Physical Society Colloquium

Solar energy conversion through the lens of coherent multidimensional spectroscopy

Jennifer Ogilvie

Department of Physics
University of Michigan

Advances in laser sources and our ability to control and measure complex optical fields over a wide range of frequencies have enabled a revolution in the development and use of time-domain coherent multidimensional spectroscopies (CMDS). These approaches borrow from the powerful Fourier-transform methods developed in the context of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. CMDS measurements correlate excited and detected frequencies with ultrafast resolution and frequency resolution limited by the sample itself. CMDS has been applied to a wide range of material systems, revealing the life-sustaining structural rearrangements of liquid water, protein folding pathways and many-body interactions in semiconductors. I will discuss recent developments in CMDS that expand its spectral range and spatial resolution and illustrate the capabilities of these new approaches through our studies of the structure-function relationship and energy conversion mechanisms of natural photosynthetic systems and organic semiconductors.