Nonequilibrium materials science with a twist

by Michael Sentef (MPI for Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg)

Wednesday 16 Oct 2019, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Berlin

build. 2a, SR2 (DESY Hamburg)

In this colloquium, I will try to give a perspective on the field of nonequilibrium materials science from the point of view of a theoretical condensed matter physicist. I will highlight the exciting possibilities that emerge from using ultrashort (femto- to attosecond) laser pulses to induce and probe complex many-body dynamics in quantum materials. Specifically, I will discuss recent efforts to induce and control nontrivial topological properties of materials. This includes the experimentally demonstrated light-induced anomalous Hall effect in two-dimensional Dirac fermions in graphene [1,2] as well as the theoretically proposed all-optical control of chiral Majorana fermions [3] in topological superconductors.