Research

Time-dependent multi-electron interactions in atoms and molecules are essential to ultrafast and strong-field science, but they can give birth to incredibly complicated motions. We apply tools from nonlinear dynamics to disentangle and identify the mechanisms that organize those dynamics.

Electrons are the glue that holds matter together: Their spatial arrangement defines chemical bonds and their time evolution controls reactions. But electrons are light, and they move fast – so probing electronic dynamics at the spatial and temporal scales of electron motions in molecules requires equally fast spectroscopies, reaching down to the femtosecond regime and shorter.

Ultrafast and strong-field science frontiers are pushing toward studying increasingly large and complex systems, which raises formidable challenges for their theoretical and computational analysis. We use models and simulation tools from chemical physics to approach those questions.

The ATTO-CM is a DOE-funded collaboration network between Louisiana State University, the Ohio State University and University of Virginia. It is and integrated relationship between theory and experiments to study charge migration, the coherent, correlation-driven, displacement of electrons in a molecule following a localized excitation or ionization.