Joint Laboratory of Optics

Extreme and powerful objects in the Universe, such as supermassive black holes and supernovae, emit gamma rays. The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) will become the world’s most powerful ground-based observatory in high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. Its Co-Spokesperson Rene Ong, who visited FZU this spring, described the scientific high-energy odyssey.

Scientists from the Joint Laboratory of Optics, a collaboration between Palacký University and the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, have significantly refined and improved the efficiency of quantum entanglement tests, which play a crucial role in the development of quantum computers, by incorporating artificial intelligence.

Eleven enthusiastic students from high schools in and around Olomouc participated in the Summer School of Optics, which was organized for the tenth time by the Joint Laboratory of Optics. A week full of science allowed them to take a peek into the secrets of optics and get acquainted with the latest findings in this promising field.

It is not a common thing that a new telescope for detecting cosmic rays is introduced to the world. The feat of our colleagues from the Joint Laboratory of Optics in Olomouc can thus be seen as unique.

Mirrors from the Joint Laboratory of Optics of Palacký University in Olomouc and the Institute of Physics (SLO) are a key part of several cosmic ray detectors located around the world. Petr Schovánek was at the very beginning of a number of important international projects in this field and continues to look for ways to improve, simplify and cheapen the production of mirror systems while maintaining their parameters.

Today the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences has announced the Nobel Prize for Physics will go to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger. Their victory is unexpected but utterly deserved: All three laureates have made a substantial contribution to significant scientific progress in several ways.

Ivana Víšová from the Optics Division has won the second place in the prestigious Werner von Siemens Award for her dissertation thesis “The study on interactions of functional surfaces with biological systems”. She has received two other prizes for it: the Bolzano Award awarded by Charles University, and the Visegrád Group Academies Young Researcher Award. In spite of her success in physics, her journey to it wasn’t completely straight; she wanted to become an Egyptologist, and Egypt has remained her grand passion until today.

On Wednesday, February 23, the Cherenkov telescope SST-1M recorded its first events initiated by high-energy particles (of hadronic origin or originating from gamma-rays). Two telescopes are gradually being built at the Ondřejov Observatory since 2021. Among the key institutions involved in those activities are Université de Genève, Instytut Fizyki Jądrowej PAN, Krakow and the Czech Academy of Sciences.