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In a Born-Oppenheimer description, atomic motions evolve across a potential energy surface determined by the occupation of electronic states as a function of atom positions. Ultrafast photo-induced phase transitions provide a test case for how the forces and resulting nuclear motion along the reaction co-ordinate originate from a non-equilibrium population of excited electronic states. Here I discuss recent advances in time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy allowing for direct probing of the underlying fundamental steps and the transiently evolving band structure in the ultrafast phase transition in indium nanowires on Si(111) [1]. Furthermore, I will discuss some recent attempts to access the space-time limit in surface dynamics using local optical excitation of controlled plasmonic nano-junctions and tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS) [2,3].
References [1] C.W. Nicholson et al., Science 362, 821 (2018) & PRB 99, 155107 (2019). [2] S. Liu et al. PRL 121, 226802 (2018) & Nano Lett. 19, 5725(2019). [3] H. Böckmann et al., J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 10, 2068 (2019).
Additional Information The physics colloquium will be held as WebEx Event. You can register/join for Prof. Wolf's talk here
The full schedule of the physics colloquia can be found at the University of Stuttgart. All talks hosted by the Max Planck Institutes are also listed in our WebEx Program.
Martin Wolf (Prof. Dr. Martin Wolf)
Director of the Department of Physical Chemistry and leader of the Dynamics of Correlated Materials