Bogdan Mihalcea’s Home page

Senior research scientist 2

Address: Natl. Inst for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Phys. (INFLPR), Atomiştilor Str. Nr. 409, 077125 Măgurele, Ilfov County, Romania

Phone: +40-21-4574437

Fax number: +40-21-4574489

Interests: Quantum technologies based on ultracold ions, quantum engineering of space and time, optical clocks, quantum optics, strongly coupled Coulomb systems levitated in ion traps, time and frequency transfer (TFT) techniques based on quantum technologies (QT)

Google Scholar: Bogdan Mihalcea

Orcid ID: 0000-0001-7880-8331

Researcher ID: E-9934-2011

ResearchGate: Bogdan Mihalcea

Scopus ID: 6507672532

Curriculum Vitae

Full list of papers

Education and background

Master of Science Degree in Physics Engineering (Measurement and Control Devices), from the Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest (June 1989). During his Master studentship the work performed has been focused on atomic clocks (especially the active H maser), along with digital and analog electronics. The thesis title is: Electronic system for temperature control of a Hydrogen maser
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in Plasma Physics awarded by the Institute of Atomic Physics (IFA) from Măgurele, Romania in March 1998. PhD thesis title: Contributions to the study of transitions from chaos to order in rarefied microplasmas consisting of trapped ions, Scientific supervisor: Prof. Dr. Viorica Gheorghe. During the PhD studentship scientific interests were focused on atomic physics, precision spectroscopy, plasma physics techniques (ultracold plasmas) and quantum optics, with a particular emphasis on ion traps and the associated quantum physics
Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) degree, awarded at the CREDIS Academy – Univ. of Bucharest, in Dec. 2002. Other interests span operating systems (UNIX and Linux, more specifically FreeBSD, NetBSD, Debian, RedHat, Ubuntu, Arch Linux etc), networking architectures and network security
Moreover, a key point in the scientific activity performed is the fruitful cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), that has developed into scientific contracts. Since Dec. 2023 I was selected as a member of the European Space Agency (ESA) Facility Definition Team (FDT) “Atomic Clock”

In March 1990 B. M. joins the former Inst. for Physics and Technology of Radiation Devices (IFTAR), which becomes the Natl. Inst. for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Phys. (INFLPR) since 1996. The earlier activity relates to atomic physics, plasma physics, optics and ion traps. At this instant the scientific interests span areas such as Quantum Technologies based on ultracold ions (atoms), investigations on dynamical stability of few- and many-body systems of trapped ions, quantum optics (nonlinear states of motion), frequency metrology and optical clocks, quantum engineering of space and time, strongly coupled Coulomb systems levitated in electrodynamic traps, quantum communications and Free Space Optical (FSO) Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) links. In addition, a particular interest is devoted to quantum sensors such as (networks of) optical atomic clocks that offer excellent capabilities in (a) performing searches for spatiotemporal variations of the fundamental constants in physics at the cosmological scale, (b) tests of General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and exploration of the bounds of quantum gravity, (c) performing searches for transient signals, such as dark matter, dark energy or extra (faint) forces that result out of powerful astrophysical events, (d) Matter and anti-matter tests of the Standard Model Extended (SME) in physics.

In light of his results and particularly related to the domains of scientific interest, B. Mihalcea is head of the ion trap experiment at INFLPR.

Teaching and other relevant professional experiences

12.2023 – Member of the European Space Agency (ESA) Facility Definition Team (FDT) “Atomic Clock”
The ESA Facility Definition Team (FDT) Atomic clocks investigates future experiments and candidate facilities for the ISS follow-on platforms in LEO. The tasks of the FDT team are to update the mission concept and science, as well as update the International Space Station-Space Optical clock-Pathfinder (I-SOC-PF) mission design.
05.2020 – , Science Team Member in the ESA Candidate Mission International Space Station-Space Optical Clock-Pathfinder (I-SOC-PF)
Management Committee (MC) Member in the COST Action CA 17113 Trapped Ions: Progress in Classical and Quantum Applications TIPICQA
09.2017 – 09.2020 Technical Manager ESA Contract No. 4000121912/17/NL/CBi Laser Plasma Accelerators as tools for Radiation Hardeness Assessment (RHA) Studies and Tests in support of ESA space missions
07.2017 – 07.2019 Project Manager Contract 136/2017 Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) (Call C3 STAR) Development of quadrupole and multipole ion trap based mass spectrometers for optical characterization and chemical analysis of atmospheric aerosol particles
06.2014 – 07.2017 Technical Manager ESA Contract No. 4000111242/14/NL/CBi Feasibility Study for the Use of the Cetal Infrastructure
12.2010 – 12.2014 MC member COST Action MP1001 Ion Traps for Tomorrow Applications
1998 – 2000, Associate Lecturer at the Dept. of Electronics of the Faculty of Phys., Univ. of Bucharest. Laboratory of Electronic Devices and Circuits
1993 – 1997, Associate Assistant at the Dept. of Electronics of the Faculty of Phys., Univ. of Bucharest. Laboratory of Electronic Devices and Circuits

Honors and achievements

Scientific highlight in Advances In Engineering (Toronto, Canada) July 2018 link
2018 IOP Outstanding Reviewer Award for J. Phys. B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics
2019 IOP Outstanding Reviewer Award for Physica Scripta

Invited Lessons

Quantum engineering of space and time using ion traps. Optical atomic clocks. Institute for Space Science (ISS) Talks, Date: 12. 10. 2017 link

Other relevant expertise

Very good command of LaTeX
Very good command of UNIX (FreeBSD and NetBSD) and Linux (Debian, RedHat, ArchLinux, etc.)
Good knowledge of Mathematica, Maple and Matlab scientific environments
Good command of Sage Mathematics
Good command of HTML5 and PHP, Web design
Basic command of Python and C++

People