“ Team work is an absolute necessity”
Meet our doctoral candidate Marco Dassie!
From the moment he first encountered the idea of measuring rapidly oscillating fields, Marco Dassie was fascinated. Since 2021, our doctoral candidate from Italy has been working on his PhD in the experimental division of the Attosecond Science group at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. His research focuses on manipulating and measuring the waveform of ultra-short light pulses - shedding light on some of the fastest processes in nature. Learn more about his research, his motivations and his PhD experiences in this interview.
What is your research about?
In our group we investigate the interaction between ultra-short light pulses (that is, optical and ultraviolet pulses with a duration of a single-cycle of the electric field oscillation) and matter (which can be atoms, solid state samples, or molecules). A big part of our job is to figure out how to manipulate these very delicate light pulses and how to measure their waveform.
Why is this important or interesting?
Light is all around us, there is no need to say how much we deal with it. And we are interested in electrons as well (more precisely, not when they are isolated, but rather in their natural environment — matter). Why electrons? Well, the whole chemistry depends on them; in the end, the properties of all materials (maybe excluding acoustic vibrations and nuclear phenomena) are determined by the behaviour of electrons. But here is the challenge: electrons are very light, and therefore move extremely fast. If we want to capture their motion, we need a similarly fast tool.
Coming to our research work, light consists of electric (and weak magnetic) fields. And electrons are charged particles. What’s better than an electric field for kicking a very light, charged particle out of its atom, just to see what happens? It looks like the perfect tool. To complete the picture, we really want to use ultraviolet (and partially visible) light, because in most cases it has the same oscillation speed as the electrons.
What excites you most about this field?
I’ve been intrigued by the possibility of measuring rapidly oscillating electric fields since I first read of this technique. You need to imagine: these electric fields are oscillating in a timescale of 0.5 to 2 • 10-15 seconds. There’s nothing we know from our macroscopic world that can be that fast, and thus no suitable instrument to measure them. We wanted to measure ultra-fast electrons, and we decided that UV light was the perfect ultra-fast tool, but now we are back to the problem of controlling and measuring our ultra-fast tool.
Somehow, using several tricks, we are able to force these light flashes to be as short as 0.6 • 10-15 seconds and to pick up a specific shape (waveform) by themselves! Then we can take several snapshots and see how they look like in time (using a second ultra-short flash of light, of course).
What is the biggest takeaway or learning from your PhD studies up to this point?
It’s clear that perseverance plays a big role in the course of a PhD, and most of the time it pays off. But personally, I would say that the biggest take-home message is that team work is an absolute necessity for scientific work, and in many other contexts as well. I wouldn’t have measured the nice waveforms that I have now if I hadn’t been supported by the colleagues with many ideas, tons of experience, and intuition as to which road was the one to take. I would also say, each individual scientific result is a small droplet in the sea of the literature, but we often tend to underestimate how important it is.
How has the IMPRS-APS program shaped your academic and/or personal development?
First of all, the IMPRS-APS program gave me many opportunities to attend great talks (Maiman Seminars). Not less important, we IMPRS students had the chance to gather during our yearly meeting or during workshops, having both personal and scientific discussions. That was fun and motivating, of course.
How is life in Germany/Munich for you?
What I like about Munich is that I have plenty of opportunities for making and listening to good music! Plus, there’s a lot of beautiful green, and the city doesn’t feel as big as it actually is.
What is something you enjoy outside of your research?
At this point you have probably guessed it: among the things that I like most here, there are music and hiking, better if in the company of other people.