Still standing: how European firms weathered the crisis - The third EFIGE policy report

This research output confirms the strength of the approach underpinning the EFIGE project, which is based on the recognition that firms are heterogeneous in the extent and the pattern of their internationalisation, as they are in many other respects. The project provides more, and more precise, evidence of what makes firms successful and therefore also what makes countries successful in the context of globalisation. Internationalisation, however, also makes firms vulnerable to shocks affecting international trade and may transform them into agents of propagation of global downturns. At the time of the Great Recession of 2009, there was intense speculation about the reasons why trade collapsed much more than output. It was sometimes claimed that global supply chains were not only propagators, but also multipliers of international fluctuations. This report by László Halpern and his colleagues makes use of the fact that the EFIGE survey was â?? by accident â?? conducted in 2009 and â?? by design â?? included questions about the firmsâ?? response to the global crisis. It provides a fascinating account of what happened to them in an especially turbulent environment. The stylised facts presented in this report are important to bear in mind at a time when Europe is heading for another severe downturn.

Generation of diffraction-free beams for applications in optical microlithography

A new concept based on a Fabry–Perot interferometer for the generation of nondiffracting Bessel beams is described and proposed for potential applications in microlithography such as the fabrication of small isolated patterns. It was experimentally demonstrated that the depth of focus can be increased by a factor of about 2, and simultaneously the transverse resolution improved by a factor of 1.6, when using this technique to image contact holes. The properties of simultaneous imaging of two contact holes were also investigated. It was shown experimentally that, even in the most critical case ~when the first diffraction rings overlap!, undesirable interference effects between the adjacent contact holes can be eliminated by means of a phase shifting technique.Texas InstrumentsNational Science FoundationOTKA Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Science

Generation of nearly nondiffracting Bessel beams with a Fabry–Perot interferometer

A new concept for generating zero-order Bessel beams was studied theoretically. The spatial intensity distribution was calculated numerically using a wave optics model. Approximate analytical expressions were derived to describe the radial intensity distribution in planes perpendicular to the optical axis of an imaging lens.Texas InstrumentsNational Science FoundationOTKA Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Science