Ultrafast Spectroscopy

We are probing solid state matter with femtosecond pulsed lasers to study the real time dynamics of new materials. Our group is funded by a SNF professorship grant of Swiss National Science Foundation.

Our aim is to understand the complex interplay of the different degrees of freedom that are the key actors in solid state matter: electrons, atoms and spins. In our research group, this is achieved by pump-probe spectroscopies: an intense pump pulse (specific to the material investigated) excites matter out of equilibrium and a probe pulse (specific to the used spectroscopy) arriving a few tens of femtosecond later performs the desired spectroscopy. This spectroscopic probe gives access to the transient electronic structure of complex materials.

Our research activities focuses on a class of materials called strongly electron correlated materials. For these systems, a mean-field description of their electronic properties fails, because of the strong electron-electron interactions. Their complexity leads to rich phase diagram which can easily be tuned e.g. by chemical parameters.