David Vojna, a post-doc in the Numeric laser modelling group, received the Česká hlava 2024 prize awarded annually in Czech Television broadcast. He was honoured for his work on the development of a Faraday isolator for the Bivoj laser system.
In his introduction, David describes the unique nature of the isolator: „My contribution is that we were able to create a device here called an optical isolator. Which is actually a very common device in all optical systems, but specifically in our case, it’s a device for a laser with really high average power and high energy in the pulse, which you can’t buy… we’re actually the first facility that’s done this.“
The Česká hlava award celebrates the best scientific achievements, discoveries and inventions of the past year. The winners are decided by an expert jury of representatives of universities, the Czech Academy of Sciences and other research institutes. It is a prestigious recognition and the largest project for the development of Czech scientific and technical intelligence. Congratulations to David, we are delighted that this talented HiLASIAN has joined the group of laureates of the highest Czech scientific award!
In a live broadcast on Sunday the 24th of November 2024, his supervisor, Ondřej Slezák, accepted the award on his behalf. He also explained to the general public why the Faraday isolator is so important for the BIVOJ system: “Light moves at the speed of light, so very fast, and we have to get it to the experiment. But if something were to bounce off the experiment, which it almost always does, we need to prevent that reflected light from getting back into the laser. Because it would get back into the amplifiers where the energy is still stored, it would get amplified and get into parts of the laser that are not built for that kind of energy or power.“
