Access Facilities - LACUS, Lausanne, Switzerland
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LACUS is a consortium of ultrafast laser labs across the Faculties of basic sciences and engineering of the EPFL. It develops and operates a wide range of laser set-ups and facilities:
a) the Harmonium set-up which is an HHG source providing VUV fs pulses to three beamlines for resp., steady-state and time-resolved angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (ARPES), PES of liquid microjets and gas phase PES studies
b) set-ups for ultrafast electron diffraction and microscopy
c) the LOUVRE lab that provides tunable and continuum deep-ultraviolet pulses for ultrafast spectroscopic (transient absorption, multidimensional spectroscopy, circular dichroim) studies of various types of samples (molecular, biological, solids).
LACUS is also deeply implanted at large scale facilities (synchrotrons and Free electron lasers) in Switzerland and world wide, where it performs ultrafast X-ray spectroscopic and scattering experiments. In particular, it has 5 collaborators stationed at the Paul-Scherrer Institut (Villigen). Finally, LACUS contains several theory groups providing support and novel avenues to experimentalists.
Excellence:
Development of ultrafast spectroscopic methods in a broad spectral range. LACUS groups performed the first ps, then the first fs X-ray spectroscopy experiments, pioneering the field. It also performed the first deep- to mid-UV (250-380 nm) 2-dimensional spectroscopy experiments and the first ultrafast circular dichroism experiment in the same spectral range. Finally, LACUS groups also performed the first attosecond coherent control of free-electron wave functions by combining plasmonics and ultrafast electron microscopy.
Publications:
- Ultrafast broadband circular dichroism in the deep-UV, M. Oppermann et al., Optica 6, 56-60 (2019)
- Attosecond coherent control of free-electron wave functions using semi-infinite light fields, G. M. Vanacore et al., Nature Communications 9, 2694 (2018)
- Laser-Induced Skyrmion Writing and Erasing in an Ultrafast Cryo-Lorentz Transmission Electron Microscope, G. Berruto et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 117201 (2018)
- Membrane water as a probe for neuronal membrane potentials and ionic flux at the single cell level, M. Didier et al., Nature Communications 9, 5287 (2018)
- Strongly bound excitons in anatase TiO2 single crystals and nanoparticles, E. Baldini et al., Nature Communications 8, 13 (2017)