Emeritus physicist of TU Kaiserslautern honored for his research achievements

Professor Dr. Klaas Bergmann (Photo: Reiner Voß / view - die agentur / TUK)

Retired physics professor Dr. Klaas Bergmann has been awarded the Davisson-Germer Prize 2020 for Atomic and Surface Physics by the American Physical Society (APS). This prize, awarded in even-numbered years for the field of atomic, molecular, and optical physics, is considered one of the highest honors in this field. Among the 27 previous winners from atomic physics, five later received the Nobel Prize. The award has only been given to a scientist outside the USA for the third time. Klaas Bergmann receives the prize for the laser method "Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage" (STIRAP) developed by him and his research group.

The method, developed over 25 years ago at TU Kaiserslautern, is a laser-based technique that allows properties (and in some cases the structure) of atoms, molecules, and other quantum systems to be deliberately altered or controlled. For the scientific standards at the time, the way this was achieved was very surprising.

"The STIRAP process has developed into an incredibly versatile technique and is used not only in physics and chemistry but also in fields such as quantum technology and quantum computing," says Michael Fleischhauer, Professor of Theoretical Physics at TUK. He adds: "For example, STIRAP is the basis for storage devices for photonic quantum bits, an application that no one had thought of 25 years ago." To this day, new application areas are regularly being explored.

The annual Davisson-Germer Prize is named after the discoverers of electron diffraction, Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer. The award will be presented to Bergmann at the beginning of June 2020 at the annual meeting of the Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics of the APS in Portland, Oregon.

Prof. Bergmann earned his doctorate in 1972 at the University of Freiburg and, after a stay at the University of California at Berkeley, moved in 1975 to the University of Kaiserslautern, where he habilitated in 1980. Until 2007, he was active in the Department of Physics at TUK, then held a senior research professorship until the end of 2015, and has been working in industry in laser measurement technology since 2017. Bergmann held several spokesperson positions at TUK, was a member of the university council from 2003 to 2008, and was a member of the board of the State Research Center for Optics and Material Sciences (OPTIMAS) until the end of 2018.