Katayama Laboratory

In our laboratory, we aim at “Visualizing, Manipulating the Invisible.” We are dedicated to developing novel spectroscopic techniques using ultrashort-pulse lasers, visualizing and unraveling new physical phenomena that occur at ultrafast timescales. Our ultimate goal is to achieve true “world-firsts” through approaches that no one has ever attempted before.

We focus particularly on ultrafast phenomena occurring in the time domain of 10^-12 to 10^-15 seconds (picoseconds to femtoseconds), and on properties observed in the frequency domain of 10¹² to 10¹⁵ hertz (THz to PHz). These regimes represent extreme speeds that remain inaccessible even with semiconductor-based electronics. Conventional optical spectroscopy is typically limited by the diffraction barrier, restricting spatial resolution to the wavelength scale. Our research seeks to overcome these limitations, enabling the investigation and control of ultrafast responses at the nanoscale and even the atomic scale.

Developing spectroscopic techniques with such ultimate spatiotemporal resolution enables us to observe dynamics and to control material properties. Yet it is an immense challenge, it makes our work so rewarding: it allows us to venture into unexplored field of research that have never before been visualized.

If you are interested, we warmly invite you to join us in this exciting research field!