012 Colm Fallon won this years Best Technology Enabled Solution at the latest Accenture Leaders of Tomorrow Awards. Colm, in collaboration with another DCU physics PhD student Conor Coyle, developed a concept, HOWL, that will help people protect their home and valuables from break-ins. Congratulations to Colm and Conor on this important recognition for their innovation. Click here for details.

29-3-2012 Physics Nobel Laureate Bill Phillips gave two talks at DCU as part of the DCU Nobel Laureate Series sponsored by Magnet Networks. One general public talk concerned Cold Matter and Clocks – the other concerned Science and Religon. His Cold Matter talk can be viewed on AerTV from the Magnet Website.

1-3-2012 John Costello was elected President of the Westland Row CBS Past Pupils Union at the 2012 AGM. The PPU website can be viewed here.

29-2-2012 Subhash Singh has returned to India to continue his work in laser produced plasmas. We wish Subhash and his family well and thank him for his many contributions to the work of the group, which will be published in the coming years.

7-2-2012 Professor Ferenc Krausz of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and LMU in Munich gave an IOP in Ireland seminar at DCU entitled Attosecond Physics: the First Decade.

2-12-2011 Talk on the Erasmus-Mundus Joint Doctorate EXTATIC given at the HEA Information Day 2011 to promote Education and Culture programmes of the DG-EACEA (Erasmus, Erasmus Mundus & Tempus). Download the talk here.

11-11-2011 Read latest Nature Photonics News and Views article: Extreme Ultra-Violet Sources, Higher Harmonics with Plasmonics here

2-11-2011 Lampros Nikolopoulos and Paddy Hayden spoke at the Extreme Matter Institute workshop in GSI Darmstadt on atomic and plasma physics topics respectively

28-07-2011 A proposal entitled 'EXTATIC' or Extreme-ultraviolet and X-ray Technology and Training for Interdisciplinary Cooperation has been selected for funding by the EACEA acting on behalf of the EC. The proposal was led by DCU and the objective is to establish a joint European PhD programme in EUV and X-ray Science and Technology. Only 10 proposals from over 140 submitted by consortia from across Europe were selected for funding. Although three existing EMJD programmes have Irish partners, this is the first time that one has been awarded with an Irish lead institution

Partners include:

University College Dublin, Kings College London, The University of Southampton, Czech Technical University-Prague, The University of Padua, The Military University of Warsaw and RWTH-Aachen University

Associated university partners include:

Colorado State University (USA), Purdue University (USA) and Tongji University (China)

Current associated industry partners include:

Silson (UK), Prevac (Poland), XENOCS (France), EPPRA (France), Rigaku Innovative Technologies (Prague) and Bruker (Germany)

24-7-2011 The inaugural I-SWAMP Satellite of ICPEAC took place in the Crowne Plaza Hotel (Santry, DUBLIN), July 21-23, 2011. I-SWAMP is the acronym for Intense-field Short Wavelength Atomic and Molecular Processes. Details at http://www.physics.dcu.ie/~I-SWAMP .

15-7-2011 Julien Witz, Ecole Polytechnique has joined the group for 6 weeks as a research intern. He will work on emission and absorption spectroscopy of Gd and Tb plasmas in the vicinity of the future generation 6.X nm wavelength.

12-7-2011 Lampros Nikolopoulos and collaborators in IESL, Crete and MPQ, Garching have published a paper in Nature Physics entitled - Extreme-ultraviolet pump–probe studies of one-femtosecond-scale electron dynamics- http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nphys2033.html

4-7-2011 Nicky Walsh, Lynam Medal winner (2010) and ISA best project winner (2010) has joined the group to pursue a PhD in ultrafast laser-matter interactions under the supervision of Lampros Nikolopoulos, Stephen Daniels and John Costello.

16-5-2011 John Costello, Paddy Hayden and Eugene Kennedy at DCU, Pranawa Deshmukh at IIT Madras and Hari Varma at IIT Mandi have been awarded a DST-Ireland grant to work on EUVL spectroscopy at the 6.X nm wavelength, focussing especially on opacity effects - http://www.dcu.ie/news/2011/may/s0511r.shtml

27-4-2011 Lampros Nikolopoulos and Ken Taylor organised a Workshop on Methods and Codes for Atoms and Molecules in Strong Laser Fields, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dublin, 27-30 April 2011. Details can viewed at http://www.physics.dcu.ie/~damot

28-3-2011 Dr. Paris Tzallas from IESL, FORTH, Heraklion gave a seminar today on pump-probe experiments with isolated attosecond XUV pulses.

24-3-2011 Profs. Miles Pagett (Glasgow) and David Birch (Strathclyde) will deliver seminars here on 24 and 25 March.

20-3-2011 Dr Will Bryan has been awarded a DCU International Visiting Fellowship. He and his group will carry out pulse compression, HHG and molecular dynamics experiments at DCU in collaboration with us.

18-3-2011 Congratulations to Vincent Richardson who has obtained a position with INTEL (Ireland). We wish Vincent well in his new position.

16-3-2011 A HEA PRTLI-5 proposal led by the INSPIRE Consortium and coordinated by Jim Greer (Tyndall, UCC) to set up a national graduate programme in nanoscience has been successful. The DCU members include Co-Is John Costello and Liam Barry and colleagues in the NCPST and RINCE here.

10-2-2011 Brian Sheehy, OCLARO (Switzerland) has begun a research M.Eng with Liam Barry and John Costello on high power laser diode characterisation. We wish Brian well in his industry-academic research programme. His mentor at OCLARO is Dr. Rainer Baettig.

8-2-2011 The inaugural I-SWAMP Satellite of ICPEAC will take place in the Crowne Plaza Hotel (Santry), July 21-23, 2011. I-SWAMP is the acronym for Intense-field Short Wavelength Atomic and Molecular Physics. If you work in EUV/X-ray Attosecond or FEL AMO Physics you should not miss this event !!! Abstracts in related areas involving intense UV laser fields may be acceptable. Registration and abstract submission will open soon on http://www.physics.dcu.ie/~I-SWAMP

7-2-2011 Prof. Ferenc Krausz, Director of MPQ, Garching (Munich) will be at DCU on March 14^th to deliver an IOP in Ireland lecture. He will also speak in UCC and QUB. The DCU contact for this event is my colleague Dr. Lampros Nikolopoulos (lampros.nikolopoulos@dcu.ie)

7-2-2011 Thomas Butler from AP3 has joined us an INTRA Intern. Thomas will work with Mossy Kelly on femtosecond laser pulse characterisation and maniplulation.

28-1-2011 Congratulations to Brian Doohan who has passed the MSc by Research examination and will graduate with Vincent Richardson at the Spring 2011 conferring. We wish Brian well in the PhD in computational that he will pursue in UCD.

21-1-2011 Congratulations to Vincent Richardson who successfully defended his PhD thesis today –we wish him well in his future career and thank him for his great work on EUV FEL interactions with atoms.

4-1-2011 John Costello has joined the Editorial Board of the Journal of Modern Optics (JMO).

26-10-2010 Professor Steven Chu, Nobel Laureate and Energy Secretary in the Obama administration will give talk at DCU on November 6^th, 2010. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize with Bill Phillips (who spoke here in 2002) and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji for laser cooling of atoms, a breakthrough that led to the formation of atomic Bose-Eistein Condensates (BEC) for which Wolfgang Ketterle (who also spoke here in 2002), Eric Cornell and Carl Weiman were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001.

2/10/2010 Ricarda Laasch has returned to the University of Hamburg to complete her Diploma studies. We wish Ricarda well and thank her for her work on optical imaging and spectroscopy, especially of sulphur.

14/9/2010 A symposium in honour of Eugene Kennedy on the occasion of his retirement will be held on Friday, September 17 at DCU. Speakers include former collaborators such as Bernd Sonntag (Hamburg), Tom Morgan (Wesleyan, CT, USA) and Gerry O Sullivan (UCD). Eugene has been elected Emeritus Professor of Physics at DCU. Attendees from other Irish and international institutes will participate in this celebration of Eugene’s distinguished academic career.

8/9/2010 Nadia Gambino has returned to The University of Catania to complete her thesis. We wish Nadia well and every success in this task.

30/5/2010 Dr. Padraig Hough has joined Google. We wish Padraig well in his new career and have no doubt that he will be a leading player in Google within a very short period of time.

6/4/2010 Ms. Ricarda Laasch from the University of Hamburg has joined us for 6 months to work on nanosecond time-resolved EUV spectroscopy of laser produced plasmas and picosecond optical spectroscopy of plasmas formed by intense femtosecond laser pulses.

29/3/2010 Congratulations to Padraig Hough who graduated PhD at the Spring Conferring on Saturday last. We thank Padraig for his many excellent contributions and wish him well in his future career.

1/3/2010 Ms. Nadia Gambino, PhD student from the University of Catania, has joined us for 4 months to work on ion generation and diagnostics in colliding laser-produced plasmas.

4/2/2010 John Dardis has joined Coherent Inc. (Scotland). We thank John for his excellent work with us and wish him the best in his new career in industry.

15/1/2010 Congratulations to Padraig Hough who successfully defended his PhD thesis on multiple diagnostics of colliding laser produced plasmas.

12/1/2010 The Greenwood-Williams group from QUB comprising Chris Calvert, Orla Kelly, John Alexander, Martin Duffy and interns Louise Belshaw/Thomas Marshall, is visiting for the next few months to make measurements on femtosecond laser dissociation of biomolecules in their KEIRA ion trap.

16/12/2009 Dr. Subhash Singh has begun his IRCSET funded fellowship. Subhash will spend two years with us working on the interaction of short (ns/ps) and ultrashort (fs) laser pulses with plasmas formed on shaped and structured targets with a specific interest in high harmonic generation.

7/12/2009 Dr. Jason Greenwood (QUB) and his group are beginning experiments with us on ultrafast laser dissociation of biomolecules in their ion trap KEIRA this week.

1/12/2009 Dr. Sivandan S Harilal, Assoc. Research Professor at Purdue University, USA visitied this week to carry out experiments with us on spectroscopic imaging of interpenetrating dissimilar plasmas.

12/10/2009 Padraig Hough have been invited by the COLA 2009 conference organisers to give a talk based on his submitted abstract. Paddy Hayden and Jiang Xi will also attend COLA 2009 to present a talk (PHa) and poster (JXi).

24/9/2009 Professor Klaus Muller-Dethlefs, Director Photon Science Institute at Manchester University visited to deliver a seminar entitled: ZEKE Rydbergs in a crowd: An ultra-cold, long lifetime, strongly-coupled molecular Rydberg plasma.

17/8/2009 John Dardis has joined the commissioning team for the AMO end-station at the LCLS X-ray FEL in Stanford. The team is led by John Bozek and Christoph Bostedt. Mossy Kelly joins the team 31/8/2009 for the final three weeks of commissioning.

4/8/2009 Subhash Singh (the Allahabad University, India) will join us in November 2009. Subhash won an IRCSET Empower postdoctoral fellowship. We wish Subhash well during his two years with us during which he will study the interaction of ultrafast lasers with plasmas and especially the resulting high harmonics.

14/7/2009 Congratulations to John Dardis who successfully defended his PhD thesis today. He will graduate in autumn 2009. We wish John well in his future career and thank him for the many contributions and successes in colliding plasmas and EUV FEL matter interactions that he brought to the group. Go n’eiri and bothair leat.

6/7/2009 Dr. Manolis Benis from the IESL, FORTH, Heraklion, Crete is visiting Lampros Nikolopoulos this week. He will discuss collaboration and deliver a seminar entitled Case studies in metrology and exploitation of ultra-short VUV/EUV pulses

12/5/2009 Rashida Jafer from the group of Dimitri Batani in Milan visited us for a week.

6/5/2009 PEARL – Physics at EBITs and Advanced Research Light Sources - WWW.PEARL2009.ORG - Dublin, DCU, May 6 – 10, 2009 is now over. We thank all 30 invited speakers, the session chairs and 120 participants from 16 countries for making it a great success.

2/4/2009 Prof. Klaus Molmer, Director, Lundbeck Foundation Theoretical Center for Quantum System Research (LTC) and Director, Center for Theory in Natural Sciences (CTN), Aarhus University visited to give a seminar entitled - Quantum Computing - how far have we come, and where will we end ?.

5/3/2009 Dr. Klaus Mann, Head of The Short Wavelength Optics Dept. of the Laser Laboratorium at Gottingen visited to deliver a seminar on VUV/EUV sources for nano-structuring and NEXAFS.

3/3/2009 Dr. Sivandan S Harilal, Assoc. Research Professor at Purdue University visited the laboratory for discussions on current results and preparations for the next step DCU-Purdue research student exchanges and joint experiments at DCU on EUV imaging and spectroscopy of colliding plasmas.

16/02/2009 Stephen Lawless (DCU Year 3 undergraduate) will join us as an INTRA Intern to work on a supercontinuum radiation demonstration experiment.

17/01/2009 Caroline Banahan has defended her PhD thesis and will be conferred in the upcoming spring ceremony. Congratulations to Caroline.

13/01/2009 A collaboration involving Stefan Diesterer/Thomas Tschentscher (DESY), Michael Meyer (Orsay), Reinhard Kienberger (MPI-Q, Garching) and the DCU group have been awarded beamtime on the new X-ray FEL called LCLS at Stanford. Experiments on X-ray and NIR cross correlation will be undertaken during two beamtime periods in late summer and autumn 2009. Our collaboration will join a US sponsored collaboration with common interests at XFELs that includes John Bozek (LCLS) and Pierre Agostini/Louis diMauro (Ohio State).

24/11/2008 Dr. Lampros Nikolopoulos takes up his appointment as SFI Stokes Lecturer in Physics in January 2009. Lampros is a leading figure in attosecond physics and the interaction of intense XUV and X-ray FEL radiation with small quantum systems. We wish Lampros every success as he builds his teaching and research activity as well as his group at DCU.

13/11/2008 Dr. Josef Feldhaus, Hasylab, DESY, Germany delivers a seminar on FLASH, the DESY EUV FEL

11/11/2008 Prof. Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna, delivers a public lecture on Quantum Puzzles and Future Information Technologies today – click here for details

9/11/2008 Dr. Sivanandan Harilal, Research Professor at Purdue University, USA and DCU International Visiting Fellow is with us this week working on pinhole EUV imaging of colliding plasmas.

7/11/2008 Prof. Franco Cacialli, University College London, delivers a seminar on organic semiconductors.

6/11/2008 Dr. Bill Brockelsby from the Optics Research Centre in the University of Southampton delivers a seminar on high order harmonic generation (HOHG) with femtosecond lasers

25/9/2008 Mossy Kelly has been awarded and IRCSET Embark Fellowship to study atomistic systems in multicolour laser fields. Mossy started 1/10/2008.

25/9/2008 Colm Fallon has joined us to study spectra of highly charged ions in laser produced plasmas (at DCU) and EBITs (at Fudan). He was awarded a FAS bursary to enable him to undertake the China phase of his studies. Colm started 1/10/2008.

11/9/2008 UCD (Gerry O Sullivan), TCD (James Lunney) and DCU (John Costello) have been awarded a SFI Principal Investigator grant to research and deliver novel solutions for high flux 13.5 nm light source for EUV lithography.

20/8/2008 Deirdre Kilbane and Stephen Chaney were presented with the SFI STARs certificates by Minister Jimmy Devins TD at the Science Gallery in Dublin. Download photo here. Deirdre appeared in the Irish Independent and Examiner newspapers (21/8/2008)

21/7/2008 Coherent Inc. will optimise the amplifier system and add 2^nd and 3^rd harmonic beamlines along with a tuneable OPA system (OperaSOLO) this week. Hamamatsu will install a synchroscan UV – NIR streak camera plus optical spectrometer.

14/7/2008 Dr. Takeushi Kobayashi will join the School as a Lecturer in Physics on August 1^st 2008. His specialty is photonic materials and devices.

14/7/2008 Coherent Inc. are installing a KHz amplified femtosecond laser system this week (pulse energy up to 3.5 mJ in ~ 30 fs).

7/7/2008 DCU International Visiting Fellow and collaborator Dr. Sivanadan Harilal of Prism Computational (formerly UCSD and Argonne Natl Labs) has been appointed Research Professor at Purdue University. Congratulations to Hari and we wish him well in this role.

2/6/2008 Dr. Deirdre Kilbane and Mr. Stephen Chaney have joined us as SFI STARs for the summer. Dee will work on modular interferometer design and Stephen will work on modular spectrometer design.

2/6/2008 Dr. Douglas Reid and Dr. Sateesh Krishnamurty have joined the DCU Nanoteire node as research officers. Doug will concentrate on high speed/ultrafast photonics and Sateesh will concentrate on photonic materials.

25/5/2008 Former postdoc Dr. Jofre Pedregosa has also been appointed Lecturer (Maitre de Conference) at Universite de Provence (Marseilles). Many congratulations to Jofre on this achievement and we wish him all the very best for his future career in Marseilles.

2/5/2008 Former postdoc Dr. Hugo de Luna has been appointed Lecturer at the Federal Fluminense University in Rio de Janeiro. Many congratulations to Hugo and we wish him all the very best for his future career back home in Rio.

25/4/2008 Deirdre Kilbane (Teacher at Our Ladys, Terenure, Dublin) and Stephen Chaney (Teacher at the Community School, Athboy, Co. Meath) have won SFI STAR awards to work with us during the summer on interferometry and spectrometry

24/4/2008 John Tisch of Imperial College London delivered a seminar on Attosecond Dynamic Imaging

10/2/2008 The main equipment for the new Ultrafast Laser laboratory, funded under HEA PRTLI IV (NANOTEIRE), has been ordered. Works on the laboratory should be complete by May 2008 and first test experiments should begin in June 2008. The laboratory is part of a collaboration between the Schools of Physics and Electronic Engineering/ associated research centres - NCPST and RINCE.

14/12/2007 Jiang Xi from Wuhan University (China) has begun her PhD studies with us. We wish her success over the next few years at DCU.

20/10/2007 Michael Meyer is visiting under the Ulysses France-Ireland Exchange Programme for joint experiments (planning) with Vincent Richardson (joint PhD student) and research article manuscript completion with analysis from John Dardis.

10/10/2007 Jiang Xi (Juliet) from Wuhan University (China) has been awarded an IRCSET Embark Scholarship to pursue a PhD in Vacuum-UV Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) with Eugene Kennedy and John Costello as joint supervisors. Juliet should be with us at DCU by early 2008.

01/10/2007 Vincent Richardson has begun his PhD studies funded by the IRCSET Embark Scholarship Scheme to pursue a PhD in 2-Colour Photoionization studies using laser plasma sources at DCU, the Soleil Synchrotron at Orsay and the FEL at DESY-Hamburg. John Costello and Michael Meyer (CNRS, LIXAM, Orsay) will act as joint supervisors.

20/08/2007 The NCPST (in collaboration with RINCE) has secured E2.4M in funding in the recent HEA PRTLI Phase 4 competition. E1.8M will be used to make a significant investment in ultrafast photonic equipment in both centres. The investment will underpin the photonics/nanotechnology theme of the NCPST research plan. The remainder of the funds will be used to recruit two high level research officers with experience in high speed photonics and ultrafast laser systems. The proposal was part of a national bid entitled NANOSCIENCE AND NANO-SCALE TECHNOLOGIES FOR IRELAND (NANOTEIRE) and comprises seven partners, DCU, TCD, UCD, NUIG, UL, DIT and CIT. The proposal team comprised John Costello, Enda McGlynn and Jean-Paul Mosnier of the NCPST and Liam Barry, Pascal Landais and Paddy McNally of RINCE. The overall DCU bid of E23M for biopharma, biophotonics and nanophotonics was coordinated by our group colleague and Vice President (Research), Eugene Kennedy.

19/08/2007 Michael Meyer, LIXAM, Univ. Paris Sud, Orsay is currently visiting under the Ulysses France-Ireland Exchange Programme.

1/08/2007 Paddy Hayden has started working with us on colliding plasma EUVL funded by IRCSET Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme.

1/08/2007 Vincent Richardson has joined us as an RA for August. He will return in October as a PhD student in atomic and molecular physics.

4/07/2007 Sivanandan Harilal, Argonne Natl Labs and UCSD, DCU International Visiting Fellow, is currently working with us on interferometric and shadowgraphic plasma diagnostics.

5/06/2007 Paddy Hayden has been awarded an IRCSET Postdoctoral Fellowship in EUV Lithography (only 55 awarded annually across all SET from almost 1000 applications).

5/06/2007 Jofre Pedregosa has also been awarded an IRCSET Postdoctoral Fellowship in two colour photoionization studies. he has also been offered (and accepted) a position at Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, a collaboraion of the Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Normale Superiere and Universite Pierre et Marie Curie. We thank Jofre for contribution to our DCU colliding plasmas programme wish him and his wife Alice Delserieys our very best wishes for a happy life together in Paris and are sure that they will both personally and scientifically prosper greatly in Paris.

2/06/2007 Lynn Gaynor has left us to pursue a career as a hospital physicist. We wish Lynn every success in the future and thank her for many contributions during her few months with us.

2/05/2007 Boris Chichkov, Laser Centre Hannover, is visiting us and will deliver a NCPST series seminar on laser micro/nano-machining.

2/05/2007 Deirdre Kilbane has been awarded a SFI STAR fellowship to work on optical interferometry of colliding plasmas. The SFI STAR programme permits secondary school teachers to use research as a platform for bringing their specialism to life for high school students.

10/04/2007 Mossy Kelly (AP3) has been awarded a SFI UREKA summer placement scholarship to work on image processing for colliding plasma experiments.

03/04/2007 Vincent Richardson has been awarded an IRCSET Embark PhD Scholarship 2007-2010 to work on photoionization of atoms and molecules in weak and intense EUV fields. He will be jointly supervised by Dr. Michael Meyer (LIXAM, Univ Paris Sud, Orsay) and myself.

10/02/2007 Lynn Gaynor has joined DCU NCPST as a postdoctoral fellow to work the photoionization of atoms and ions with Paul van Kampen, Caroline Banahan and myself. We wish Lynn a successful time with us.

01/02/2007 Kevin Kavanagh has left to set up his own business. We wish Kevin all the very best and great success in this new (ad)venture. We thank him for his many outstanding contribution both as a PhD student and a postdoctoral fellow and his legacy will live long in the group’s colliding plasmas programme.

01/12/2006 A New EU COST Action MP0601 (39) - Short Wavelength Laboratory Sources has been approved in Brussels recently. Led by Prof. Alan Michette of Kings College London, we are co-proposers in this action. John Costello (DCU) and Gerry O’Sullivan (UCD) are the National Delegates for this Action.

29/11/2006 Hugo de Luna has returned to Brasil after two very successful years with us in which he worked in colliding plasmas at DCU and in FEL-atom interactions, synchrotron-ion interactions and collisions physics in Hamburg, Aarhus and Belfast respectively. We wish Hugo, Thais and their baby of 2 months (Vivian) all the best for their future. We will continue to collaborate with Hugo.

02/10/2006 Congratulations to John Dardis who won first prize at the QuAMP III conference in Durham for his poster on Imaging and Spectroscopy of Collisions Between Hot Dense Plasmas. He was also part of the team that won first prize in the Ideas Factory competition.

15/09/2006 Kevin Kavanagh has successfully defended his PhD thesis work on Colliding Laser Produced Plasmas. Congratulations to Kevin who will graduate on Nov 6^th. In the interim he will work with us a postdoctoral fellow fitting his radiative transfer model to colliding plasma spectra to extract useful plasma parameters.

6/09/2006 Irina Haar has returned to Kassel to continue her studies. We wish her well for the future and thank her for her work there.

1/09/2006 Padraig Hough has joined us to pursue a PhD in colliding plasmas, specifically optical diagnostics and control of stagnation layers as beam sources.

29/08/2006 On foot of his abstract submitted to the HCI2006 conference in Belfast, John Dardis has been invited to give a talk on Colliding Plasmas

22/08/2006 During a recent run at the Hamburg FEL, the FLASH team managed to obtain pulse energies in excess of 100 microjoule at the EUVL wavelength of 13.5 nm. As members of the LIXAM/ IRCEP/ DESY/ NCPST photon diagnostics team, we measured high fluxes at the 3^rd and 5^th harmonics at 4.5nm and 2.7 nm in the water window. The press release can be found here.

14/06/2006 Irina Haar from University of Kassel, Germany has joined us as a summer student. Irina will work on Controlled Self Absorption at VUV Wavelengths in Laser Plasma Spectra

16/05/2006 Padraig Hough has won an IRCSET PhD scholarship and will join us later in the summer to begin work on colliding plasma plumes

10/04/2006 John Costello and Jean Paul Mosnier have been awarded a SFI Research Frontiers Basic Research Award to investigate laser plasma stagnation layers as atomic, molecular and cluster sources.

01/04/2006 Alice Delserieys has joined as a visiting Marie Curie Fellow from the PLIP division of QUB to work on EUV spectrometry for the DESY FEL (now known as FLASH) and also on Thompson scattering.

03/03/2006 Congratulations to Mark Stapleton on his recent marriage to Sarah. We wish them both the very best of good things for their future together

14/02/2006 John Costello has been elected a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the International Centre for Experimental Physics (IRCEP) at Queens University Belfast

01/02/2006 Jofre Pedrogosa has joined us from Queens University Belfast to work on experiment and modelling in colliding plasmas. Jofre has worked on ultrafast laser ion interactions and ion trapping for his PhD with Jason Greenwood at QUB

15/01/2006 Dr. Mark Stapleton has left to join INTEL. We wish Mark all the best in his new career. He will remain and Associate Group Member and work on plasma modelling (in his spare time).

3/01/2006 Floralice Miroiu has returned to Bucharest to continue her studies on PLD of bioceramic materials under the direction of Prof. Ion Mihailescu. We wish Floralice continued success in her work.

10/12/2005 John Costello has accepted an invitation to join the International Advisory Board of the Photon Science Institute at the University of Manchester

21/11/2005 Postdoctoral position. Application deadline; Dec 9^th, 2005. Candidates must have published their thesis work in journals of the highest international quality in atomic and/or plasma physics i.e., Phys.Rev.Lett, JPB, PRA, PRE, Appl.Phys. Lett, JAP etc. Details here.

POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED

15/10/2005 John Costello has accepted an invitation to join the UK EPSRC Peer Review College, Jan 2006 – Dec 2009.

8/10/2005 Barry Foy will work with us on subcutaneous imaging and spectroscopy with polarised light for his final year project dissertation

26/09/2005 Domenico Doria, MC Student returned to Univ. Lecce on Sept 30^th. We wish ‘Nico’ well in his continuing studies on laser plasmas as ion sources and will miss his contributions to our work here and also watching him tackle pints of Irish beer

24/09/2005 Hugo de Luna and John Costello delivered part of the PG Course on Collisions Physics at the 2^nd QuAMP conference in Milton Keynes, 19 – 23 Sept 2005. Download course notes (5 MB pdf file) here

09/09/2005 Floralice Marimona Miroiu, National Institute for Lasers, Bucharest-Magurele has joined us as a Marie Curie Pre-doctoral Fellow for 4 months . Floralice will work on spectroscopic diagnostics of laser plasmas of biocompatible materials

23/08/2005 Hugo de Luna, Pat Yeates, John Costello and Philip Orr (QUB) collaborated on the first experiments on 2 photon (optical + eXtreme-UV) driven photoelectron spectroscopy at the Hasylab EUV FEL in the II-2002-037 collaboration with Michael Meyer (Orsay, Project PI), Paul Radcliffe (DESY) and Stefan Dusterer (DESY)

9/08/2005 The 37^th EGAS conference is now over but the website is still live and you can download the electronic book abstracts, see the conference photogallery etc. here. The 38^th EGAS will take place on the island of Ischia (access from Naples) in June 2004.

09/06/2005 John Costello has been appointed Associate Professor of Physics at Dublin City University

04/04/2005 Domenico Doria, Univ. Lecce has joined us as a Marie Curie Pre-doctoral Fellow for 6 months. He will work with us in laser plasma spectroscopy in the Vis-IR and VUV with a view to characterising early phase laser target interactions.

02/03/2005 Dr. Rafael Mayo, Universita Complutense Madrid, is visiting scientist with us, 2 to 11 March 2005. Rafale is working with Deirdre Kilbane on EUV Photoabsorption of Mn3+ ions and with Caroline Banahan on EUV Photoabsorption of Cr2+ ions.

01/02/2005 Dr. Mark Stapleton has joined us as a Postdoctoral Fellow working on multifluid (colliding laser plasma) simulation. We welcome Mark back from Australia and wish him a happy and fruitful time with us.

10/01/2005 Dr. Deirdre Kilbane’s paper on 3p-subshell (sCK) excitation in Mn2+ has been chosen by IOPP for inclusion in IOP Select, see D Kilbane, E T Kennedy, J-P Mosnier, P van Kampen and J T Costello, J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. Vol 38 L1 (2005)

01/01/2005 Eugene Kennedy has been appointed Vice President for Research at DCU. We wish him well in this key role. John Costello assumes the headship of the school of physical sciences from Dec 1^st, 2004.

01/10/2004 Dr. Hugo de Luna, PUC, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil has joined as an EU FP6 Marie Curie Incoming International Fellow . Such Fellowships are highly competitive with only 8% of world-wide applicants winning one of these prestigious awards. Hugo will spend two years at in the NCPST and brings expertise in collisions physics to our laser plasma interactions research.

01/9/2004 John Dardis has joined the group to pursue a PhD in optical and x-ray probing of plasma plumes both freely expanding and colliding with surfaces. John gained a 1^st class honours degree and won the Fryar medal for his final year project.

01/08/2004 Philip Orr, PhD student with Jason Greenwood at Queens University Belfast, is working on fast pulse detection at X-ray and VUV photon energies. His visit will be funded under the HEA North-South exchange programme which links the NCPST (DCU) and IRCEP (QUB).

01/07/2004 Paper resulting from a QUB, DCU, MPI Heidelberg collaboration has been selected for inclusion in the AIP/APS Virtual Journal of Ultrafast Science. See J Pedregosa-Gutierrez, P A Orr, J B Greenwood, A Murphy, J T Costello, K Zrost, T Ergler, R Moshammer and J Ullrich, Phys. Rev. Lett Vol 93, Art. No. 223001 (2004)

2003

01/07/2004 DCU (Costello and Kennedy) will partner LURE (Meyer) and DESY-Hasylab (Feldhaus et al) in one of the three first test (T) projects on VUV-IR pulse synchronisation using photoelectron heterodyning at the DESY SASE VUV FEL, early 2005. A scientific project on VUV laser atom/ molecule interactions will follow later in 2005. The projects are coordinated by Michael Meyer, LURE, Paris.

Prof. Viktor Sukhorukov (Rostov on Don) visited during 13 – 21 Aug, 2004 to complete work on N-shell absorption in Y³⁺ ions.

Nely Parvanova has completed her term as a Marie Curie training site Fellow at the NCPST and has returned to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Nely worked on coherence in the steady state and transient optogalvanic effect. We wish Nely every happiness and success in the future .

Kevin Kavanagh has been invited to present his work on VUV Photoabsorption Imaging of Colliding Plasmas as a talk at the VUV14 conference. Oral presentations were by invitation only. Approximately 5% or so of the contributed abstracts were selected for the International Programme Committee for such invitations.

Caroline Banahan has joined the the CLPR to work on a 2 colour photoionization of atoms and ions experiment. Caroline gained a 1 st class degree in applied physics and 1^st place in physics at DCU. She will work with Paul van Kampen (1^st supervisor), John Costello (2^nd supervisor) and Deirdre Kilbane (PD). We wish Caroline well and hope that she has a fruitful few years with us.

John Costello has been successful in the recent SFI / IRCSET Basic Research Grants Competition. The three-year project will begin in October 2004. He will be seeking to recruit a pre-doctoral research student to begin studies at the beginning of Q4/2004 and a postdoctoral fellow between Q2 and Q4 of 2005.

Mr. Michal Novotny, Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic has joined the NCPST as a Marie Curie training site Fellow. We welcome Michal to DCU. Ms. Nely Parvanova from the group of Prof.Dr. Dimo Zhechv, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Inst. Of Solid State Physics continues as a MC Fellow in optogalvanic plasma spectroscopy.

Mr. Adrian Murphy has completed a research visit to the Max Planck Institut fur Kernphysik, Heidelberg where he was part of the Jason Greenwood (QUB) intense laser-negative ions collaboration.

Dr. Deirdre Kilbane has joined Paul van Kampen and John Costello to work on a 2-colour photoionization project funded by IRCSET. We wish Deirdre well at the NCPST.

John Hirsch has left to take up a position in EUV Technology at Exitech (UK) Ltd. John made many valuable and important contributions during his time as a doctoral student and postdoctoral fellow here for which we are very grateful. We wish him, Vanessa and baby Julia all the best in their new life in Oxford.

The winter meeting of the IOP - Atomic and Molecular Interactions Group (AMIG) took place here in DCU, Jan 12 – 14, 2004. The theme of the conference was ‘atoms, ions, molecules and their interactions’. See http://www.physics.dcu.ie/~amig . See the groups page of the IOP website for information on AMIG. If oyu are an active researcher in atomic and/or molecular physics please join IOP and the AMIG group – Join IOP and the AMI Group. You and your discipline count !!!!

John Costello has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

The Minister for Education, Mr. Noel Dempsey, T.D., has announced that the NCPST (DCU) and IRCEP (QUB) have been awarded a HEA Strand 1 North-South research grant. The award, made following a highly competitive process, will run for 3 years and help strengthen existing collaborations in laser-atom / plasma physics between the centres by enabling significant exchange of personnel between four well fefined projects. Miles Turner (NCPST) and Bill Graham (IRCEP) will manage the grant. Miles, Bert Ellingboe and John Costello will co-ordinate the four underpinning projects for NCPST. Ciaran Lewis, Jason Greenwood and Bill graham will co-ordinate the four projects for IRCEP. 20 other such awards were made across the sciences, humanities and business groups in DCU, QUB, UU, UL, TCD, UCD & UCC.

John Hirsch’s main Ph.D. paper (J Hirsch et al., Rev.Sci.Instrum. 74, 2992 (2003)) has been selected for inclusion in the June edition APS virtual journal of ultrafast science (http://www.vjultrafast.org).