Biography:

Andrea Konečná is currently a junior group leader and lecturer at the Institute of Physical Engineering and Central European Institute of Technology of the Brno University of Technology. She is dealing with research topics at the interface of nanophotonics and state-of-the-art electron microscopy and spectroscopy. In particular, she is interested in the theoretical description of the interaction between fast electrons and optical excitations in nanostructures, such as plasmons, phonons, and excitons, or in electron beam shaping by optical fields.

Andrea Konečná obtained PhD from the University of the Basque Country under the supervision of Javier Aizpurua and Rainer Hillenbrand. She defended her thesis focused on the interaction of fast electrons with low-energy optical excitations as probed by electron energy-loss spectroscopy in 2019. She further developed her expertise in the theory of electron-light/matter interaction at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona as a post-doctoral researcher in the group led by Javier García de Abajo.

LECTURE: "Electron energy-loss spectroscopy for nanophotonics"

The lecture will focus on the theoretical description of electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) applied to polaritonic excitations in nanostructures. We will briefly review the basics of the optical properties of solids and the emergence of polaritons at surfaces, in thin films, and in nanoparticles. We will demonstrate that polaritons can be efficiently excited by fast electrons and discuss the corresponding signatures in EELS. The theoretical overview will be accompanied by examples of recent EELS experiments probing plasmon and phonon polaritons from the visible to infrared spectral region.

TALK: "Electron beam shaping using optical fields"

The interaction of fast electrons with light suggests the possibility of using tailored light fields to control the phase and amplitude of electron beams in electron microscopes. We theoretically explore two possible setups exploiting either shaped light propagating in free space or light scattered from a thin film. We demonstrate that light-based electron beam shaping offers promising applications in electron microscopy and spectroscopy, such as the correction of aberrations produced by electron optics or the generation of well-controlled electron-sample entangled states.