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Dr. Youyuan Zhang Receives the 12th (FY2021) JSPS Ikushi Prize
Kaoru Yamauchi, Professor, Department of Chemistry
Dr. Youyuan Zhang
Dr. Youyuan Zhang, a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry, 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 in the near infrared and cannot directly excite N2+ to the B state. Zhang 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. Zhang has received international acclaim for his use of a microscopic model at the molecular level to clarify the formation process of the inverted distribution of N2+. The award is a great honor for Dr. Zhang, who has received international acclaim for his work in this field.
We congratulate Dr. Zhang for this award .
Published in Faculty of Science News, March 2022