Jochen Küpper

Jochen Küpper FRSC is a German chemist and physicist, group leader at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, and Professor of Physics and Professor by courtesy of Chemistry at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

He is best known for his pioneering work on the control of complex neutral molecules, including the spatial separation of structural isomers and their laser-alignment and mixed-field orientation. He develops novel techniques to control the external and internal degrees of freedom of neutral molecules and exploits these well-defined samples in experiments to image their nuclear and electronic structure and dynamics.

Jochen Küpper received several awards, including the prestigious Nernst Haber Bodenstein Prize of the German Bunsen-Society for Physical Chemistry in 2009 and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2013. He was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2014.

Jochen Küpper went to Lise-Meitner-Gymnasium in Leverkusen, Germany. From 1991 to 1996 he studied Chemistry at Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany and at University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. In 2000 he received his doctorate in Physical Chemistry from Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany. In 2009 he received the Habilitation in Experimental Physics for his work on the control of large, neutral molecules at Free University Berlin.

He was Feodor-Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Society at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, USA from 2001 to 2002 and at the FOM-Institute for Plasma Physics "Rijnhuizen" in Nieuwegein, The Netherlands. He then became project leader in the Department of Molecular Physics at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin-Dahlem, Germany.

Since 2010 he is a Professor of Physics at University of Hamburg and a research group leader at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science and DESY, Hamburg, Germany and since 2015 he is a Professor by courtesy of Chemistry at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

• "Spatially-controlled complex molecules and their applications", Y.-P. Chang, D. Horke, S. Trippel, J. Küpper, Int. Rev. Phys. Chem. 34, 557–590 (2015) DOI: 10.1080/0144235X.2015.1077838
• "Two-State Wave Packet for Strong Field-Free Molecular Orientation", S. Trippel, T. Mullins, N.L.M. Mueller, J.S. Kienitz, R. González-Férez, J. Küpper, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114,103003 (2015) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.103003
• "Specific Chemical Reactivities of Spatially Separated 3-Aminophenol Conformers with Cold Ca Ions", Y.-P. Chang, K. Długołęcki, J. Küpper, D. Rösch, D. Wild, S. Willitsch, Science 342, 98–101 (2013) DOI: 10.1126/science.1242271
• "X-Ray Diffraction from Isolated and Strongly Aligned Gas-Phase Molecules with a Free-Electron Laser", J. Küpper, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 083002 (2014) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.083002
• "Laser-Induced Alignment and Orientation of Quantum-State-Selected Large Molecules", L. Holmegaard, J.H. Nielsen, I. Nevo, H. Stapelfeldt, F. Filsinger, J. Küpper, G. Meijer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 023001 (2009) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.023001
• "Selector for Structural Isomers of Neutral Molecules", F. Filsinger, U. Erlekam, G. von Helden, J. Küpper, G. Meijer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 133003 (2008), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.133003
• "Indole−H2O in the Gas Phase. Structures, Barriers to Internal Motion, and S1←S0 Transition Moment Orientation. Solvent Reorganization in the Electronically Excited State", T.M. Korter, D.W. Pratt, J. Küpper, J. Phys. Chem. A 102, 7211–7216 (1998) DOI: 10.1021/jp982456x

He has authored more than 120 scientific articles; see also full publication list.