Quantum Dynamics in Tailored Intense Fields

The workshop focused on the dynamics of microscopic systems under the in
uence of strong tailored laser waveforms.
The systems under investigation range from atoms over molecules to nanostructures and solids.
The applied laser elds are shaped on the sub-cycle scale for
example by using two- or multicolour elds or few-cycle pulses with stable carrier-envelope
phase. Besides bringing together a number of international speakers, the workshop served
as the Annual Meeting of the Priority Programme ''Quantum Dynamics in Tailored Intense
Fields" (QUTIF) of the German Research Foundation DFG. The programme consisted of
seven invited talks, a substantial number of talks by QUTIF network members as well as two
contributed talks from external participants. One invited talk was given by Isabelle Auret-
Babak as a representative of IOP Publishing, providing information about peer review and
the publication landscape in Europe.

Among the invited speakers, Professor Zenghu Chang (University of Central Florida)
reported the most important scientic news in the sense that he presented a new record
in making the shortest coherent light pulses produced until today. In the talks by QUTIF
members, particularly interesting progress was reported by Matthias Wollenhaupt (University
of Oldenburg) on a new setup that allows to generate polarization controlled multicolor
elds over an octave-spanning spectrum. New theoretical results by Armin Scrinzi (Ludwig-
Maximilians-Universitat Munchen) on photoelectron momentum distribution from ionization
of helium atoms by circularly polarized pulses (''attoclock"), now including electron-electron
interactions, could not resolve the longstanding discrepancy between experiment and theory
regarding the emission angle of electrons. He thus inspired and renewed the debate on the
attoclock method.

About one third of the list of speakers consisted of young scientists, many of them
being PhD students in the QUTIF network. They did an excellent job in reporting the
status of the QUTIF network nearly one and a half years after its beginning. Noteworthy
scientic newcomers include Giulio Vampa (invited speaker from Stanford University),
showing exciting results of high-harmonic generation from various types of solid systems,
Alvaro Jimenez-Galan (Max Born Institute Berlin), reporting a theoretical framework for
high-harmonic generation in bicircular laser elds and shedding light on the polarization
properties of individual harmonic peaks, and Sebastian Eckart (Goethe University Frankfurt),
showing pump-probe measurements that experimentally conrm the dependence of
strong-eld ionization on the direction of the initial-state angular momentum. Although not
using tailored elds, this work provides a knowledge basis for other projects that rely on
bicircular elds or angular momentum states.

The workshop gave a broad view on physics and chemistry driven by tailored light elds
on ultrafast time scales. Clearly, one important subject was the observation and control
of matter on sub-femtosecond time scales, while another intensely discussed aspect was
the response of matter to non-linearly polarized elds. Overall, the workshop showed how
the manipulation of microscopic phenomena on short time scales has become surprisingly
accurate through recent developments in the field.