Condensed-Matter Physics & Materials Science Seminar

Ultrafast optical excitation, especially when resonant to specific lattice modes, has recently emerged as a powerful means to control and induce new functionalities in quantum materials. One of the most ambitious goals is to selectively drive structural or electronic degrees of freedom to bring about nonequilibrium superconductivity at temperatures far above the equilibrium critical temperature Tc. While this phenomenon has been observed in a variety of systems ranging from copper oxides to organic molecular metals, the microscopic physics of these dynamics is still large-ly unexplored. By focusing on the paradigmatic example of light-driven La2-xBaxCuO4, I will show how the newly developed technique of time-resolved resonant inelastic X-rays scattering (trRIXS) provides an unprecedented route to probe the finite-momentum excitation spectrum of these transi-ent phases. Furthermore, I will discuss how trRIXS experiments could reveal transient pairing dy-namics induced by a light-driven renormalization of the spin fluctuation spectrum.