Hosted by: Cedomir Petrovic

In strongly correlated electron materials, the delicate interplay between spin, charge, and lattice degrees of freedom often leads to extremely rich phase diagrams exhibiting intrinsic phase inhomogeneities. The key to understanding such complexities usually lies in the characterization and control of these materials at fundamental energy, time and length scales. I will use this opportunity to report the recent advances in the IR and THz near-field microscopy and spectroscopy, and explain how they can be used to probe electronic/structural phase transitions with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions. Specifically, with scanning near-field infrared microscopy we resolved the insulator to metal phase transitions in 3d (VO2), 4d (Ca2RuO4) and 4f (SmS) materials with ~10 nm resolution over a broad spectral range. The results set the stage for future spectroscopic investigations to access the fundamental properties of complex materials.