25+

Publications in top-tier journals

Nature, Nature Communications, Light: Science & Applications, Science Advances, PRL, Optica

6

Researchers and scientists

From around the world

$2.2M

Active research funding

Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), ETH Zurich Research Funding

8

Active research projects

Across three research focus areas

Research Focus Areas

We study ultrafast light-matter interactions across domains of experimental and theoretical physics

Active

Experimental

We perform time-resolved experiments to capture the ultrafast dynamics of exotic states of matter in novel quantum materials

Physics Optics Lasers Photonics Quantum materials Ultrafast science

5 team

27 papers

Active

Theoretical

We perform theoretical modeling to elucidate the physical processes underlying the experimentally observed dynamics

FDTD DFT TDDFT COMSOL Semiclassical Bloch equations

3 team

14 papers

Active

Metrology & Methodology

We develop novel experimental techniques and theoretical frameworks to capture complex ultrafast dynamics of exotic states of matter

Fieldoscopy Strongly Correlated Dynamics Sub-cycle Floquet Physics Pump-probe Spectroscopy

6 team

17 papers

Recent Publications All Publications

Experimental infrastructure

We operate state-of-the-art high power carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) stable laser system that is utilized to produce coherent light of multi-octave spanning bandwidth via non-linear ligth-matter interaction and supercontinuum generation in optical fibers.

• Ultrashort (~3 fs) and intense (~1 mJ) carrier-envelope-phase stable laser pulses at 1 KHz repetition rate
• Ultrabroadband multi-octave (200 - 1200 nm) spanning spectral coverage
• Temperature stabilized laboratory
• Various experimental equipment: lock-in amplifiers, closed-loop piezo stages, low-temperature cryostats, etc.

Chemical & sample peparation facilities

We are a part of the Physical Chemistry Institute of ETH Zurich. We also collaborate with national and international research groups and facilities.

• Chemical infrastructure of the Physical Chemistry Institute of ETH Zurich
• Collaboration with renowned groups worldwide
• Access to the clean room, glove box, lithography, microscope, etc. facilities

Computational resources

We are users of the Euler supercomputer of ETH Zurich - a massive cluster of interconnected computers designed for scientific computing. We utilize it to conduct heavy computations based on for instance Time Dependent Density Function Theory (TDDFT) or Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) numerical solving of Maxwell’s equations in 3D space and time.

• Over 200000 CPU cores and 1300 GPUs
• GPU nodes for machine learning and acceleration
• Petabytes of storage
• Extensive software library with pre-installed scientific applications

Meet Our Team

Our diverse team of researchers brings expertise from multiple disciplines

Principal Investigator

Dr. Dmitry Zimin

Principal Investigator

Dmitry obtained his PhD in Physics (with honours) from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at ETH Zurich, the University of Cambridge, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before returning to ETH Zurich as principal investigator of the Lightwave Quantum Dynamics group.

Experimental Theoretical Metrology & Methodology

PhD Students

M.Sc. Melisa Ozen

PhD Student

Melisa obtained her B.Sc. in Physics (with honours) from the University of Ottawa, and M.Sc. in Physics (with honours) from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She was awarderd Quantum Electronic Science & Technology (QuEST) fellowship from the University of British Columbia for her M.Sc. thesis 'Exciton dynamics of rhombohedral bilayer MoSe2 via multidimensional coherent spectroscopy'. She is a members of the Dean's Honour List (2019-2023) of the University of Ottawa. Melisa worked as a Research Assistant at the Ménard and Luican-Mayer Labs at the University of Ottawa before joining Lightwave Quantum Dynamics group at ETH Zurich for her PhD research.

Experimental Metrology & Methodology

M.Sc. Students

Adam Muderris

M.Sc. Student

Adam obtained his B.Sc. in Physics (with honours) from ETH Zurich. He is currently pursuing his M.Sc. studies (Physics) at ETH Zurich and working on his experimental M.Sc. project in the Lightwave Quantum Dynamics group. Adam was awarded multiple outstanding prizes such as: "Best Abitur of the Year 2022"; "DPG-Abiturprize 2022" from the German Physical Scociety, in recognition of very good performance in physics; "Abiturpreis Mathematik 2022" from the German Mathematicians Association, for an outstanding performance at the Abitur in mathematics; "Rotary Research Award 2022" from the Rotary Club Lörrach, for the best entry in the seniors category; "Student Award 2022" from the German Physical Society, for the achievements as a member of the German team at the first virtual "International Young Physicists Tournament (OYPT)"; Seecond place and silver medal at the International Young Physicists Tournament (IYPT) 2021; Third and second prizes at national German Young Physicists Tournament 2019-2020.

Experimental Metrology & Methodology

Archis Mukhopadhyay

M.Sc. Student

Archis obtained his B.Sc. in Physics (with honours) from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Kolkata. He is currently pursuing his M.Sc. studies (Physics) at ETH Zurich and working on his theoretical M.Sc. project in the Lightwave Quantum Dynamics group.

Theoretical Metrology & Methodology

Mario Zingg

M.Sc. Student

Mario obtained his B.Sc. in Physics from ETH Zurich. He is currently pursuing his M.Sc. studies (Physics) at ETH Zurich and working on his experimental M.Sc. project in the Lightwave Quantum Dynamics group.

Experimental Metrology & Methodology

Nikoloz Svanidze

M.Sc. Student

Nikoloz obtained his B.Sc. in Computational Engineering (with honours) from the Aalto Univesity in Espoo, Finland. He is currently pursuing his M.Sc. studies (Physics) at ETH Zurich. Nikoloz was awarded multiple outstanding prizes such as: Aalto University School of Engineering Dean's List for Academic year 2023-2024; Aalto University School of Engineering Dean's List for Academic year 2022-2023; NASA SpaceApps Hackathon 2nd place winner; Millemium Challenge Account 2nd place winner. He was a teaching assistant at Aalto University and a Physics Summer Intern at CERN before joining the Lightwave Quantum Dynamics group for his experimental M.Sc. project.

Experimental Metrology & Methodology

Recent Publications

Fieldoscopy at the quantum limit Dmitry a. zimin, Arjun ashoka, Florentin reiter, Akshay rao

Light: Science & Applications (2026)

We demonstrate a novel concept for measuring time-varying electric field transients of petahertz-scale photons down to a single-photon regime. We observe a clear breakdown of the classical regime consistent with our Monte Carlo model. We reach unprecedented yoctojoule-level (10⁻²⁴ J) sensitivity and a dynamic range exceeding 90 decibels. We utilize this capability to measure intrapulse light coherence - a regime inaccessible to conventional, time-averaged spectroscopy. This opens new avenues for quantum information, cryptography, and quantum light-matter interactions on sub-cycle time scales with attosecond precision.

URL Cite DOI

Electric Field Resolved Image Formation in a Widefield Optical Microscope Arjun ashoka, Juhwan lim, Akshay rao, Dmitry a. zimin

arXiv (2026)

Visualizing the spatiotemporal evolution of the electric field of light is fundamental to optics, from designing photonic devices to developing next-generation microscopes. However, we lack the experimental tools to directly access the electric field of light in the sample plane of an optical microscope. Here, we introduce an all-optical imaging modality that resolves the electric field of light in the plane of a traditional widefield transmission optical microscope with 100-attosecond temporal and 200-nanometer spatial resolution. With this we demonstrate the delayed buildup of scattering contrast and pulse broadening through and around a thick MoTe2 flake - dynamics inaccessible via standard simulations. We showcase our technique’s versatility by additionally resolving the full in-plane vector electric field lines during photoexcitation as the optical pulse propagates through and around the MoTe2 flake.

URL Cite DOI

All Optical Sampling of Near-Infrared Waveforms at 505 kHz Francesco tani, Martin butryn, Anton husakou, Dmitry a. zimin

2025 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC) (2025)

The past few years have witnessed the development of multiple techniques to measure the full-electric field of ultrashort optical waveforms, enabling the study of ultrafast phenomena on sub-cycle time scales. Among them, generalized heterodyne optical sampling techniques (GHOSTs) provide a convenient all-optical approach that promises scalability to high repetition rates and implementation without the need for pulses with stable carrier envelop phase (CEP).

URL Cite DOI

Dynamic response of solids after 1-fs-scale charge injection Dmitry a. zimin, Nicholas karpowicz, Muhammad qasim, Matthew weidman, Ferenc krausz, Vladislav s. yakovlev

CLEO 2025 (2025)

Drude–Lorentz model describes optical properties of solids and is fundamental for the condensed matter physics. We measure the formation of this response in photo-excited silicon and silica to be on the order of several femtoseconds.

URL Cite DOI

Plasmascopy of ultrafast hot charges in solids Dmitry a. zimin, Raja sen, Muhammad qasim, Jelena sjakste, Vladislav s. yakovlev

arXiv (2025)

We demonstrate an electric field-resolved approach for probing ultrafast dynamics of photoinjected charges in solids. Direct access to the electric field of few-cycle pulses enables us to measure a broadband response of a medium with associated plasma frequency. We prepare an ensemble of photoinjected hot charge carriers with energies sufficient to trigger impact ionization and establish a framework to measure its dynamics. Our study reveals the first time-resolved observation of the short-lived ultrafast impact ionization in germanium counteracted by trapping of mobile charges at later times. This approach provides a promising route for studying ultrafast many-body physics in photoexcited solids, with predictions from advanced theoretical models.

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Collaborations

We collaborate with research groups from the following institutions

Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich)

University of Cambridge

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy

Max Planck Insitute of Quantum Optics

University of Bern

Aknowledgments

We aknowledge the following academic organizations

Swiss National Science Foundation

ETH Grants Office

Trinity College Cambridge

Contact Us

Get in touch with our team

Visit Our Group

Lightwave Quantum Dynamics (LQD)

Institute of Physical Chemistry

ETH Zürich

Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 1-5 / 10, HCI E 233

8093 Zürich

Switzerland

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Connect With Us

dzimin@ethz.ch

+41 44 633 93 50

Join Our Research Team

We are always looking for talented and motivated researchers to join our lab. We occasionally have fully funded positions for PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and research scientists.

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