Thematic school 2026

From Sunday, 22 march 2026 to Friday, 27 march 2026

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Ultrafast sources of coherent light: current research and emerging applications

The Houches Physics School, France, March 22 to 27, 2026

The workshop is devoted to bringing prominent scientists in ultrafast and nonlinear optics together with the goal of, starting from fundamentals, providing overviews of recent research work, covering emerging applications, and devising future directions in the field. It aims at giving to PhD students and post-doctoral researchers a broad coverage, from pulse generation and manipulation to characterization, from the THz domain to the XUV, and describe applications spanning from time-resolved spectroscopy to secondary sources of light and particles. The workshop is motivated by the current blooming of ultrafast sources and applications, triggered by the wide availability of robust and high power femtosecond lasers, and the rapid development of methods to convert them into sources with a wide range of parameters in terms of pulsewidth, central wavelength, or control over the electric field. It will be a unique opportunity to get a unified vision of this research area, and contribute to developing new collaborations and cross-fertilizing the sources and applications communities.


Lecturers:

  • Anne L'Huillier (Lund University) - Attosecond sciences 
  • Clara Saraceno (Bochum University) - THz sources and applications 
  • Nathalie Picqué (Max Born Institute, Berlin) - Frequency combs spectroscopy 
  • Jérôme Faure (LOA, Palaiseau)- Particle acceleration at ultra-high intensity 
  • Spencer Jolly (Université Libre de Bruxelles) - Spatio-temporal shaping 
  • Dimitris Papadopoulos (LULI, Palaiseau) - Ultra-high intensity sources 
  • John Dudley (Femto-ST, Besançon) - AI for ultrafast photonics 
  • Emmanuel Beaurepaire (LOB, Palaiseau) - Nonlinear microscopy 
  • Thierry Ruchon (LiDyl, CEA Saclay) - Linear & nonlinear propagation of ultrashort pulses 


This event is organized by the French Optical Society (SFO), EOS Branch.


More information: https://www.sfoptique.org/pages/sfo/ecoles-thematiques/2026-ultrafast/