[Seminar] Ultrafast Dynamics and Control in Quantum Materials by Richard Averitt

[Seminar]

Title: Ultrafast Dynamics and Control in Quantum Materials

Speaker: Professor. Richard Averitt

Institution: UC San Diego

Abstract:

The past decade has seen enormous advances in the synthesis and ultrafast optical spectroscopy of quantum materials. Indeed, quantum materials exhibit fascinating phenomena ranging from superconductivity to metal-insulator transitions.  Many of these materials exhibit colossal changes to external perturbation, which includes electromagnetic excitation [1]. This opens up exciting possibilities such as photoinduced phase transitions with the goal to create and control novel states with unique properties. To illustrate the richness of this still emerging field, I will present examples that include optically induced metastable insulator-to-metal phase transitions, and recent work on photoinduced phenomena in superconductors.

[1] D. N. Basov, R. D. Averitt, D. Hsieh, "Towards properties on demand in quantum materials," Nature Materials 16, 1077 (2017).

Biography:

Richard Averitt received his PhD from Rice University for work on the synthesis and optical characterization of gold nanoshells. Following this, Richard was a Los Alamos National Laboratory Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow where his work focused on time resolved far-infrared spectroscopy of strongly correlated electron materials. In 2001, Richard became a member of the technical staff at Los Alamos, and in 2005 a member of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies co-located at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. In 2007, Richard joined Boston University as a faculty member in the Department of Physics and the Boston University Photonics Center. Since 2014, Richard has been with the Department of Physics at UCSD. Richard’s research is directed towards characterizing, creating, and controlling the optical and electronic properties of complex materials using terahertz and ultrafast optical spectroscopy. This includes metamaterials, plasmonics, and correlated electron materials. Richard is a 2014 Fellow of the Optical Society of America and a 2016 Fellow of the American Physical Society.