DATE2022.02.18 #Awards & Prizes

Mr. Youyuan Zhang (Department of Chemistry) wins the 12th (FY2021) JSPS Ikushi Prize

Disclaimer: machine translated by DeepL which may contain errors.

Mr. Youyuan Zhang

Dr. Youyuan Zhang, a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry, has received the 12th (FY2021) JSPS Ikushi Prize for his "Theory of Photoexcitation Process of Molecular Ions Generated in Intense Laser Fields.

Dr. Zhang has made a decisive contribution from a theoretical standpoint to the elucidation of the phenomenon known as "air laser," in which monochromatic and coherent light is generated when a femtosecond laser beam in the near-infrared region is focused into air. This phenomenon is associated with the visible and ultraviolet emission of nitrogen molecular ions ( ^N₂+ ) from the electronically excited B state to the electronically ground X state, but the mechanism has long been a mystery because the wavelength of the femtosecond laser used for excitation is near-infrared light, which cannot directly excite ^N₂+ to the B state. performed numerical simulations of a two-level quantum system suddenly exposed to a photoelectric field and successfully explained how the lower level distribution shifts to the upper level, even at low photon energies. He developed a simulator for air lasers by introducing vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom, and reproduced the time evolution of air laser oscillation by theoretical calculations. The award is a great honor for Dr. Zhang.

We sincerely congratulate Dr. Zhang for this award.

The 12th (FY2021) Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Ikushi Prize
https://www.jsps.go.jp/j-ikushi-prize/index.html

(Responsibility: Professor Kaoru Yamauchi, Department of Chemistry)