PIQUE Jean-Paul

Jean-Paul Pique, a former student of the ENS de Cachan and agrégé de Physique, was Director of Research at the CNRS in the speciality "Atoms and molecules, optics and lasers". He is now a Scientific Collaborator at Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique (LIPhy), a joint Université-Grenoble-Alpes and CNRS unit. During his career, he first used non-linear optical methods to study crystallographic phase transitions in solids. He then turned to the spectroscopic study of molecules. Using the first ultra-high resolution lasers, he studied interactions involving the properties of the atomic nucleus and showed for the first time a symmetry break inducing the reversal of the nuclear spin. During long stays in the United States at MIT, he studied the correspondence between classical chaos and "quantum chaos" in the very high resolution spectra of polyatomic molecules. Laser technology having made spectacular progress, particularly at LIPhy, he has developed close collaboration with researchers from observatories in Lyon, Grenoble and Hawaii in the context of laser star projects. He is currently working on a patent for a new type of laser with multiple applications such as THz imaging, lidar (optical radar), metrology and spectroscopy. He is the author of about 100 articles published in international scientific journals, two patents and has directed a dozen theses.