Paul Corkum: International partnership explores “extreme photonics”
The Max Planck-University of Ottawa Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics is at the forefront of photonics research.
Paul Corkum is a professor of physics and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Attosecond Photonics at University of Ottawa (Canada).
Twenty years ago, Corkum explained the origin of the high harmonic radiation that had been discovered in France. Within a year of developing the theory, Corkum and his group proposed methods for producing and measuring the world's shortest light flashes. Seven years later, he participated in the first experiments in which attosecond pulses were produced and measured. Since then Corkum's group has imaged molecular orbitals, "watched" a molecule's electrons as a chemical reaction takes place and extended recollision technology to solids.
Corkum is a fellow of the Royal Societies of Canada and London and the Royal Photographic Society. He is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Academy of Science. In 2013, he was awarded the King Faisal Prize for science (Saudi Arabia), the Harvey Prize for physics (Israel) and the Progress Medal for Photography (UK). In 2014, he received the Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America - the society's top medal. He was the 2015 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate and was award the 2015 Lomonosov Gold Medal by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
