Ursula Keller wins “Swiss Nobel” Marcel Benoist Prize
Farewell: the NCCR MUST ended 
MUST2022 Conference
New scientific highlights
FELs of Europe prize for Jeremy Rouxel
Ruth Signorell wins Doron prize
New FAST-Fellow Uwe Thumm at ETH
International Day of Women and Girls in Science
New scientific highlight
EU XFEL Young Scientist Award for Camila Bacellar,
Prizes for Giulia Mancini and Rebeca Gomez Castillo
Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to RESOLV Member Benjamin List
Hans Jakob Wörner invited to give the „New Horizons Solvay Lectures” 
Unusual keynote talk at an international scientific conference
NCCR MUST at Scientifica 2021Spotlight on Optics -
Thomas Feurer, Ursula Keller and co-workers demonstrate a new attosecond pulse reconstruction modality which uses an algorithm that is derived from ptychography. In contrast to other methods, energy and delay sampling are not correlated, and as a result, the number of electron spectra to record is considerably smaller. Together with the robust algorithm, this leads to a more precise and fast convergence of the reconstruction.
From the OSA website:
"Spotlight Summary by Brynmor Davis: Ptychographic reconstruction of attosecond pulses"
The fastest pulses of light can be painfully slow to measure, but a new technique promises to make it easier. Over the last decade it has become increasingly common to generate and measure optical pulses lasting only tens to hundreds of attoseconds. These phenomena are extremely brief - an attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second, and in 50 attoseconds light travels only about the width of a white blood cell. Measuring attosecond pulses is complicated by the fact that we have no shorter-duration yardstick to compare them against; instead it is necessary to mix pulses together, take measurements of the combined field using comparatively slow detectors, and then make indirect inferences based on the collected data. This sort of inference is common in science - for example, recently discovered exoplanets are too small to observe directly; but were inferred from a slight dimming of starlight, seen as the planet transited our line of sight to the star it orbits. However, to make a successful inference it is necessary to collect sufficient data, and in many cases this means a lot of data. Current attosecond-pulse measurement techniques often involve taking measurements of many different mixes of optical pulses. What the authors describe in this paper is a new data processing method which requires substantially fewer measurements, while producing results of similar quality. The paper introduces the method (which is based on "ptychography" tools used in other fields), shows analysis and computer simulations, and then presents experimental results to validate their approach. The method described has the potential to simplify attosecond optical metrology and so open up new possibilities for ultrafast experimental design.
In the context of this publication, the authors offer a minimal example MATLAB code that demonstrates the capabilities of this method based on four example data sets: to download, follow the link to the highlight.
Lucchini, M., Brügmann, M.H., Ludwig, A., Gallmann, L., Keller, U., and Feurer, T. (2015) Ptychographic reconstruction of attosecond pulses. Optics Express 23, 29502-29513 (10.1364/OE.23.029502).
From the OSA website:
"Spotlight Summary by Brynmor Davis: Ptychographic reconstruction of attosecond pulses"
The fastest pulses of light can be painfully slow to measure, but a new technique promises to make it easier. Over the last decade it has become increasingly common to generate and measure optical pulses lasting only tens to hundreds of attoseconds. These phenomena are extremely brief - an attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second, and in 50 attoseconds light travels only about the width of a white blood cell. Measuring attosecond pulses is complicated by the fact that we have no shorter-duration yardstick to compare them against; instead it is necessary to mix pulses together, take measurements of the combined field using comparatively slow detectors, and then make indirect inferences based on the collected data. This sort of inference is common in science - for example, recently discovered exoplanets are too small to observe directly; but were inferred from a slight dimming of starlight, seen as the planet transited our line of sight to the star it orbits. However, to make a successful inference it is necessary to collect sufficient data, and in many cases this means a lot of data. Current attosecond-pulse measurement techniques often involve taking measurements of many different mixes of optical pulses. What the authors describe in this paper is a new data processing method which requires substantially fewer measurements, while producing results of similar quality. The paper introduces the method (which is based on "ptychography" tools used in other fields), shows analysis and computer simulations, and then presents experimental results to validate their approach. The method described has the potential to simplify attosecond optical metrology and so open up new possibilities for ultrafast experimental design.
In the context of this publication, the authors offer a minimal example MATLAB code that demonstrates the capabilities of this method based on four example data sets: to download, follow the link to the highlight.
Lucchini, M., Brügmann, M.H., Ludwig, A., Gallmann, L., Keller, U., and Feurer, T. (2015) Ptychographic reconstruction of attosecond pulses. Optics Express 23, 29502-29513 (10.1364/OE.23.029502).
