DEPARTMENT OF
PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY
DEPARTMENT OF
PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY
Fundamental Interactions in Solids

One of the deeply intriguing aspects of solid state physics is how many-body systems with countless particles, interactions, correlations and excitations organize such that order emerges out of the chaos. This often leads to very useful and fascinating properties, e.g. superconductivity, magnetic order, metal-isolator transitions etc., emerging due to these interactions in materials often referred to as strongly correlated or quantum materials. At the core of such complex emergent states lie the interactions between the elementary degrees of freedom in such materials, the electronic, spin, orbital and lattice degrees of freedom. Combining several quantitative ultrafast time-domain techniques to study and disentangle the dynamics of the individual degrees of freedom can yield valuable information on the forces and interactions that ultimately govern material properties and functionality.