November 26 - December 1, 2023
Boston, Massachusetts

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2023 MRS Fall Meeting

Tutorial EL02—Introduction to Ultrafast Optical and Structural Techniques in Materials Science

Boston, Massachusetts

This tutorial aims to provide the audience an overview of the various ultrafast techniques used for materials characterization and understanding.

Instructors: Peijun Guo, Yale University; Burak Guzelturk, Argonne National Laboratory; Rebecca Milot, University of Warwick; Ajay Ram Srimath Kandada, Wake Forest University

This tutorial aims to provide the audience an overview of the various ultrafast techniques used for materials characterization and understanding. The topics of the tutorial include the basic concepts behind optical pump-probe spectroscopy, ultrafast optical microscopy and imaging, time-domain and time-resolved terahertz spectroscopy, and quantum nonlinear spectroscopy. In addition, the tutorial will cover the emerging ultrafast structural probes including time-resolved x-ray diffraction and ultrafast electron diffraction for studying lattice dynamics induced by pulsed optical (or electrical) excitations. The primary learning objectives are to acquaint the audience with the implementation and the critical parameters of these techniques, so that they know what material information these techniques can provide, how to prepare samples amenable to each of these methods, and the strengths and the limitations of these methods. After attending the tutorial, a student, postdoc, or faculty member, without any prior exposure to these techniques, should be able to find the right technique for characterizing their materials of interest.

Tutorial Schedule

1:30 pm
Introduction to Ultrafast Optical Techniques
Peijun Guo; Yale University, United States

2:15 pm
Transient Structural Measurements Using Various Probes and Different Modalities
Burak Guzelturk; Argonne National Laboratory, United States

3:00 pm
Break

3:30 pm
Theory and Experiment of Nonlinear Coherent Spectroscopy
Ajay Ram Srimath Kandada; Wake Forest University, United States

4:15 pm
Terahertz Spectroscopy
Rebecca Milot; University of Warwick, United Kingdom