Ytterbium thin-disk lasers pave the way for sensitive detection of atmospheric pollutants

The laser's capacity to generate high-power, stable pulses in the SWIR range is a game-changer for field-resolved spectroscopy and femtosecond fieldoscopy

19-Nov-2024 - Alongside carbon dioxide, methane is a key driver of global warming. To detect and monitor the climate pollutants in the atmosphere precisely, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) have developed an advanced laser technology. A high-power ytterbium thin-disk laser ...

Tobias Erb receives the Leibniz Award 2024

Innovative, interdisciplinary research approach opens up new possibilities for developing technologies to address the global climate crisis

11-Dec-2023 - Prof. Dr. Tobias Erb, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology and Professor at the University of Marburg, has been awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The Leibniz Prize is the most important research award in Germany and ...

How lab-made catalysts can help to get a grip on difficult greenhouse gases

09-Nov-2023 - Natural gas consists of light hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane. Such gases are more potent greenhouse gases than CO2, are constantly released into the atmosphere from natural gas wells, and are more difficult to store than, for example, their corresponding alcohols (methanol and ethanol, ...

Nitrous oxide - anything but inert

Synthesis of phenols with nitrous oxide

10-May-2022 - The emission of various greenhouse gases threatens the global environment, and scientists around the world are increasingly involved and committed to address this issue. While many research groups focus on carbon dioxide (C02) or methane (CH4) revalorization strategies, a team led by Dr. Josep ...

How humans affect indoor air

How we choose to live will impact the indoor chemistry

11-Feb-2021 - Humans emit significant amounts of chemical compounds in indoor environments. Several studies published by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry now show the extent to which we influence the air in enclosed spaces. Human bodies can have a strong impact on the chemical composition ...

Pinpointing Pollutants from Space

Industrial plants can be precisely located to within two kilometers

19-Nov-2019 - Nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2) are major contributors to air pollution. In order to accurately predict air quality and develop strategies to reduce pollution, precise emission data are needed. Daily satellite measurements can help to derive such data. The measuring instrument observes a specific ...

Anthropogenic nitrogen plays a double role in climate change

Increased nitrous oxide emissions from fertilised soils offset climatic benefits from carbon sequestration

05-Aug-2011 - Human nitrogen additions to the soil may reinforce the greenhouse effect. Nitrogen additions tend to boost plant growth, so that terrestrial ecosystems absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But recent studies have shown that they also stimulate nitrous oxide release from the ...

Quantum simulator and supercomputer at the crossroads

MPQ-LMU scientists in an international collaboration measure for the first time a many-body phase diagram with ultracold atoms in optical lattices at finite temperatures

13-Oct-2010 - Transitions between different phases of matter are a phenomenon occurring in everyday life. For example water – depending on its temperature – can take the form of a solid, a liquid or a gas. The circumstances that lead to the phase-transition of a substance are of fundamental interest in ...

Observing Quantum Particles in Perfect Order

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics succeed in recording single-atom resolved images of a highly correlated quantum gas

23-Aug-2010 - Ultracold atoms in optical lattices have evolved in the last years into an interdisciplinary tool for many-body solid state and quantum physics. But so far only limited possibilities were available to manipulate and to image the quantum gas on a microscopic scale. For the first time a team around ...

Attosecond real-time Observation of a Quantum Hole

09-Aug-2010 - For the first time ever, physicists from the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have observed what occurs inside an atom from which a single electron has been ejected. An international team from the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics, led by ...