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PV: Plenarvorträge

PV XVI

PV XVI: Prize Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2015, 13:15–13:45, H 0105

Light control of functional materials — •Andrea Cavalleri — Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg, Germany — Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK --- Laureate of the Max-Born-Prize

In this talk I will discuss how light is emerging as a new tool to imprint new properties and functionalities in solids. Work of ever increasing experimental sophistication is being fuelled by a revolution in optical technology and laser science, which is making it possible to drive and interrogate matter on the shortest time- and length-scales. Both by driving charge excitations across electronic bands, or by controlling other excitations with nonlinear THz-frequency optical techniques, coherent control has been amply shown to turn insulators into metals, switch the magnetic state of solids and even induce superconducting coherence. Behind the ever-increasing body of work in this area, is a desire to understand non-equilibrium many-body physics and to invent new technologies for data manipulation and storage at ultrahigh speeds.