Dr. rer. nat. Ingo Will

The physicist at the Max Born Institute works towards the development of various diode-pumped lasers

Ingo Will studied Physics at Warsaw University and at the Humboldt University Berlin. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the former Central Institute of Optics and Spectroscopy Berlin on the optimization oft Nd:Glass laser systems with high output pulse energy. After defending his thesis at the Technical University Berlin, he worked at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics Rochester on the development of large solid-state laser systems which were used for inertial confinement fusion.

He returned to Berlin in 1994. Since then he has been working towards the development of various diode-pumped lasers at the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short-pulse Spectroscopy.

His research topic:

Ingo Will’s research presently deals with the development of lasers that are used at electron accelerators. One focus of his work at the Max Born Institute consists in the development of photoinjector drive lasers that generate tailored picosecond laser pulses in the ultraviolet spectral range. When focusing these pulses onto a photocathode, electron bunches of high density are generated. After being accelerated in a linac, these bunches are well suited for driving Free Electron Lasers (FELs).

The properties of these electron bunches can be optimized by appropriately tuning the shape of the picosecond laser pulses. To accomplish this, the group of Ingo Will has recently developed the first Yb:YAG laser in the world, that can generate trains (bursts) of ultraviolet laser pulses with variable shape. The figure shows the novel pulse shaper, which synthesizes the desired pulse shape from a Gaussian input pulse by means of a chain of nonlinear crystals.

The development work is carried out in close cooperation with DESY, HZB(BESSY) and the Forschungszentrum Dresden Rossendorf (FZD). The various lasers developed in Ingo Will’s group are presently being used for driving the electron gun of the FLASH-FEL (DESY Hamburg), the PITZ photo injector (DESY Zeuthen) and the superconducting RF gun that is being developed at the ELBE radiation source (FZD).

Contact:. Ingo Will, MBI B3, e-mail: will(at)mbi-berlin.de, tel.: +49 30 6392 1320
www.mbi-berlin.de