Project description
Modern-day ‘alchemy’ could transform crystalline material properties
The interaction between light and matter at the cross-section of optics, magnetism and crystals is a vibrant research area behind emerging technologies in fields including optical communications, quantum computing, biomedicine and energy. The ERC-funded INTERPHON project aims to manipulate and control magnetic and electric order in materials by ultra-fast excitation using the crystal lattice as a mediator. Integrating nonlinear optics, phononics and ultrafast magnetism, the team will use a free electron laser to deliver short, intense pulses in the infrared to terahertz frequency range at the frequencies of optical phonons. INTERPHON plans to enable ultrafast, energy-efficient manipulation of all crystalline materials in a universal paradigm leveraging the lattice found in them all.
Objective
For almost two millennia people are looking for the philosophers' stone, dreaming to be able to change material properties at will. While turning lead to gold might just have become a reality, even though only a few atoms at a time, in a broader sense we are still very far from this.
To make this dream come true, INTERPHON challenges the existing ideas and understanding of the interactions between light and matter, developing a research area at the junction of nonlinear optics, phononics and ultrafast magnetism, and aiming at ultrafast and energy-efficient manipulation of materials by using the crystal lattice as a mediator. Thus, glass can be made into a magnet; antiferromagnets to ferromagnets, paraelectric into ferroelectric, by exciting matter with long-wavelength light.
This fundamentally new approach to steering magnetic and electric order by ultrafast excitation at the frequencies of optical phonons has been made possible by my group’s latest work. It will involve a controlled deformation of the crystal lattice and is non-thermal (thus energy-efficient), precessional (hence ultrafast) and potentially universal (since the lattice is found in all crystalline materials). Interestingly, it does not involve any absorption of light by the very same phonons! Instead, light will communicate with matter in an interactive way, so that matter reciprocates by changing the very resonance used for excitation. To realize this, INTERPHON will develop novel research methods using short and intense pulses of an infrared-to-THz-range free electron laser.
Therefore, gaining control over the microscopic crystalline lattice could actually be the key to realizing a phononic philosopher’s stone, capable of inducing ultrafast phase transitions and permanently switching macroscopic order.
When successful, this will strongly advance the frontiers of knowledge in both out-of-equilibrium physics of solids and nonlinear optics, with a potential for novel emerging technologies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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.
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.
- natural sciences physical sciences atomic physics
- engineering and technology materials engineering amorphous solids
- natural sciences physical sciences optics laser physics
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
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-2023-ADG
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6525 XZ Nijmegen
Netherlands
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