The ICO Galileo Galilei Award Committee awarded the ICO Galileo Galilei Award 2015 to Aram Papoyan, Director of the Institute for Physical Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia since 2006.

The award citation reads “For his important achievements in high resolution spectroscopy of Alkali atoms and for his valuable contributions to the promotion of experimental atomic physics in Armenia”.

A. Papoyan’s main research interests are laser spectroscopy and nonlinear optics of atomic media. He obtained his Master in Radiophysics from the Yerevan State University in 1982, his PhD in Optics in 1991, and his Doctorate in Laser Physics in 2004.

However, the most important achievements of A. Papoyan relate to studies of selective reflection of light, a process first observed over a century ago by R. Wood, and that has become a powerful spectroscopic tool. During the past 20 years A. Papoyan performed a series of experiments, where the technique of selective reflection was used to study the onset of the multi-particle interatomic collision regime in ultra-dense vapor, to achieve phase-tunable homodyne detection of atomic radiation by suppression of off-resonance reflection, to the realization of tunable locking of laser radiation frequency to atomic resonance lines, to the determination of isotopic abundance, etc. Recently A. Papoyan succeeded to observe, for the first time, selective reflection from a molecular vapor of rubidium dimers. These studies extended the capability of selective reflection as a spectroscopic instrument and had considerable impact on fundamental and applied atomic physics.

The ICO Galileo Galilei Award Committee 2015-2017 consists of professors María J. Yzuel (Chair, ICO VP), Anna Consortini, Nataliya Kundikova, Fernando Mendoza Santoyo, and Joseph Niemela (ICO VP).