Peter Hommelhoff receives the Otto Hahn Prize 2025
Peter Hommelhoff, holder of the Chair of Laser Physics at FAU from 2012-2024, has been awarded the Otto Hahn Prize 2025 for his pioneering contributions to the ultrafast control of electrons and the associated establishment of new areas of research. The award ceremony, which includes prize money of 50,000 euros and the presentation of the certificate and medal, will take place on October 23, 2025 in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche.
Peter Hommelhoff researches extremely fast and small-scale processes in physics, particularly in the interaction of light and electrons. His integration of ultrafast optics into research on electron beams, which led to the invention of a femtosecond electron source, was groundbreaking.
Two new fields of research were opened up on the basis of Peter Hommelhoff’s research. The first is strong-field physics on metal surfaces, which makes it possible to investigate their properties with unprecedented precision. The second field of research is electron optics using nanophotonic structures. This makes it possible to direct and accelerate electrons on the fastest time scales.
In the future, conventional particle accelerators could be reduced to a component just a few millimeters in size. This would open up completely new applications, especially in medicine. For example, such a particle accelerator could be installed at the tip of an endoscope, allowing minimally invasive irradiation to be carried out directly on the tumor. However, this requires further intensive research.
Peter Hommelhoff
Peter Hommelhoff completed his degree in physics at ETH Zurich in 1999 after starting at the Technical University of Berlin. He then completed his doctorate at LMU Munich; his dissertation under Theodor Hänsch dealt with the generation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a magnetic chip trap (“Bose-Einstein condensates in microchip traps”). Hommelhoff moved to Stanford University as a postdoc in 2003. He returned to Germany in 2007 to head a research group at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. After more than a decade as a professor at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, he now holds a chair at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; all of his research will continue at FAU until the laboratories in Munich are ready for occupation in fall 2026.
Otto Hahn Prize
The Otto Hahn Prize is awarded jointly by the City of Frankfurt am Main, the German Physical Society (DPG) and the German Chemical Society (GDCh). It serves to promote science, particularly in the fields of chemistry, physics and applied engineering sciences, by recognizing outstanding scientific achievements. It is endowed with 50,000 euros and is awarded every two years and presented at a ceremony in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche.