IUPAP Awards 1st Young Scientist Prize for AMO Physics

Robin Santra, assistant physicist in the chemistry division at Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago, has won the first International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Young Scientist Prize for Atomic, Molecular and Optical (AMO) Physics. The 2007 prize, consisting of a medal, a citation and $1000, will be presented to Santra by IUPAP, an international group devoted to the advancement of physics, during the XXV International Conference on Photonic, Electronic and Atomic Collisions (ICPEAC) in Freiburg, Germany, July 25-31, 2007. Since his arrival at Argonne in August 2005, Santra has used an x-ray microprobe to collaborate on the discovery of a hole-orbital alignment in atomic ions generated in the focus of a strong laser field. Most recently, his theoretical work has uncovered electromagnetically induced transparency for x-rays, suggesting a simple switch to produce ultrafast x-rays. He is currently investigating other ways of influencing x-ray absorption with strong lasers and is also interested in nonlinear x-ray science with free-electron lasers. He has contributed to 12 scientific papers and been published five times.