The History of the Institute
The MPQ in flux: 1993 to 1998
In 1993, Dr. Siegbert Witkowski retired and was awarded emeritus status, thus concluding the experiments with the Asterix high-power laser. The laser was dismantled in 1997 and at the end of 1998 was brought to the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Academy of Sciences in Prague, where it remains in operation to this day. Further research on light-plasma interaction was continued up until 2004 by the Laser Plasmas working group led by Prof. Klaus-Jürgen Witte and Prof. Jürgen Meyer-ter-Vehn.
In 1993, the Gravitational Waves project group of Prof. Karsten Danzmann moved to Hannover, where the first test measurements for the experiment were carried out. Until 2001, the project group had the status of an outpost of the MPQ. In 2002, it was incorporated into the Albert Einstein Institute/MPI for Gravitational Physics, which, since then, has sites in both Potsdam and Hannover.