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Controlling quantum materials with light

 

Abstract: Modern condensed matter physics is increasingly focused on materials exhibiting macroscopic quantum-mechanical effects (“quantum materials”) and on ways to manipulate their electronic properties. Ultrafast optical excitation, especially when resonant to specific lattice modes, has recently emerged as a powerful mean to induce new functionalities in quantum materials and to control their properties. A most ambitious goal is to selectively drive structural or electronic degrees of freedom to bring about nonequilibrium superconductivity at temperatures far above the thermodynamic critical temperature Tc. In this talk, I will discuss how midinfrared optical excitation led to transient superconductivity above the equilibrium Tc in cuprates and molecular solids. I will then show how time-resolved x-ray scattering methods can provide new insights into the charge, spin and lattice response of these light-driven states of matter.

 

Bio: Prof. Mitrano received his PhD from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in 2015. After leaving Max Planck, he worked as a Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Physics. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Physics at Harvard University.  Prof. Mitrano is interested in investigating fundamental problems in quantum materials, as well as in controlling their nonequilibrium properties with light. The goal of his research is to discover novel, emergent physical phenomena and solve long-standing problems in the physics of interacting electron systems. He makes use of advanced ultrafast optical methods, e.g. THz time-resolved spectroscopy, and of ultrafast scattering probes (hard/soft X-rays, and electrons) both in his laboratory and at large-scale facilities (e.g. free electron lasers).

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