Attosecond Science in Chemical, Molecular Imaging, Spintronics, and Energy Science

Sunday, February 17, 2013: 8:30 AM-11:30 AM
Room 306 (Hynes Convention Center)
Advances in modern laser technology allow for the generation of phase-controlled intense ultrashort (few cycles) light pulses with which one can explore light-matter interactions in the nonlinear nonperturbative regime. An important "spin-off" of this research, both theoretical and experimental, has been the development of high-order harmonic generation as the main source of current attosecond pulses and attosecond physics from linear to even circular polarization. Attosecond pulses are becoming the preferred future tools for imaging, visualizing, and even controlling electrons in matter on their natural time-scale, the attosecond (the orbit period of an electron in the hydrogen atom is 152 attoseconds). Nuclear motion such as proton motion, the fastest atom in chemistry, biology, and materials, has its own time-scale of ~10 femtoseconds, which adds another time-scale to the control of matter at the atomic and molecular level. This  symposium will focus on the growing impact of this new science in modern research and future technologies, based on the ultimate control of electrons in matter. Heralded as the science of the 21st century by Science and The Economist, attosecond science is a new frontier of molecular and material sciences that will catalyze novel applications in a wide range of fields such as nanotechnology and life sciences, based on a new scientific direction -- the ultimate visualization and control of the quantum nature of the electron.
Organizer:
Andre D. Bandrauk, University of Sherbrooke
Co-Organizer:
Margaret M. Murnane, University of Colorado
Speakers:
Tenio Popmintchev, University of Colorado
Attosecond Pulse Generation and Intense Ultrafast Laser Technology
Ali Belkacem, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Attosecond Science for Steering Chemical Reactions
Stefan Mathias, University of Kaiserslautern
The Power of Ultrafast X‑Rays for Materials Science
Mark I. Stockman, Georgia State University
Attosecond Science in Plasmonics
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