Members
Project Professor Kaoru Yamanouchi
Affiliation: Institute for Attosecond Laser Facility,
The University of Tokyo
Office Address: 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo
113-0033
Japan
TEL: +81-3-5841-4334, +81-80-4294-6407
(mobile)
FAX: +81-3-5689-7347
E-mail: kaoru@chem.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Curriculum Vitae
Professor Kaoru Yamanouchi is Project Professor of Institute for Attosecond Laser Science at the University of Tokyo since April 2023. He is head of the Quantum Frontiers Laboratory at Department of Chemistry, School of Science, the University of Tokyo. His research fields are in physical chemistry, especially, intense laser science, attosecond laser science, laser spectroscopy, chemical reaction dynamics, and quantum computing of atomic and molecular processes.
Honors: He has been the recipient of Morino Fellowship endowed by Morino Foundation (1987), Spectroscopical Society of Japan Award for High-Quality Papers (1989), Chemical Society of Japan Award for Young Scientists (1991), Japan IBM Prize (2000), Fellow of Institute of Physics (2004), The Best Paper Award of the Laser Society of Japan (2008), The 67th Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ) Award (2015), The 7th Japan Society for Molecular Science Award (2016), The Japanese Photochemistry Association Lectureship Award (2017), and Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon (2020).
Biographical & Education: He was born on April 27 (1957) in Tokyo, Japan, and graduated from Department of Chemistry, the University of Tokyo in 1981. After receiving Master's Degree from Graduate School of Chemistry in 1983, he received Doctoral Degree from the same graduate school in 1986 with the thesis title of “Structural Chemical Studies on Rotational Isomerism, Nuclear Quadrupole Coupling, and van der Waals Interaction.”
Experience: One year before receiving the doctoral degree he was appointed as Research Associate at Department of Pure and Applied Sciences of the University of Tokyo. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and became Professor of Chemistry in 1997. He is director of Institute for Attosecond Laser Facility, established under the Office of the President from November 2023. In March 2023, he formally retired from professorship. In April of the same year, he was appointed Project Professor of Institute of Attosecond Laser Facility of the University of Tokyo.
Association: He is now Associate Member of Science Council of Japan, Member of Chemical Society of Japan and American Physical Society, and Executive Committee Member of Japan Intense Light Field Science Society. He is also International Advisory Committee Member of Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, Series Editor of Springer's Series in Chemical Physics, Series Editor of Springer's Series in Topics in Applied Physics, Chief Editor of Springer's Sub-series, “Progress in Ultrafast Intense Laser Science,” and Editorial Board member of Chemical Physics (Elsevier).
Research Activities: Since 1980, Professor Kaoru Yamanouchi has been engaged in research in the field of molecular science for many years. Until around 1995, his major research area was that related with intramolecular dynamics of highly excited molecules and clusters. On the basis of the development of laser spectroscopic techniques, he showed how information on ultrafast nuclear dynamics is encoded in high-resolution frequency domain spectra. The series of his studies have been known to demonstrate that the ultrafast dynamics of molecules in the time domain can be extracted from spectra in the frequency domain.
For 27 years from around 1996 until today, he has been investigating how atoms, molecules, and clusters behave in an intense laser field from experimental and theoretical standpoints, making him widely known at home and abroad as one of the pioneers in the new interdisciplinary research field of intense laser science. Among his discoveries, ultrafast structural deformation of molecules and ultrafast hydrogen atom migration within hydrocarbon molecules are particularly noteworthy. He demonstrated also that the ultrafast structural changes of molecules can in principle be probed in real time with femtosecond temporal resolution using a method called laser-assisted electron diffraction.
Professor Yamanouchi has also been working experimentally and theoretically to elucidate the mechanism of “air lasing,” a phenomenon of the generation of coherent and unidirectional radiation in the ultraviolet wavelength region, occurring when an intense near-infrared laser pulse propagates in air, and has revealed that the air lasing is realized by ultrafast population transfer among the three electronic states of nitrogen molecular ions.
In 2021, after recognizing the importance of scientific research using quantum computers, he started research projects using a real quantum computer to treat fundamental problems in molecular science such as molecular vibrations, molecular orbitals, and population transfer processes in intense laser fields and has been showing how quantum computers can be used in scientific research.
He has also demonstrated that ultrahigh-resolution spectroscopy is possible by pump-and-probe measurements using ultrashort laser pulses in the time domain combined with Fourier transform. Indeed, he has shown ahead of the world that the strong-field ultrahigh-resolution Fourier transform (SURF) spectroscopy enables us to obtain a spectrum with unprecedentedly high resolution by introducing a long-arm interferometer, that is, ultrahigh resolution in the frequency domain can be reached by measurements of ultrafast phenomena using ultrashort laser pulses in the time domain.
Meanwhile, in the process of promoting experimental research, he has been developing a variety of experimental techniques such as coincidence momentum imaging, laser-assisted electron diffraction, and attosecond high-order harmonics pulse generation using home-build apparatuses with original designs. In 2010, his research team, in collaboration with the research teams at RIKEN, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (now National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology), and Keio University, introduced high order harmonics of femtosecond laser pulses as seed light into a prototype soft X-ray free electron laser installed at RIKEN Harima Institute and succeeded in generating full coherent soft X-ray free electron laser pulses for the first time in the world.
Science Promotion: Professor Yamanouchi is one of the world-leading scientists in the new interdisciplinary research field of ultrafast intense laser science. From 2002 to 2006, he has been Principal Investigator of Priority Area Program on Control of Molecule in Intense Laser Fields funded by MEXT, Japan, and developed a network of more than 45 research groups in Japan. As Head Coordinator of Core-to-Core Program on Ultrafast Intense Laser Science supported by JSPS, Japan (2004-2009), he made efforts to promote internationally the research area of ultrafast intense laser science in cooperation with research groups in six countries in Europe and North America and 15 research groups in Japan. Professor Yamanouchi has organized a series of international symposia as a chairman or as one of the cochairmen. For example, “International Symposium on Ultrafast Intense Laser Science (ISUILS)” that was started in 2002 has now received world-wide recognition as the most successful symposia in this new research field. He also organized Asian Symposium on Intense Laser Science 1 in 2004 at Tokyo and The 1st Shanghai-Tokyo Advanced Research (STAR) Symposium on Ultrafast Intense Laser Science at Tokyo in 2009 (organized every year alternating hosts between Shanghai and Tokyo groups since then) to promote the research field in Asian countries.
He pioneered attosecond science using attosecond laser pulses, which can be generated only by using intense laser pulses and established a network of researchers at home and abroad. Since 2018, as the head of “Development of Next-Generation Attosecond Laser Sources and Advanced Measurement Technologies (ATTO)”division in Q-LEAP Advanced Laser Innovation Center, he has been working with members of 37 research groups from academia, industry, and government in Japan to develop fundamental technologies essential for attosecond laser light sources and measurement devices to be installed at a future light source facility, Attosecond Laser Facility (ALFA). As Director of Institute for Attosecond Laser Facility, which was established in November 2022 under the Committee for Presidential Initiatives of the University of Tokyo, he continues devoting himself to the establishment of a joint-use light-source facility, ALFA, for the benefit of the academic community.
Publications: Professor Yamanouchi is the author of 270 original papers (as of April 2023).
