NEWS

We are proud to celebrate the achievements and dedication of our growing team. Our group at UCF began its journey in August 2023, and since then, we have been advancing research and student success together.

Browse the year you are interested in to discover our group’s recent awards, success, featured publications, conference presentations, and key milestones.

2026

2025

2024

2023

2026

New Special Collection

Nicolas Douguet, Jan-Christoph Deinert, and Shambhu Ghimire are pleased to announce a forthcoming collection on High-Order Harmonic Generation (HHG) in Scientific Reports (IF~4.0). The issue will be dedicated to recent advances and emerging directions in this rapidly evolving field of HHG. This collection aims to bring together original research articles that highlight fundamental mechanisms, technological developments, and novel applications of HHG.

The submission is now open and will remain open until September 2026

You can access the collection page and submit your manuscript here.

Editorial Service & Professional Service

Nicolas Douguet will now serve as an Editorial Board Member in AMO Physics for Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group).
Nicolas Douguet will serve in the DAMOP program committee for the subfield "Lasers and Ultrafast Physics".

2025

Congratulations to our students!

Jonathan Sar-Shalom successfully defended his undergraduate honors thesis titled “Entangled Photoelectron Attosecond Spectroscopy”. Congratulations, Jonathan! Check out the thesis here.
Jonathan Sar-Shalom and Braeden Larson earned their B.S. degree in Physics, with Braeden also earning a B.S. in Optics & Photonics. Congratulations to both!
Davis Robinson successfully passed his candidacy exam and defended his Ph.D. thesis proposal entitled “Advanced Optical Schemes for High-Order Harmonic Generation and Strong-Field Ionization.” Well done Davis!
Braeden Larson was accepted into the Ph.D. program at the Ohio State University in Columbus and is now working on the design of experimental quantum systems using laser-controlled neutral atoms. Good luck, Braeden!
Sarah Gallego was accepted into the Ph.D. program at the University of Delaware and is currently working in an experimental optics group focused on quantum sensing in Rb vapor. Good luck, Sarah!

Jonathan (left) and Braeden (right) at their 2025 graduation. We are all very proud of your success!

Student Research Opportunities

Jonathan Sar-Shalom was accepted into the Computing Sciences Area Student Summer Program 2025 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). During the program, Jonathan worked with the SciData Division on the GNN4ITK Pipeline; a graphical neural network framework developed to reconstruct particle tracks in the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Great job Jonathan!

Jonathan presenting his work at Berkeley this summer

Featured Publications

Our paper “Hybrid Basis and Multi-Center Grid Method for Strong-Field Processes”, authored by our postdoctoral scholar Kyle Hamer, was published in Atoms. The paper provides the first comprehensive description of the time-dependent quantum chemistry method ATTOMESA.
Our collaborative Perspective paper "Opportunities for gas-phase science at short-wavelength free-electron lasers with undulator-based polarization control" was published in Physical Review Research.

Welcoming a New Group Member!

We are delighted to welcome Ivan Schneider to our team this Fall! Ivan is a URA who will be supported by our NSF grant and will contribute to the incorporation and simplification of ATTOMESA within the AMOS Gateway.

Invited Talk and Colloquium

Douguet discusses “Probing and Controlling electron dynamics in Atoms and Molecules” during his colloquium at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in December 2025. Learn more here
Douguet gave an invited talk at the Optics, Photonics, and & Laser conference on “Temporal gating and Vortex-beam control of High-order Harmonic generation" in November 2025.

Conference Presentations

The group traveled to Portland in June for the DAMOP 2025 annual meeting.

Davis Robinson presented an oral talk with Kyle Hamer as co-author “Generation of bright and Isolated Attosecond Pulses using Synchronized Ultra-Short UV and Mid-Infrared Pulses”. Check out the abstract here!.
Davis Robinson presented a poster "Orbital Angular Momentum Transfer in the Photoionization of Excited Lithium Using Optical Schemes with Vortex Beams". See the abstract here.
Kyle Hamer presented an oral talk "ATTOMESA: A New Method for Attosecond and Strong-Field Physics in Correlated Multielectron Systems". Abstract available here.
Kyle Hamer presented a poster "Imaging the Ultrafast Coupled Electron-Nuclear Dynamics of Light-Induced Molecular Fragmentation"". The abstract can be found here.

Kyle Hamer presenting new results of ATTOMESA (left) and Davis Robinson presenting his poster on the photoionization of excited lithium atoms using optical vortex beams (right) at the APS DAMOP conference in Portland, OR in June 2025.

2024

Student success

Sarah Gallego earned her B.S. degree in Physics. Congratulations Sarah!
Braeden Larson was selected for the University of Florida Gravitational Physics IREU program and traveled to Tokyo this summer, where he developed, modeled, and built a diamagnetic levitation system for silica mirrors. Way to go Braeden!
Jonathan Sar-Shalom presented a poster on "Interferometric Scheme for Resolving the Dynamics of an Attosecond Wave packet" at the Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science (FiO/LS) Symposium on Undergraduate Research in Denver, Colorado, USA.

Jonathan presenting his EPAS poster at FiO/LS 2024 in Denver.

Welcoming a New Group Member!

We are excited to welcome Dr. Kyle Hamer to our research group this October. Kyle recently earned his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, where he worked in the research groups of Mette Gaarde, François Mauger, and Kenneth Schafer. His doctoral research focused on charge migration in linear molecules using time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), culminating in a Ph.D. thesis titled “All-Optical Probes of Particle-Like Charge Migration Dynamics". In our group, Kyle will contribute to the development of ATTOMESA and its application to probing and controlling ultrafast electron dynamics in molecules using combined intense optical and attosecond pulse schemes.

The Group Heads to Fort Worth Texas for the APS DAMOP conference 2024 (June)

Our group at the DAMOP conference in Fort Worth, Texas. From left to right: Davis, Nicolas, Jonathan, and Sarah.

Davis Robinson and Sarah Gallego presented their poster on "Strong-field ionization of excited Lithium atoms with optical vortex beams".

Check out the abstract here.

Nicolas Douguet presented an oral talk on "Harmonic Generation with Optical Vortex Beams". View the abstract here.
Jonathan Sar-Shalom presented a poster (right picture) on "Interferometric Scheme for Resolving the Dynamics of an Attosecond Wave packet". View the abstract here.
Davis Robinson presented a poster on "Generation of High Harmonics driven by Synchronized Ultra-Short UV and Mid-Infrared Pulses". Abstract available here.
Juan Del Valle Rosales from Klaus Bartschat's group presented an oral talk on our collaborative work on "Benchmark calculations for high-order harmonic generation in helium." Check out the abstract here.

Featured Publication

Our paper “Strong- Field Ionization Phenomena Revealed by Quantum Trajectories”, authored by our undergraduate student Taylor Moon, was published in Physical Review Letters. In this work, we demonstrate that quantum trajectories computed using Bohmian dynamics provide deep insight into strong-field electron dynamics in atoms, including transitions between ionization regimes, the role of long-range forces, channel closing, and over-the-barrier ionization.

Editorial Service

Nicolas Douguet is serving as a guest editor for the special issue “Ab Initio Calculations in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics: A Tribute to Barry Irwin Schneider,” dedicated to our dear colleague Barry I. Schneider, who passed away on July 3, 2024. The special issue page can be accessed here.

2023

Grants

Kathryn Hamilton (PI), Klaus Bartschat (co-PI), Sudhakar Pamidighantam (co-PI), and Nicolas Douguet (co-PI) have secured a major federal funding: National Science Foundation (NSF) — "Frameworks: An Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Science (AMOS): Democratizing AMOS for Research and Education", 2023-2028. The subaward at UCF will help support undergraduate students contributing to the development of ATTOMESA and its deployment on the AMOS Gateway.
The remaining funds from the NSF award “Attosecond and Strong-Field Physics in Correlated Multielectron Systems” (PI: Nicolas Douguet) were successfully transferred to UCF and will be used to support research undergraduate students to complete the grants' projects.

Invited Talk

Douguet presents a Progress reports "Theoretical and numerical advances for the study of ultra-fast and strong-field phenomena in atoms and molecules" at the XXIII International Conference on Photonics, Electronic, and Atomic Collisions (ICPEAC) in Ottawa (July 25- Aug 1, 2023).

Check it out here

Starting the group at UCF!

I am very happy and excited to start my research group in the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida (UCF). My group will focus on theoretical and computational studies of ultrafast electron dynamics in atoms and molecules, with close connections to emerging attosecond and strong-field spectroscopies.

Faculty Award

Nicolas Douguet received the "Outstanding Early Career Faculty Award" at Kennesaw State University (2023).

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