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Emerging ultrafast techniques for studying quantum materials

Nature Reviews Materials (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

In quantum materials, emergent functional properties resulting from strong correlations or electronic topology offer opportunities for new applications. Over the past decade, ultrafast techniques such as photoemission, scattering and optical spectroscopies have complemented traditional control knobs such as temperature, pressure, chemical substitution and external fields, adding the time coordinate as a new dimension for understanding and engineering the properties of quantum materials out of equilibrium. Despite remarkable progress, there remains a host of open questions that will require detailed understanding of the non-equilibrium response of quantum materials to enable applications in areas such as clean energy production, energy storage and quantum computation and communication. In this Review, we survey three categories of emerging ultrafast spectroscopies for investigating condensed matter systems — attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy, solid-state high-harmonic generation spectroscopy and extreme ultraviolet second-harmonic generation spectroscopy — and we discuss their potential applications to the study of quantum materials. We analyse these ultrafast tools from the standpoint of open questions in quantum materials, highlighting the unique observables and capabilities these methods can offer to address them.

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Fig. 1: Overview of attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy, solid-state high-harmonic generation spectroscopy and extreme ultraviolet second-harmonic generation spectroscopy.
Fig. 2: Few-femtosecond electronic response in metals with varying degrees of electronic correlations studied by attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy.
Fig. 3: Optically induced spin and orbital momentum transfer studied by attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy.
Fig. 4: Coherent phonon dynamics studied by attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy.
Fig. 5: Characterization of MoS2 by solid-state high-harmonic generation spectroscopy.
Fig. 6: Solid-state high-harmonic generation spectroscopy as a tool to measure non-trivial topology.
Fig. 7: Extreme ultraviolet second-harmonic generation schemes and typical data.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for input by Graham Fleming, Craig Schwartz, Anshul Kogar, Hanzhe Liu and Matteo Mitrano. A.Z. acknowledges support from the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science. B.R.N. acknowledges funding by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Programme. S.-C.L. acknowledges support by the Berkeley–Taiwan Fellowship. J.A.S. acknowledges support by the Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme. M.Z. acknowledges funding by the W. M. Keck Foundation, funding from the Hellman Fellows Fund, funding from the UC Office of the President within the Multicampus Research Programmes and Initiatives (M21PL3263) and funding from Laboratory Directed Research and Development Programme at Berkeley Lab (107573 and 108232).

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  1. Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Alfred Zong, Bailey R. Nebgen, Sheng-Chih Lin, Jacob A. Spies & Michael Zuerch

  2. Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Alfred Zong, Bailey R. Nebgen, Sheng-Chih Lin, Jacob A. Spies & Michael Zuerch

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All authors contributed to literature review, manuscript writing, figure composition and article integration. A.Z. and M.Z. conceived the topical focus of this review. M.Z. supervised the project.

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Zong, A., Nebgen, B.R., Lin, SC. et al. Emerging ultrafast techniques for studying quantum materials. Nat Rev Mater (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-022-00530-0

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