Project description
Novel ultrafast imaging technique to unveil atom and electron motion
Understanding and controlling matter at the atom and electron scales are crucial for advancing fields such as quantum chemistry, materials science and information technology. However, current imaging techniques cannot capture the ultrafast dynamics of electrons and atoms, such as their motion on femtosecond and picometer scales. The ERC-funded ULPIS project will further develop ultrafast picoscopy, an advanced technique that uses intense laser fields to drive coherent electron motion in crystals. This process generates high harmonics, revealing the spatial arrangement of electrons and atoms at sub-angstrom precision. Combining this with attosecond laser pulses, the proposed technique will allow real-time 3D visualisation of chemical bonds in condensed matter, structural changes in crystalline materials, and electron motion in ordinary and correlated materials.
Objective
Material science, quantum chemistry, electrical and quantum engineering in the 21st century focus on manipulating and harnessing the properties of matter at the level of atoms and electrons. Advancing these technological capabilities to their ultimate limit calls for novel imaging techniques that can allow us to peer into matter at the level of valence electrons and follow their dynamics in space (tens of picometers) and time (femtosecond to attoseconds). Here we propose the development and use of ultrafast picoscopy to attain this grand goal of ultrafast and microscopy sciences. Intense laser fields can drive the coherent motion of electrons inside crystals to emit high harmonics of the fundamental whose spectral characteristics embody critical information about the spatial arrangement of electrons and atoms in the sub-angstrom scale. By combining this capability with state-of-the-art laser pulses whose field waveform is confined to a fraction of a femtosecond (optical attosecond pulses), it should be possible to record movies of electrons in solids in picometer space and attosecond time scales. Ultrafast picoscopy aims at enabling the three-dimensional visualization of the chemical bond in condensed matter, the detailed visualization of structural changes in crystalline materials and the real-time tracking of atomic and electron motion in ordinary and correlated materials. We anticipate the technique and the results of this endeavour to yield benefits to a broad range of scientific disciplines ranging from physics and quantum chemistry to material science and information technology.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2022-ADG
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18055 Rostock
Germany
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