Prof. Franz Kärtner

Franz Kärtner heads the Ultrafast Optics and X-rays Group at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) at “Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron” (DESY), Hamburg, and is Professor of Physics at University of Hamburg as well as a Visiting Scientist at Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Prof. Kärtner received his Diploma and Doctoral degrees in Electrical Engineering from Technical University Munich, Germany.  He received his Venia Legendi from ETH Zurich in Experimental Physics, taught at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and MIT before joining University of Hamburg. His research interests are in classical and quantum noise in electronic and photonic systems, ultrashort pulse generation, precision timing distribution, optical waveform synthesis, high energy THz generation and its applications to attosecond science and compact attosecond hard X-ray sources. He has authored or co-authored more than 330 peer-reviewed journal publications, four book chapters and holds or has applied for 30 patents. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a member of the German National Merit Foundation and a Humboldt Feodor-Lynen Fellow and received in 2014 jointly with other researchers from University of Hamburg and DESY a prestigious ERC Synergy Grant to explore attosecond hard X-ray sources driven by high energy THz radiation.