Béatrice Chatel is a French physicist and researcher specializing in femtosecond lasers. She was awarded an Irène Joliot-Curie Prize in 2005 for her work.

Life and work

In 1993, Chatel graduated from the Institut d'optique Graduate School, sometimes called " SupOptique." She completed her thesis at the Kastler Brossel laboratory and then became a lecturer at the University Toulouse-III-Paul-Sabatier. After a short period at the Applied Optics Laboratory, she began full time research at the Collisions, Aggregates, Reactivity (LCAR) laboratory as a research fellow. Between 2013 and 2014, she was director of the laboratory.

Chatel distinguished herself by developing a laser capable of shaping its pulses in an extremely precise way. Using this tool, researchers can break up molecules in a controlled manner depending on the properties of the laser pulse to which they are subjected. ^[1]

In addition to her work as a researcher, Chatel was president of the steering committee of the French National Centre for Scientific Research ( CNRS) national network of femtosecond technologies, which seeks to promote exchanges among scientific communities that use these lasers. ^[2] (A femtosecond laser is a beam of light that is sent in pulses that last about one quadrillionth of a second.) Chatel sometimes visits schools to share stories about her work with young people, "especially young girls." She has also worked as a volunteer at a hospital school where she "contrives to distract sick children with her physics lessons." ^[3]

Chatel was part of the team that created a travelling optics exhibition that became a part of the World Year of Physics in 2005, the same year she was awarded the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize in the young scientist category. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

Selected publications

• Chatel, Béatrice, Jérôme Degert, Sabine Stock, and Bertrand Girard. "Competition between sequential and direct paths in a two-photon transition." Physical Review A 68, no. 4 (2003): 041402.
• Chatel, Béatrice, Jérôme Degert, and Bertrand Girard. "Role of quadratic and cubic spectral phases in ladder climbing with ultrashort pulses." Physical Review A 70, no. 5 (2004): 053414.
• Monmayrant, Antoine, Béatrice Chatel, and Bertrand Girard. "Real time quantum state holography using coherent transients." Optics communications 264, no. 2 (2006): 256-263.
• Chatel, Béatrice, Damien Bigourd, Sébastien Weber, and Bertrand Girard. "Coherent control of spin–orbit precession with shaped laser pulses." Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics 41, no. 7 (2008): 074023.
• Monmayrant, Antoine, Sébastien Weber, and Béatrice Chatel. "A newcomer's guide to ultrashort pulse shaping and characterization." Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics 43, no. 10 (2010): 103001.

Distinctions

• 2005: Bronze Medal, CNRS ^{[2] [4]}
• 2005: Irène Joliot-Curie Prize, young scientist category. ^[1]

References