Expert Exchange: Improving the Laboratory of Electron Induced Fluorescence

Europlanet 2024 RI’s Expert Exchange Programme aims to support the planetary community to share expertise and best practice, and to prepare new facilities and services. The programme provides funding for short visits (up to one week). 

Dr Juraj Orszagh and PhD student, Barbora Stachova, from the Laboratory of Electron Induced Fluorescence (LEIF), Department of Experimental Physics, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia visited Dennis Bodewits at Auburn University in Alabama, USA, from 26 June – 3 July 2022.

The aim of the visit was to deepen the existing scientific collaboration between the LEIF group at Comenius and the Department of Physics at Auburn, and to plan future cooperations. The overlap and common interests of the experimental research between the groups are extensive and provide many possibilities for further cooperation in the field of astrophysics and in wider molecular physics. In particular, LEIF output data serve as a reference for analysing astrophysical observations and are useful as input for various models of atmospheres and comas.

As well as visiting facilities and learning more abou the research carried out at Auburn, Juraj and Barbora participated in a colloquium where they introduced the Department of Experimental Physics, their research, and latest experimental results. This led to led to a rich discussion and a proposal for deeper collaboration in the near future, including cooperations to strengthen the capacity of LEIF to produce output data in a format most useful for astrophysical research and make the facility’s contribution to Europlanet efforts more valuable.

Prof Bodewits and Dr Steven Bromley were preparing for a Transnational Access to LEIF later in July 2022, so considerable time was spent discussing the details of the planned experiments aimed at electron-induced fluorescence of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

A further outcome of the visit is support by Auburn University in developing a more progressive teaching methods and active learning techniques to support teachers and students at Comenius University.

Read the full reports by Juraj Orszagh and Barbora Stachova.

Expert Exchange Objectives covered by this visit: Improvement of Facilities and Infrastructure, Training for Transnational Access, Early Career Support.

Find out more about the Europlanet Expert Exchange Programme.