Soft Matter Physics

Understanding the physical properties of materials self-organized into mesoscopic structures, such as liquid crystals or polymers.

CELIA (Bordeaux, France)

CELIA is a centre of excellence in lasers and their interaction with matter. Research is performed on laser development, ultra-short intense laser matter interactions and applications, from the physics of hot dense plasmas to laser-molecule or laser-atom interactions. 3 state-of-the art laser drivers based on Ti:sapphire and Yb:fiber feed 9 fully-equipped end-stations including secondary XUV and X-ray sources.

CUSBO (Milan, Italy)

CUSBO covers a broad range of activities of interdisciplinary nature. Several unique state of the art sources provide few-cycle light pulses, either widely-tunable or of high peak power seeding attosecond beamlines, for pump-probe experiments. Advanced laser workstations mostly based on time-resolved measurements are also applied to non-invasive clinical diagnostics, biological imaging, and non-destructive analysis of food and cultural heritage.

FERMI (Trieste, Italy)

Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste is a multidisciplinary international laboratory of excellence, specialized in generating high quality synchrotron and free-electron laser light and using it in materials science

LACUS (Lausanne, Switzerland)

LACUS offers various instruments for the investigation of matter (molecules, solutions, proteins, solids and nanosystems) in out-of-equilibrium conditions. Our instruments cover a broad range of observables, ranging from spectroscopic probes in the UV-visible range to electron diffraction and imaging in various sample environments, and covering a temporal range from femtoseconds to nanoseconds.

LENS (Florence, Italy)

LENS, the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy, is a center of excellence at the University of Florence. Research interests include photonics, biophysics, chemistry and atomic physics. Three different main research areas (BIOPHOTONICS, PHOTONIC MATERIALS, ATOMIC PHYSICS) and more than twenty research topics, corresponding to active laboratories, are presently running.

LLAMS (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

LLAMS develops new techniques and tools, including ultra-precise spectroscopy, to study the interaction of (laser) light and matter. Looking at systems ranging from atoms and molecules to living cells and tissues, the focus is on advancing understanding of both molecular physics and living systems.