RTG-Seminar: Tuesday, 4:30 pm (Freiburg) / 7:30 am (Vancouver)
QUATTO Webinars: Thursday, 12:00 pm

01.10.26 – Fernando Martin, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (QUATTO webinar)

20.10.26 – Marcelo Ciappina, Guangdong Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, China

27.10.26 – Walter Hahn, IAF Freiburg

05.11.26 – Rosa Romero, University of Porto (QUATTO webinar)

10.11.26 – free slot

17.11.26 – Eric Heller, University of Freiburg

24.11.26 – free slot

03.12.26 – Marc Vrakking, MBI Berlin (QUATTO webinar)

08.12.26 – Eduard Prat, SWISS FEL

15.12.26 – free slot

12.01.27 – Spiros Skourtis, University of Cypris

14.01.27 – QUATTO webinar

19.01.27 – free slot

26.01.27 – free slot

04.02.27 – Paris Tzallas, FORTH, University of Crete (QUATTO webinar)

09.02.27 – free slot

20.10.26 – Marcelo Ciappina, Guangdong Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, China

Strong-Field Physics Meets Quantum Light

Intense laser pulses do spectacular things to matter: they pull electrons out of atoms within a fraction of an optical cycle, drive them back, and make them emit bursts of light lasting only attoseconds. For four decades this strong-field physics has been described by a remarkably successful semiclassical picture, a quantum electron in a classical electromagnetic wave, which reproduces above-threshold ionization, high-harmonic generation and the attosecond pulses that grew out of them. In this seminar we ask the question the other way around: what does the matter do to the light? Treating the driving field as a quantum object opens two routes. In the first, a classical laser drives the electrons, and their collective current, coupled to the quantum fluctuations of the field, leaves an imprint on the light itself: the driver is depleted and its quantum state is modified, yielding high-photon-number entangled coherent states and
coherent-state superpositions that semiclassical theories cannot capture. In the second, the driver is quantum light from the outset, from bright squeezed vacuum to weaker non-classical states, and the electron dynamics change accordingly. We will illustrate both routes with examples: above-threshold ionization, high-harmonic generation in gases and in solids, high-harmonic generation driven by elliptically polarized classical and quantum light, and stochastic methods that make the quantum-optical calculations tractable. Finally, we consider how these ideas might extend to more complex materials and what they could mean for emerging quantum technologies, at the intersection of attosecond physics and quantum information science. They also offer natural points of contact with the electron and nuclear dynamics of controlled atomic, molecular and cluster ensembles probed with ultrashort light pulses, with entanglement and quantum many-body physics, and with open quantum systems, where stochastic methods are a natural tool.

Chair: Giuseppe Sansone

01.10.26 Fernando Martin, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Attosecond molecular dynamics

A joined viewing of the Webinar will be held in Lecture Hall 2 (HS II).

You can find the entire QU-ATTO-Programm here.