Femtosecond Laser Secondary Sources: Modern approaches in nano-structured material diagnosis & Imaging

Although ultrafast laser technology provides today electromagnetic sources in the visible and near-infrared light (ultra-short lasers technology) their penetration inside the materials is often very small and the observation capacity is limited in the very few surface layers of materials. The probe of ultrafast excitation phenomena that occur on the surface or inside the bulk of nano-structured materials, at proper time scales, requires the development of laser-based secondary sources of mechanical waves that offer the ability of monitoring the matter with extremely small spatiotemporal windows. In this talk we will present the physics and technology of novel sources of mechanical waves that will be, in our opinion, the future of nanoimaging of nanostructured materials in small spatial dimensions much less than a micrometer and in very short time scales in the order of picoseconds or less. These sources are the ultrafast ultrasonic acoustic strain pulses generated by the localized interaction of ultrafast laser pulses with the metallic film transducers placed on front of the probed materials.

BIO:

Nektarios PAPADOGIANNIS received his Bachelor Degree in Physics from the University of Crete in 1990 and his MSc in 1992 in Atomic and Molecular Physics. In 1996 he was awarded with Ph.D. in Experimental Ultrafast Laser-Matter Interaction Physics from University of Crete in cooperation with Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser of Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (IESL-FoRTH), Heraklion, Greece and University Bernard Lyon I, Lyon France. His main research fields are the science and technology of the ultrafast and intense laser pulses and the ultrafast and intense laser secondary sources (VUV and XUV Coherent Light Sources, Coherent and Incoherent X-rays Sources, Laser generated pulsed Acoustic Waves, Electron and Proton relativistic particle sources) and their applications in matter diagnosis. His scientific work is reflected in about 100 publications in reputable international scientific journals (i.e. Nature, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, Applied Physics Letters, Optic Letters etc) and book volumes of Physics and Technology and has received about 1850 citations. At present, he holds the Position of Professor of Physics at Hellenic Mediterranean University (HMU) and he is Vice-Rector of the HMU. He is Co-Founder and member of the steering committee of the Research Institute of Plasma Physics & Lasers (IPPL/HMU).