Watching the motions of atoms in the course of a chemical reaction is generally thought of as the Holy Grail for understanding chemical transformations or phase transitions in solids. While recordings of such “molecular movies” have been achieved in recent years, the atomic motion does not reveal the whole story of why specific bonds break and others form. This is dictated by the arrangement of the electrons as the atoms move along gradients on an energy landscape defined by the electrons. It [more...]

The Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin announced that Christopher Nicholson is awarded the Carl Ramsauer Award 2018 for his thesis “Electronic Structure and Dynamics of Quasi-One Dimensional Materials” that he prepared at the Dynamics of Correlated Materials group.
The thesis of Christopher Nicholson (who is meanwhile at the Université de Fribourg) explores the electronic structure and ultrafast dynamics of quasi-one dimensional materials by means of high resolution angle-resolved photoemission [more...]