Biegert, Jens – ICREA Memoir 2021

Jens Biegert

Institut de Ciències Fotòniques

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

PhD in 2001 with distinction from TU Munich, Oberassistent/Habilitation at ETH Zürich. Since 2007 at ICFO, he has pioneered mid-IR photonics, attosecond soft X-rays and laser-induced electron diffraction which led to breakthroughs in imaging chemical dynamics and carrier motion in materials. He is Associate Editor of APL Photonics and AAAS/CAS Ultrafast Science, Fellow of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Fellow of the Optical Society, Fellow of the American Physical Society, recipient of the Thousand Talents Program Award China, the OSA Allen Prize, and Bessel Prize of the Humboldt Foundation, ERC Advanced Grant and ERC Proof of Concept Grant holder. He is actively involved in the scientific community, e.g. co-author of the whitebook for European Extreme Light Infrastructure, Laserlab-Europe, Panel Member of the ERC and Volkswagen Foundation, on the Scientific Advisory Board of FORTH in Crete and Executive Diirector of Laserlab-Europe AISBL.

Research interests

Our research in attosecond science accesses the natural time scale of electronic motion, thus providing a unique tool to study the dynamic behaviour of the quantum world within atoms molecules and solids. Presently, we are witnessing an amazing convergence of attosecond physics, ultrafast x-ray science and xray free-electron laser research to address fundamental problems across physics, chemistry and material science with revolutionary new tools and methodologies. The power of these investigations with attosecond soft x-ray pulses and quantum microscopy with single electrons is the ability to investigate fundamental problems such as molecular isomerization, energy harvesting, or e.g. superconductivity.

Selected publications

– Liu, Xinyao; Amini, Kasra; Sanchez, Aurelien; Belsa, Blanca; Steinle, Tobias; Biegert, Jens 2021, ‘Machine learning for laser-induced electron diffraction imaging of molecular structures’, Communications Chemistry, 4, 1, 154.

– T.P.H. Sidiropoulos, N. Di Palo, D.E. Rivas, S. Severino, M. Reduzzi, B. Nandy, B. Bauerhenne, S. Krylow, T. Vasileiadis, T. Danz, P. Elliott, S. Sharma, K. Dewhurst, C. Ropers, Y. Joly, K. M. E. Garcia, M. Wolf, R. Ernstorfer, J. Biegert 2021, “Real-time observation of energy conversion in graphite between light, carriers and lattice revealed by attosecond core-level spectroscopy”, Phys. Rev. X. 11, 041060.

– Elu U, Maidment L, Vamos L, Tani F, Novoa D, Frosz MH, Badikov V, Badiko D, Petrov V, St. J. Russell P & Biegert J 2021, ‘Seven-octave high-brightness and carrier-envelope-phase-stable light source‘, Nature Photonics, 15, pages 277–280.

– B. Belsa, K. Amini, X. Liu, A. Sanchez T. Steinle, J. Steinmetzer, A.T. Le, R. Moshammer, T. Pfeifer, J. Ullrich, R. Moszynski, C.D. Lin, S. Gräfe, J. Biegert 2021, “Laser-induced electron diffraction of the ultrafast umbrella motion in ammonia”, Struct. Dyn. 8, 1, 014301.

– Buades, Barbara; Picon, Antonio; Berger, Emma; Leon, Iker; Di Palo, Nicola; Cousin, Seth L.; Cocchi, Caterina; Pellegrin, Eric; Herrero Martin, Javier; Manas-Valero, Samuel; Coronado, Eugenio; Danz, Thomas; Draxl, Claudia; Uemoto, Mitsuharu; Yabana, Kazuhiro; Schultze, Martin; Wall, Simon; Zuerch, Michael; Biegert, Jens 2021, ‘Attosecond state-resolved carrier motion in quantum materials probed by soft x-ray XANES’, Applied Physics Reviews, 8, 1, 011408.

– Sanchez, A.; Amini, K.; Wang, S. -J.; Steinle, T.; Belsa, B.; Danek, J.; Le, A. T.; Liu, X.; Moshammer, R.; Pfeifer, T.; Richter, M.; Ullrich, J.; Graefe, S.; Lin, C. D.; Biegert, J. 2021, ‘Molecular structure retrieval directly from laboratory-frame photoelectron spectra in laser-induced electron diffraction’, Nature Communications, 12, 1, 1520.