17 May 1962 in Mór, Hungary
Married, Two Children
Director at MPQ
Chair of Experimental Physics at LMU
Studied Electrical Engineering and
Theoretical Physics (Budapest)
PhD in Laser Physics (Vienna)
Field of Research:
Laser Science and Technology,
Attosecond Physics
Ferenc Krausz grew up in Mór, a small town in the west of Hungary. Already at high school he developed a passion for the electrons running back and forth between the ends of the 15?m-long radio antenna wired to his self-built radio, just as for solving the physics problems published monthly in KöMaL (Középiskolai Matematika és Fizikai Lapok).
These passions led him to study Electrical Engineering and Physics in Budapest, where he became fascinated by ultrahigh-frequency »radio antennas« – lasers. This fascination was deepened during his PhD studies and subsequent years spent in Vienna under the guidance of Prof. Arnold
Schmidt, directing his attention to the generation and application of ever-shorter flashes of laser light, onto a path he has been pursuing ever since. The 17 memorable years in Vienna culminated in the birth of his two daughters, Anita and Martina, and in the generation and measurement of the first attosecond pulses in 2001. Three years later he joined the MPQ and the LMU in Munich, Germany, which offered him unparalleled opportunities for advancing the field he started in Vienna.
His research has been motivated by curiosity and fascination with phenomena that occur within the smallest dimensions of space and time, yet have a
profound impact on our lives: electrons moving inside molecules and nano-circuits, furnishing us with the capability of vision, and making computers work. His passion for capturing electrons is now extending to using ultrashort-pulsed light for the early detection of cancer. Thanks to the immeasurable support of his wife, Angela, he can be fully devoted to his job. New discoveries still make him feel happy like a child, as they have done from the very beginning, but what he is most proud of are the wonderful colleagues that have chosen to work with him. This website came into being — not least — to pay tribute to them.
Ferenc’s research is guided by some grand questions and goals, requiring extension of the frontiers of femtosecond and attosecond science (for more details please visit attoworld.de).
Electrons in motion: How do electronic motions in chemical bonds initiate fundamental biological processes in living organisms? Can these processes, most of which are vital and some of which are life-threatening, be captured, visualized, and understood by attosecond diffraction imaging?
Electric current is being switched on and off within a fraction of a nanosecond in contemporary signal processing. Can electrons be controlled a hundred thousand times faster, without excessive heat development, in light-driven, solid-state structures, in order to enable light wave electronics?
The controlled electric force of multi-octave (visible-infrared) light transients show potential for the generation of attosecond X-ray pulses, providing real-time insight into motions in complex systems, and …
… for exploring the ultimate frontiers of solid-state electronics and the routes to advancing signal processing from microwave to light wave frequencies.
Early cancer detection with lasers: Molecular constituents and products of cancerous cells enter the body’s circulation at an early stage of tumor development, well before metastases emerge. Can low concentrations of such cancer markers be reliably detected in blood and/or breath by femtosecond molecular vibrational spectroscopy, for early detection and subsequent therapy monitoring?
Femtosecond pulses of multi-octave infrared light and complete waveform measurements show potential for sensing molecules via their vibrational “fingerprint” at unprecedented concentration levels, which could open the door for early cancer detection.
 | Arnold Schmidt |
 | Károly Simonyi |
 | György Marx |
 | József Bakos |
 | Alexander Apolonskiy |
 | Peter Baum |
 | Hanieh Fattahi |
 | Nicholas Karpowicz |
 | Zsuzsanna Major |
 | Volodymyr Pervak |
 | Ioachim Pupeza |
 | Oleg Pronin |
 | Martin Schultze |
 | Vladislav Yakovlev |
 | Mihaela Žigman |
 | Matthias Uiberacker |
 | Andreas Stingl |
 | Christian Spielmann |
 | Julia Mikhailova |
 | Thomas Metzger |
 | Michael Hentschel |
 | Thomas Brabec |
 | Andrius Baltuska |
 | László Veisz |
 | Matthias Kling |
 | Mark Stockman |
 | Reinhard Kienberger |
 | Stefan Karsch |
 | Eleftherios Goulielmakis |
 | Ulf Kleineberg |
 | Ulrich Heinzmann |
 | Theodor Hänsch |
 | Markus Drescher |
 | Paul Corkum |
 | Joachim Burgdörfer |
 | Abdallah Azzeer |
Initiated the first attosecond laboratory in the Arabic world and a new collaboration with Ferenc’s group aiming at the use of infrared lasers for early cancer detection
Measured the evolution of the carrier-envelope phase in a mode-locked laser for the first time, develops femtosecond infrared techniques for medical applications
Demonstrated the first femtosecond laser using chirped mirrors for dispersion control and advanced this laser to the #1 femtosecond titanium-sapphire oscillator of the world (Rainbow)
Generated the first controlled light waveforms (in Vienna) and initial efforts towards their optical parametric amplification (in Garching); explores attosecond phenomena with mid-infrared light
His long-standing mentorship and guidance at the Vienna University of Technology had the greatest impact on Ferenc’s scientific career.
Pioneered the generation of few-cycle pulses and their use for XUV continuum generation as a forerunner for isolated attosecond pulse generation
Measured light-field oscillations and synthesized sub-fs optical transients for the first time; uses them for attosecond control of ionization and bound electron dynamics
His unforgettable basic courses in physics at Eötvös Lóránd University fundamentally shaped Ferenc’s insight into the way physics can help us understand the working of nature.
Conceived and tested the basic concepts, system components, and architecture of third-generation femtosecond technology; pursues its proof-of-principle demonstration
Demonstrated ultrahigh-average-power (>100 kW) fs pulses, advanced coherent XUV and MIR sources to unprecedented performance levels; develops a novel MIR fs spectroscopy technique
Pioneered theoretical modelling of attosecond electron processes, including, among others, a delay in photoemission
Ferenc’s diploma thesis work on picosecond laser pulse measurement, supervised by Prof. Bakos and his coworker Dr. Tibor Juhász at the Budapest University of Technology, granted Ferenc his first encounters with lasers in 1985.
Explored (theoretically and experimentally) novel routes to generating powerful attosecond pulses from relativistic interaction
His illuminating lectures on electromagnetism and electron physics at Budapest University of Technology made Ferenc decide to devote his life to research on electrons and light.
Developed the world’s most powerful few-cycle source, uses it for laser-plasma electron acceleration and high-energy attosecond pulse generation
Pioneered modelling collective electron dynamics in nanostructures and strong-field processes in dielectrics, both being in the focus of studies at LAP
Performed the first attosecond spectroscopy experiment in the Vienna laboratory
Observed a delay in atomic photoemission and bandgap dynamics in Si, both on the attoseond scale; explores strong-field processes in solids with attosecond spectroscopy
Demonstrated attosecond electron control in a molecule for the first time and pioneered attosecond nanoplasmonics; explores collective electron phenomena in nanoscopic systems
Led the development of the prototype of second-generation attosecond beamlines (AS-1@ MPQ) and used it for real-time observation of electron tunneling
Performed, together with Reinhard Kienberger, the first measurement of an isolated sub-femtosecond pulse
Employed genetic, molecular and microscopy tools to study how cells divide and become different from each other by cell polarization in diverse animal model systems in vivo. Currently tackles molecular mechanisms of cancerous growth by broadband infrared spectroscopy.
Advanced electro-optic sampling to telecommunication frequencies; uses sub-femtosecond light-field-driven currents for exploring strong-field phenomena in wide-gap solids
Pioneered high-power fs Yb:YAG thin-disk oscillators, demonstrated their Kerr-lens mode-locking and carrier-envelope-phase stabilization; extends the technology to the mid-IR
Proposed the concept behind the attosecond streak camera, which was demonstrated in Ferenc's laboratory in Vienna at the turn of the millennium.
© National Research Council Photograph
Pushed the frontiers of ultrafast electron diffraction to the time scale of molecular vibrations (< 30fs); advances it with an all-optical THz technique, further towards the 1-fs frontier; studies the atomic-scale foundations of light-matter interaction
Generated and measured the first subfemtosecond pulse, demonstrated the first attosecond streak camera, measured first sub-femtosecond X-ray FEL pulses; explores attosecond electron transport in solids
Advanced laser-plasma-wake-field electron acceleration beyond the GeV frontier and used it for laser-driven brilliant X-ray generation; develops the first petawatt-scale few-cycle source
His self-referencing technique for frequency-comb stabilization played a central role in the generation of the first waveform-controlled light in Vienna in 2003
Pioneered theoretical studies on few-cycle pulse generation from solid-state lasers and their use for strong-field interactions (in Vienna); studies attosecond and strong-field processes in condensed matter
Developed a novel high-power sub-picosecond thin-disk laser technology, which now serves as a basis for third-generation femtosecond technology
Developed the first XUV multilayer optics for the isolation of a single attosecond pulse and, later, for compensating its chirp (first in Vienna and later at LAP)
His group prepared the instrumentation (time-of-flight spectrometer and XUV multilayer optics) for the first attosecond measurements (performed in Vienna at the turn of the millennium)
Developed powerful theoretical methods for accessing microscopic motions in attosecond measurements; studies theoretical femtosecond-attosecond strong-field phenomena in solids
Has been pushing the frontiers of broadband dispersive multilayer optical technology towards broader (> octave) bandwidth and into new (UV, IR) wavelength ranges
Made seminal contributions to devising third-generation fs technology and to creating the first petawatt-scale few-cycle laser; will use it for high-energy attosecond pulse generation
14 March 2018
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
