I received my Ph.D. degree in Material Sciences from the Université de Nancy I, France, in 1989. I joined the Laboratoire de Cristallographie in Nancy as CNRS researcher (1989-1993), the Ginzton Laboratory in Stanford University as Visiting Scientist (1993-1994) and the Laboratoire de Physique de l’Université de Bourgogne as CNRS researcher (1994-2000). From 2000, I am Professor at Joseph Fourier University, now named Université Grenoble Alpes, where I joined at first the Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Physique (2000-2006) ; I was director of this lab from 2004 to 2006. In 2007 I joined the Institut Néel of which I was director of the department Matière Condensée, Matériaux et Fonctions until 2010.
I founded the national CNRS network Crystals for Optical Devices (CMDO) in 2000, which I managed until 2005. I was President of the French Society of Optics SFO from 2016 to 2017.
My work is at the frontiers between nonlinear crystal optics, material engineering and quantum optics. My main achievements are : the crystal growth of KTP, and of the new compounds CTA and the associated solid solutions ; the understanding of the mechanism of gray-tracking in KTP ; the proposal and development of the field tensor formalism for parametric nonlinear optics ; the invention of the sphere method for the metrology of the linear and nonlinear crystal optical properties ; the conception of optical parametric devices with infinite angular tunability ; the proposal and experimental demonstration of Angular-Quasi-Phase-Matching ; new contributions in monoclinic crystal optics ; the first demonstration of generation of triple photons, including classical and quantum theory.
My main co-workers are Prof. Patricia Segonds, Dr. Véronique Boutou, Dr. Alexandra Peña Ravellez, Dr. Bertrand Ménaert, Jérôme Debray, Corinne Félix and David Jegouso.
Department: PLUM
Team: Optics and Materials (OPTIMA)
Status: Personnel Chercheur
Structure: UGA
Position: Permanent