Alexandros Lappas, a chemical physicist at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) of the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), will be supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) under their international Research Grants scheme to conduct interdisciplinary, basic scientific research in the area of magnetism and superconductivity.

Researchers at IESL-FORTH, Attosecond Science and Technology Laboratory, led by Dr. Paraskevas Tzallas, in collaboration with scientists at the Department of Physics, University of Crete and the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics, Halle, Germany, have developed a novel quantum optical approach for describing interactions of intense electromagnet fields with atoms. This approach, published recently in Nature Communications [1], has led to the development of a quantum spectrometer in the extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) spectral range. The work unifies two, until recently disjoint fields, quantum optics and strong-field physics and paves the way for a new era of experimental investigations of strong-field laser matter interaction in the context of quantum optics.

The Association has set the cooperation with the world's best scientists as a key objective. To this end, the organization has established the Helmholtz International Fellow Award, which targets outstanding senior scientists and research managers based outside Germany who have excelled in fields relevant to the Helmholtz Association, including science management at large international research institutions.