CPM Seminar

Femtosecond X-ray measurements of Photo-control in Complex Solids

Andrea Cavalleri

Clarendon Laboratory
University of Oxford

One of the current scientific frontiers in physics and chemistry involves the measurement of microscopic atomic, electronic and magnetic dynamics on the femtosecond timescale. Ultrashort pulses of laser, electron and x-rays are allowing for increasingly sophisticated measurements, for example extending the power of crystallography and of x-ray spectroscopy to the elementary timescale of atomic motion. In this talk, I will discuss some of our recent contributions in this area, motivated by the attempt to understand the non-equilibrium and coherent dynamics of complex oxides. We combine femtosecond optical, THz and x-ray pulses to control and interrogate such dynamics. Of particular interest are photo-induced insulator-metal transitions in strongly correlated electron systems and the study of coherent light matter interaction in ferroelectrics.