Symposium CH02—Ultrafast Probes in Emerging Materials

High temporal resolution and the ability to access non-linear optical responses is enabled by the use of femtosecond lasers. These have allowed spectroscopists to observe and rationalize photophysical processes in a variety of complex materials. Recent advances in laser technologies have also pushed these ultrafast probes into a wider energy range, from X-rays to THz and even ultrafast electron probes have emerged. These lead to groundbreaking and relevant discoveries in a broad variety of materials such as biological matter, energy materials and quantum materials. Keeping in mind the steady metamorphosis of these rather niche spectroscopic tools into standard material probes, this symposium takes stock of recent developments in ultrafast spectroscopic techniques in addressing contemporary issues in emerging materials. This provides an ideal platform for both ultrafast spectroscopists and material scientists to explore ways to converge established and emerging techniques for material characterization and development.

• Photo-excitation dynamics in materials, probed via time-resolved spectroscopies
• Structure-property relationships of ultrafast carrier dynamics via spatial probes
• Multi-dimensional and other non-linear spectroscopies exploring many-body physics in materials.
• Defect physics probed via ultrafast optical/opto-electronic spectroscopies
• Ultrafast opto-electronic probes (Stark effects, current, interface potentials) applied to functional devices
• Hybrid methods that employ optical pump and Xray/electron/THz probes.
• Role of vibrations in the fate of optical excitations probed via ultrafast Raman probes
• Experiments that include magnetic, electrical or pressure perturbations to the standard optical detection
• Materials of interest: Energy materials such as metal halide perovskites, Excitonic materials such as 2D transition-metal dichalcogenides, quantum materials including superconductors, quantum dots and other nanostructures, organic semiconductors.

• Martin Aeschlimann (University of Kaiserslautern, Germany)
• Mathew Beard (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA)
• Eric Bittner (University of Houston, USA)
• Andrea Cavalleri (Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Germany)
• Giulio Cerullo (Politecnico di milano, Italy)
• Jenny Clark (The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom)
• David Cooke (McGill University, Canada)
• Keshav Dani (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan)
• Naomi Ginsberg (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• Libai Huang (Purdue University, USA)
• Elaine Li (The University of Texas at Austin, USA)
• Kalobaran Maiti (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India)
• Jennifer Oglivie (University of Michigan, USA)
• Tonu Pullerits (Lund University, Sweden)
• Akshay Rao (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
• Claus Ropers (University of Goettingen, Germany)
• D. D. Sarma (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India)
• Julia Stahler (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)
• Sergei Tretiak (Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA)
• Cathy Wong (University of Oregon, USA)
• Joel Yuen-Zhou (University of California, San Diego, USA)
• Xiaoyang Zhu (Columbia University, USA)