What's New?

New content and hot topics in the JRM Lab.

Hot Topics

Nora Johnson has added to her plaudits by receiving the Golden Key Award for Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant.
Carlos Trallero has received a Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for "Intense, Few-cycle Infrared Pulses for Attosecond Science".
Matthias Kling has recieved an Early Career Research Program award from the US Department of Energy. The program supports development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and stimulates research in disciplines supported by DOE.
James R. Macdonald Laboratory director Itzik Ben-Itzhak has been named a University Distinguished Professor. Itzik joins a long line of Physics professors who have been so honored; clearly, we're doing something right! Distinguished Professor is a lifetime title that is the highest honor the University bestows on its faculty for demonstrating their commitment to education through their excellence in teaching, research, creative endeavors and service. Four University faculty members were so honored in 2012.
Graduate student Andrew Jones has received the Anderson Graduate Award for Outstanding Academics. The Anderson Graduate Awards program honors outstanding students for their contributions to the university, and selects one graduate student in two categories: leadership / service and academics.
Nora Johnson, a doctoral student in Physics, has been selected to participate in the 62nd Lindau Meeting on Physics of Nobel Laureates and Students. Her participation is being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences Program. The annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings provide a globally recognised forum for the transfer of knowledge between generations of scientists. They inspire and motivate Nobel Laureates and international Best Talents.
The March 2012 edition of the Division of Laser Science newsletter is available.

Local Research in the News

Kansas State University physicists and an international team of collaborators have made a breakthrough that improves understanding of matter-light interactions. Their research allows double ionization events to be observed at the time scale of attoseconds, which are one-billionth of a billionth of a second. The physicists have also shown that these ionization events occur earlier than thought -- a key factor to improving knowledge of correlated electron dynamics. The work appears in a recent issue of Nature Communications.
University Distinguished Professor CD Lin and his graduate student Junliang Xu are contributors to work done at Ohio State University and published in the 08 March issue of Nature. Entitled "Imaging ultrafast molecular dynamics with laser-induced electron diffraction", the paper describes the real-time imaging of two atoms vibrating in a molecule. Links to the paper and various press releases describing it may be found on our Ultrafast Press Releases page.
Two JRM faculty members have recently been recognized for the special merit of papers published in the Journal of Physics B. Matthias Kling contributed to a paper chosen as a 2011 Highlight, giving "a taste of the outstanding and excellent research" in 2011. See J. Phys. B 44, 105601 . Carlos Trallero was a co-author of work chosen in December of 2011 as an IOP Select paper for its "novelty, significance and potential impact on future research". See J. Phys. B 45, 011001 . Find still more of our world-class reserach on our Publications page.
Bethany Jochim is the recipient of the LeRoy Apker Award, the top undergraduate honor awarded by the American Physical Society. Jochim is a 2011 bachelor's graduate of Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD, where she had a successful career as an undergraduate researcher, working with her advisor, K-State alumnus Eric Wells. She had five research articles published in mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journals. Some of this research work was conducted here at the JRM Lab. See the full K-State, Augustana or APS News press releases.
See older press releases concerning ultrafast physics at JRM.

Web Site Updates

In April, Itzik Ben-Itzhak was named a Distinguished Professor. A new feature story and a new photo gallery were added in recognition of the honor. Our set of photo galleries documenting our lab remodeling continued to grow. The galleries are frequently updated as progress is now both visible and swift.
The 2012 Physics Department Newsletter is available, now in Acrobat (pdf) format. Older versions of the full departmental newsletter have been archived, as have the JRM Lab contributions, which are available via our sitemap.
Download the Acrobat version of our latest visitor's guide.