Magneto-plasmonic nanostructures and crystals
Plasmonics exploits the collective motion of conduction electrons in metals (plasmons), thus
enabling light to couple with nanoscale objects, with the consequent generation of a plenty of
novel and unexpected optical effects and functionalities. Plasmonic nanostructures have been
deeply studied in the last decade due to their crucial impact on several areas of nanoscience
and nanotechnology....
Direct manipulation of the atomic lattice using intense long-wavelength laser pulses has become a viable approach to create new states of matter in complex materials. Conventionally, a high frequency vibrational mode is driven resonantly by a mid-infrared laser pulse and the lattice structure is modified through indirect coupling of this infrared-active phonon to other, lower frequency lattice...
The mechanism of high-TC superconductivity in cuprates remains an unsolved question since its discovery in 1986. Answering the question of its microscopic origin turns out to be a great challenge, complexity arises from the coexistence of several phases along with the superconductivity. While it has been argued that spin fluctuations may be crucial for forming superconductivity [1], abundant...
Zeolites, crystalline and microporous aluminosilicates, are one of the most important groups of
functional materials. Zeolites are widely used as solid acid catalysts in petroleum refinery and
petrochemical industries. Zeolites can be described as microcoporous polymorphs of quartz.
Whilst quartz is SiO2, zeolites asmit the isomorphous substitution of Si by many tetrahedrally
coordinated ...
Oxygen ionic conductors are materials of fundamental interest for the development of ambient temperature working devices for energy conversion, such as solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC)
Inelastic and neutron scattering experiments, coupled with ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations (AIMD), give the unique chance to unveil the presence of specific low-energy modes favoring diffusion events and...
Conventionally, experimental phonon dispersions are determined by inelastic neutron scattering on triple-axis spectrometers or by inelastic X-ray scattering, in both cases requiring single crystalline samples. When only polycrystals are available, the energy-dependent density of states (DOS) can be measured as an alternative.
Here I will make the point that the (|Q|,E)-dependent...
Transformations of alkali metals at high pressures is one of the hot topics of modern condensed matter physics. Exotic crystalline structures with very large and complex unit cells, unusual melting lines showing maxima and minima, pressure induced metal to non-metal transitions are some examples of this fascinating scenario. I will describe recent X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy...
The multiscale modeling of complex molecular systems is a hot topic of the modern theoretical and computational research. To fully understand the dynamics of molecular systems and exploit it in different technological applications, such as hadron therapy, surface deposition and nanofabrication technologies, construction of novel light sources and others, one needs to consult many disciplines...
Channeling is the phenomenon well-known in the physics world mostly related to the propagation of the beams of charged particles in aligned crystals. Since the beginning of 1970s channeling of high-energy leptons (electrons/positrons of several MeV up to hundred of GeV energies) and hadrons (protons/ions of tens GeV up to several TeV energies) has been applied at various famous world research...
Autocatalysis, i.e., the speeding up of a reaction through the very same molecule which is produced, is common in chemistry, biophysics, and material science. Despite the pervasiveness of autocatalytic phenomena in nature and technology, autocatalytic aggregation has so far remained out of reach of realistic numerical simulations. Rate-equation-based approaches are often used to model the time...
Recently, considerable attention has been given to the properties of systems that contain interacting point electric dipoles. Such systems are expected to manifest rich variety of exotic phases resulting from competition between the dipole-dipole coupling and disordering effects, both dependent of various factors, like spatial symmetry and dimensionality of the dipoles locations, presense of...
