DAMP Physics, IITB

"Ask Me Anything!" with Prof. Gopal Dixit Research Interests :   Our research group focuses on probing ultrafast processes in nature on attosecond and femtosecond timescales. Our research interest include: 1. Four Dimensional Imaging of Electronic Motion : The motion of atoms within molecule and solid that is associated with physical and chemical transformations occurs on femtosecond timescale, whereas the electronic motion can be even faster, on the order of attoseconds timescale. In order to understand the functionality and dynamic behavior of ultrafast physical, and chemical processes completely, it is essential to have a complete four-dimensional imaging (three spatial and one temporal) of electronic motion with sub-angstrom spatial and few-femtoseconds to several hundreds of attoseconds temporal resolutions, respectively, in real-space and in real-time. Moreover, imaging and manipulating the electronic motion on ultrafast timescale provide novel pathways towa...

Temporal characterization of Attosecond pulses. Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK), Heidelberg, Germany. Work I joined the Quantum Dynamics and Control division at MPIK for 10 weeks for my summer internship. Ultrafast optics is useful in studying processes in nature which happen on a very small time scale. With the discovery of High Harmonic Generation it is possible to generate ultrashort Laser pulses with attosecond duration. But these pulses are of no use if they are not characterized before using them to observe other phenomenon (like observing Photoionization time delay). My work dealt with characterizing an attosecond time scale pulse in time domain so as to identify the intensity, phase variation and length (FWHM) of the pulse. For the first few weeks I read about algorithms used to characterize these pulses and discussed them with other PhD students in the group. I was assigned one particular PhD student whom I had already been corresponding with 2 months...