Scientific workshops by PhD students for PhD students: Focus Session on General Laser Operation and Common Problems

“At 14:00 the first people arrived in the Meeting room of AG Bovensiepen and immediately a discussion on the pros and cons of different commercial laser systems broke out. After the diverse group of experimental and theoretical physicists and even a chemist from the CRC1242 had gathered, they went off with Florian Kühne and Oscar Naranjo to the laser laboratories of the group. After a short tour of the photoemission spectroscopy laboratory, they dived in depth about the different techniques used in the laser setup of that laboratory. After giving a basic overview over things like second harmonic generation, non-collinear optical parametric amplification and operations of a Ti:Sa-Laser and its regenerative amplifier the discussion shifted to the more technical aspects of beam stability and pulse characterisation. In the second part of the workshop they went to the high harmonic generation laboratory, which is pushing the boundaries of table-top generated X-Rays. Here the focus was really on the details since there the development and optimization of the laser source is the key objective of the laboratory. Here it became clear how much know-how is needed to maintain good operations of a laser laboratory. Probably the hardest questions came from the theoretical physicists, because they always reminded the experimentalists to come back to the fundamental physics behind the topic. It is fair to say, that everybody learned something from each other that day. Afterwards the students meet up with the rest at the regular social event of the CRC1242 for a well-deserved beer at the Finkenkrug.”