Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Mathias Richter
The physicist is head of the department of X-ray metrology using synchrotron radiation at PTB in Berlin-Adlershof.
Mathias Richter, born in 1959 in Marburg, studied physics in his home town from 1978 and graduated later from Hamburg University. Since his diploma thesis carried out in 1983/84 at the Hamburger Synchrotronstrahlungslabor (HASYLAB) of the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), the application of synchrotron radiation has represented the central theme of his scientific work.
At the beginning of his career, emphasis was laid on atomic physics. Hamburg (Ph.D. in 1988), Paris (Postdoc in 1989/90) and Berlin (since September 1990) have been the significant stages.
In 1996, he was awarded the German professorship qualification at Berlin Technical University. After that, he concentrated on metrology using synchrotron radiation at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), Germany’s national metrology institute. Responsible for UV and VUV radiometry since 1997, he has from then on also undertaken applied research in the PTB laboratories at the electron storage rings BESSY I (till 1999) and BESSY II (since 2000).
Mathias Richter is married to Babette Dombrowski and has a daughter and two sons. He is a professor at Berlin Technical University, a board member of the BESSY/HZB Society of Friends and Sponsors, and is active as a reviewer in a number of areas. Recently, he became the head of the department of X-ray metrology using synchrotron radiation at PTB in Berlin-Adlershof.
Research focus:
Mathias Richter’s own research is currently focused on experiments using highly intense and ultra-short X-ray pulses. In close cooperation with DESY, the Ioffe-Institute in St. Petersburg, the University of Münster, and BESSY/HZB, different methods have been developed at the free-electron laser in Hamburg FLASH, which are based on linear and nonlinear photoionisation of atomic and molecular gases, to measure pulse energies, microfocus diameters, and femtosecond pulse durations.
In this context, also a number of fundamental quantitative investigations on photon-matter interaction at high intensities and short wavelengths have been performed which are at the limits of current models to describe photoionisation and, hence, significant for future experiments of materials research using the new X-ray sources and lasers (Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 213002 (2007)).
Contact: Prof. Dr. Mathias Richter, PTB 7.1, e-mail, tel.: +49 30 6392 5084,
http://ib.ptb.de/de/org/7/71/