SPIN+X PhD student wins oral presentation award at SPIE Photonics West

At the world's largest annual event for the photonics, laser, and biomedical optics industries, the SPIE Photonics West in San Fransico, SPIN+X PhD student Sebastian Weber has won the student oral presentation award in the conference Laser Applications in Microelectronic and Optoelectronic Manufacturing (LAMOM) XXIII. Sebastian Weber is a PhD student in the group of SPIN+X PI Bärbel Rethfeld in the project A08 „Exchange interaction on femtosecond time scales“.

In his talk with the title „Electron dynamics in silver after ultrafast laser-excitation“ the dynamics of nonequilibrium electrons in noble metals after excitation with an ultrashort laser pulse has been presented. Such femtosecond laser pulses drive the electrons out of thermal equilibrium. The time evolution of the energy distribution has to be described with numerically expensive kinetic models, going far beyond temperature-based equations. In the work, the timescales of the relaxation processes have been analyzed as well as the influence of the nonequilibrium state on the further energy dissipation. The results are important for the understanding of the optical excitation of metals as well as the spin-dependent electron dynamics in ferromagnets.