Coherent Control of Quantum Materials

Controlling electronic quantum coherence in solids at ambient conditions is a long sought-after target in condensed matter physics. Quantum pathways could be exploited to coherently convert photons into charge excitations, to manipulate electronic phase transitions for quantum and neuromorphic computing, to control and store quantum information. Unfortunately, the quantum-coherent nature of electronic excitations in materials is usually lost on extremely fast timescales (few femtoseconds), because of the interactions with the incoherent fluctuations of the environment. Nevertheless, the increasing development of the new laser technologies, and the recent advances in ultra-fast science, allow the generation of ultrashort pulses with a temporal duration of few femtoseconds, providing the opportunity to investigate the quantum-coherent nature of electronic excitations on the femtoseconds time scale. The possibility to disentangle the intertwined electronic and lattice processes in various physical systems allows to investigate their thermalization dynamics, that takes place at different time scales, according to the different microscopical processes. The ultimate goal of our project is to investigate strategies to achieve the coherent optical control of the macroscopic properties of technologically relevant quantum materials. A strong theoretical background is essential to support the experimental research, which needs suitable theoretical models, to treat the interacting systems’ quantum dynamics on ultrafast time scales. In our project, we will focus on the development of several mathematical many-body models for describing the coherent dynamics of correlated materials and on their analytical/numerical solving procedure. By combining our outcomes with the experimental ones, we will address the possibility of enhancing the decoherence time by tuning the temperature, strain, excitation protocols and chemistry of the systems. Moreover, we will develop the theoretical tools necessary to the experimental investigation of the coherent manipulation of photoinduced insulator-to-metal transition in various correlated materials, which represent paradigmatic examples of correlation-driven Mott insulators. Finally, we will possibly develop the theoretical models to control phase transition in other systems in a coherent way (e.g. superconductivity in copper oxides).