Alfred Laubereau

Alfred Laubereau passed away on 25 February 2025, his 83rd birthday.

With the death of Laubereau, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has lost an excellent, highly deserving, and highly respected member. The Chair of Experimental Physics E11 is losing an outstanding and committed leader and scientist of many years’ standing. His former coworkers, also from earlier times, are losing a mentor, a personal role model; some are losing a loyal colleague and friend.

Laubereau studied physics at TUM in the 1960s. In 1970, he completed his doctoral thesis there on the generation and compression of ultrashort laser pulses, at the chair of Wolfgang Kaiser. At the time, Kaiser and his team were the center of laser and ultrashort physics in Germany and among the leading groups worldwide. Laubereau remained on friendly terms with Kaiser and looked after his doctoral supervisor until Kaiser’s death in 2023.

Laubereau recognized that research into ultrafast physical phenomena could be advanced in particular through the development of stable, short-pulse laser sources. With a picosecond Nd-glass laser he built in single-pulse mode, he was the first to deliver reliable results on vibrational relaxation and dephasing processes in condensed matter on this time scale.

In the 1970s, Laubereau and Kaiser were the first to understand that time-resolved infrared spectroscopy could provide valuable insights into the dynamics of local structures in solids and liquids. Hundreds of research groups worldwide have taken up this approach and are still pursuing it today. The groundbreaking research made Laubereau one of the pioneers of time-resolved vibrational spectroscopy.

After completing his habilitation in 1975, he decided to accept an appointment as professor of experimental physics at the University of Bayreuth in 1978. Here he developed femtosecond lasers and devoted himself to new research topics, such as stimulated Raman spectroscopy.

In the 1980s, Laubereau was a visiting professor at the Laboratoire d’Optique Quantique du CNRS in Palaiseau, France. His work on the lifetime and properties of vibrational quantum states in gases and liquids dates from this time.

In 1993, Laubereau returned to his original place of work and took over the Chair of Experimental Physics E11 at the TUM physics department, where he remained committed to his subject area of ultrafast optical spectroscopy of solids and liquids. His profound understanding of the properties of hydrogen-bond networks played a crucial role in the discovery of the so-called “hot ice.” He and his colleagues were the first to show that it is possible to briefly heat ice well above the freezing point.

Laubereau’s scientific work, only some of which can be highlighted here, was honored with an honorary doctorate from Vilnius University and the Nernst-Haber-Bodenstein Prize of the German Bunsen Society.

Laubereau intensively promoted scientific exchange and was a co-organizer of major conferences. At the same time, he was strongly committed to the interests of students and young scientists. Several members of his staff later became professors at various universities. With his typical way of allowing the greatest freedom for independent scientific development but always pointing out opportunities for improvement with a smile and a wink, he inspired young people and helped them to grow.

From 1999 to 2009, Laubereau held the office of dean of the faculty of physics. He rendered valuable services to TUM and in particular to the physics faculty.

Laubereau remained loyal to research even after his retirement and devoted himself to a completely new field of research, namely climate change. As an experienced spectroscopist, he carried out systematic measurements of the absorption behavior of carbon dioxide and methane at the temperatures and pressures present in the atmosphere. On the basis of those data, he developed a model of the greenhouse effect caused by the two gases mentioned.

The Technical University of Munich, the Chair of Experimental Physics E11, and his former employees, colleagues, and friends will honor Alfred Laubereau’s memory. His keen sense of humor, his friendship, his profound understanding of physics, and his wise advice will be greatly missed.

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