On Wednesday 20 December (3.30pm), director Francesco Saverio Cataliotti will present this year’s Christmas lectures, featuring a diverse program that will delve into highly relevant and intriguing subjects.

Marco Bellini, a physicist based in Sesto Fiorentino, will elucidate the nature of light pulses that last for mere billionths of billionths of a second, explaining their production and the groundbreaking research that earned this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, with Arcetri also playing a role in the achievement.

Camilla Baratto, a physicist working in Brescia, will discuss the process of obtaining a digital fingerprint of plant molecules through spectroscopic analysis of molecular vibrations. Additionally, Andrea Ponzoni, a physicist and colleague from Brescia, will explore how this information can be utilized to study plants’ responses to stress and diseases. Ponzoni will also introduce electronic nose technology, demonstrating its application in capturing olfactory signals emitted by plants when they come under attack from viruses and/or molds.

Maja Colautti, a physicist and winner of the 2022 “180 seconds of science” competition, will delve into the realm of nanophotonics, focusing on the detection of even the faintest light signals, specifically single photons – the fundamental units of light.

The Christmas lecture will be available for viewing on ZOOM (link) and will be live-streamed on the CNR-INO YouTube channel (link). To ensure you don’t miss the lecture, remember to “like” the channel and activate the notification bell for the streaming event.

For a detailed program, please refer to the following link

If you’re eager to explore the topics covered in the Christmas Lecture or wish to delve deeper after listening to the speakers, you can click on the provided links:

Attoseconds

https://quantumlight.ino.cnr.it/2023/10/05/a-bit-of-us-in-2023-nobel-prize-in-physics/
https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/advanced-physicsprize2023-2.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.297
https://www.colombaria.it/rivistaonline/archives/2062
https://www.lanazione.it/firenze/cronaca/fisica-il-nobel-che-arriva-da-arcetri-fiorentino-un-contributo-fondamentale-58720401

Fingerprint of lant molecules

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9915321

Eletronic nose

https://prismlab.ino.cnr.it/
https://doi.org/10.3390/s22155888

180 seconds of science

https://www.lanazione.it/firenze/cronaca/scienziati-e-divulgatori-in-sfida-0c7606a8
https://www.ino.cnr.it/?p=20116
https://www.instagram.com/p/CjVhTvRtUmR/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Do you already have any curiosities or questions for the speakers? Send an email: outreach@ino.cnr.it