A Quantum of Matter – 03 December 2021, 16.30
OLight-tunable ultrafast phenomena in quantum materials:
a first principles approach
Giovanni Marini
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Aula B109 – Polo Ferrari (Povo 2), Povo
Abstract
Non-thermal plasmas are physical systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium. One can take advantage of this property for channelling the energy to promote the process of interest rather than waste energy in heating the gas. Over the past y
Designing and manipulating materials by means of ultrashort coherent light pulses is a hot research topic as it allows the observation of hidden broken-symmetry states and enables control over a broad range of material properties [1]. The talk aims to provide a comprehensive look at the most recent advances of this field. Special attention is devoted to illustrate the role of first principles techniques in the understanding of ultrafast physical phenomena: in particular, the inherent challenges of out-of-equilibrium system modeling are discussed and the development of a new density-functional theory based approach for treating laser irradiated insulators is presented [2]. I discuss how this new technique can be exploited to gain insights on the material’s behavior after irradiation and predict the appearance of hidden states from first principles, demonstrating the formation of charge-density wave orders in monolayer dichalcogenides [3] and a possible route to induce a magnetic ordered state in non-magnetic insulators.
[1] J. Lloyd-Hughes et al., Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 353001, (2021).
[2] G. Marini, M.Calandra, Phys. Rev. B 104, 144103 (2021).
[3] G. Marini, M.Calandra, accepted in Phys. Rev. Lett. (2021).
Who is Giovanni Marini?
Giovanni Marini received his PhD degree at the University of L’Aquila in 2021. Since November 2020 he has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Matteo Calandra Buonaura. His expertise lies in theoretical solid state physics and his research interests include 2D materials, ultrafast phenomena, charge-density waves, superconductivity, magnetism and topological phases.
