Driven quantum materials

Professor Andrea Cavalleri from the Department of Physics at Oxford and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Germany will discuss how coherent electromagnetic radiation at Tera-Herz frequencies can be used to drive quantum solids periodically, leading to non-equilibrium magnetic, ferroelectric and superconducting phases. These ordering phenomena are sometimes observed at temperatures higher than the thermodynamic transition temperatures, due to induced synchronization between otherwise incoherent fluctuations. He will also discuss how these phenomena can be interrogated, introducing along the way many innovations in experimental methods to study materials physics at the shortest timescales.