The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons from a material caused by electromagnetic radiation such as ultraviolet light. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physics, solid state, and quantum chemistry to draw inferences about the properties of atoms, molecules and solids. The effect has found use in electronic devices specialized for light detection and precisely timed electron emission.
An attosecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10−18 or 1⁄1 000 000 000 000 000 000 of a second.
Femtochemistry is the area of physical chemistry that studies chemical reactions on extremely short timescales in order to study the very act of atoms within molecules (reactants) rearranging themselves to form new molecules (products). In a 1988 issue of the journal Science, Ahmed Hassan Zewail published an article using this term for the first time, stating "Real-time femtochemistry, that is, chemistry on the femtosecond timescale...". Later in 1999, Zewail received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in this field showing that it is possible to see how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical reaction with flashes of laser light.
Photoemission spectroscopy (PES), also known as photoelectron spectroscopy, refers to energy measurement of electrons emitted from solids, gases or liquids by the photoelectric effect, in order to determine the binding energies of electrons in the substance. The term refers to various techniques, depending on whether the ionization energy is provided by X-ray, XUV or UV photons. Regardless of the incident photon beam, however, all photoelectron spectroscopy revolves around the general theme of surface analysis by measuring the ejected electrons.
Coherent control is a quantum mechanics-based method for controlling dynamic processes by light. The basic principle is to control quantum interference phenomena, typically by shaping the phase of laser pulses. The basic ideas have proliferated, finding vast application in spectroscopy, mass spectra, quantum information processing, laser cooling, ultracold physics and more.
Attosecond physics, also known as attophysics, or more generally attosecond science, is a branch of physics that deals with light-matter interaction phenomena wherein attosecond photon pulses are used to unravel dynamical processes in matter with unprecedented time resolution.
Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is an experimental technique used in condensed matter physics to probe the allowed energies and momenta of the electrons in a material, usually a crystalline solid. It is based on the photoelectric effect, in which an incoming photon of sufficient energy ejects an electron from the surface of a material. By directly measuring the kinetic energy and emission angle distributions of the emitted photoelectrons, the technique can map the electronic band structure and Fermi surfaces. ARPES is best suited for the study of one- or two-dimensional materials. It has been used by physicists to investigate high-temperature superconductors, graphene, topological materials, quantum well states, and materials exhibiting charge density waves.
The Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics is a part of the Max Planck Society which operates 87 research facilities in Germany.
Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) is an experimental tool for studying the vibrations of molecular adsorbates on metal oxides. It yields vibrational spectra of the adsorbates with high resolution (< 0.5 meV) and high sensitivity (< 1013 molecules are required to provide a spectrum). An additional advantage is the fact that optically forbidden transitions may be observed as well. Within IETS, an oxide layer with molecules adsorbed on it is put between two metal plates. A bias voltage is applied between the two contacts. An energy diagram of the metal-oxide-metal device under bias is shown in the top figure. The metal contacts are characterized by a constant density of states, filled up to the Fermi energy. The metals are assumed to be equal. The adsorbates are situated on the oxide material. They are represented by a single bridge electronic level, which is the upper dashed line. If the insulator is thin enough, there is a finite probability that the incident electron tunnels through the barrier. Since the energy of the electron is not changed by this process, it is an elastic process. This is shown in the left figure.
Paul Bruce Corkum is a Canadian physicist specializing in attosecond physics and laser science. He holds a joint University of Ottawa–NRC chair in attosecond photonics. He also holds academic positions at Texas A&M University and the University of New Mexico. Corkum is both a theorist and an experimentalist.
Quantum-optical spectroscopy is a quantum-optical generalization of laser spectroscopy where matter is excited and probed with a sequence of laser pulses.
Eleftherios Goulielmakis is a Greek physicist specializing in lasers. He is a professor of physics at the University of Rostock, Germany where he currently leads the research activities of the Extreme Photonics group. Previously, he was the head of the research group "Attoelectronics" at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany.
Anne Geneviève L'Huillier is a French physicist. She is a professor of atomic physics at Lund University in Sweden.
Ultrafast electron diffraction, also known as femtosecond electron diffraction, is a pump-probe experimental method based on the combination of optical pump-probe spectroscopy and electron diffraction. Ultrafast electron diffraction provides information on the dynamical changes of the structure of materials. It is very similar to time resolved crystallography, but instead of using X-rays as the probe, it uses electrons. In the ultrafast electron diffraction technique, a femtosecond (10–15 second) laser optical pulse excites (pumps) a sample into an excited, usually non-equilibrium, state. The pump pulse may induce chemical, electronic or structural transitions. After a finite time interval, a femtosecond electron pulse is incident upon the sample. The electron pulse undergoes diffraction as a result of interacting with the sample. The diffraction signal is, subsequently, detected by an electron counting instrument such as a charge-coupled device camera. Specifically, after the electron pulse diffracts from the sample, the scattered electrons will form a diffraction pattern (image) on a charge-coupled device camera. This pattern contains structural information about the sample. By adjusting the time difference between the arrival of the pump and probe beams, one can obtain a series of diffraction patterns as a function of the various time differences. The diffraction data series can be concatenated in order to produce a motion picture of the changes that occurred in the data. Ultrafast electron diffraction can provide a wealth of dynamics on charge carriers, atoms, and molecules.
Xue Qikun is a Chinese physicist. He is a professor of Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has done much work in condensed matter physics, especially on superconductors and topological insulators. In 2013, Xue was the first to achieve the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE), an unusual orderly motion of electrons in a conductor, in his laboratory at Tsinghua University. Xue is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, vice president for research of Tsinghua University, and director of State Key Lab of Quantum Physics. In 2016, he was one of the first recipients of the new Chinese Future Science Prize for experimental discovery of high-temperature superconductivity at material interfaces and the QAHE. This award has been described as "China's Nobel Prize".
Michel Devoret is a French physicist and F. W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University. He also holds a position as the Director of the Applied Physics Nanofabrication Lab at Yale. He is known for his pioneering work on macroscopic quantum tunneling, and the single-electron pump as well as in groundbreaking contributions to initiating the fields of circuit quantum electrodynamics and quantronics.
Fabrizio Carbone is an Italian and Swiss physicist and currently an Associate Professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). His research focuses on the study of matter in out of equilibrium conditions using ultrafast spectroscopy, diffraction and imaging techniques. In 2015, he attracted international attention by publishing a photography of light displaying both its quantum and classical nature.
In physics and chemistry, photoemission orbital tomography is a combined experimental / theoretical approach which was initially developed to reveal information about the spatial distribution of individual one-electron surface-state wave functions and later extended to study molecular orbitals. Experimentally, it uses angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to obtain constant binding energy photoemission angular distribution maps. In their pioneering work, Mugarza et al. in 2003 used a phase-retrieval method to obtain the wave function of electron surface states based on ARPES data acquired from stepped gold crystalline surfaces; they obtained the respective wave functions and, upon insertion into the Schrödinger equation, also the binding potential. More recently, photoemission maps, also known as tomograms, have been shown to reveal information about the electron probability distribution in molecular orbitals. Theoretically, one rationalizes these tomograms as hemispherical cuts through the molecular orbital in momentum space. This interpretation relies on the assumption of a plane wave final state, i.e., the idea that the outgoing electron can be treated as a free electron, which can be further exploited to reconstruct real-space images of molecular orbitals on a sub-Ångström length scale in two or three dimensions. Presently, POT has been applied to various organic molecules forming well-oriented monolayers on single crystal surfaces or to two-dimensional materials.
Photon-Induced Near-field Electron Microscopy (PINEM) is a variant of the Ultrafast Transmission Electron Microscopy technique and is based on the inelastic coupling between electrons and photons in presence of a surface or a nanostructure. This method allows one to investigate time-varying nanoscale electromagnetic fields in an electron microscope.
Caterina Vozzi is an Italian physicist, Professor and Director of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie. Her research considers the ultrafast dynamics of molecules and solids. She holds a European Research Council grant to develop spectroscopic probes for complex molecules. She was awarded the Millie Dresselhaus Professorship in 2020.
