Missions

The project aims to provide with robust crystallographic analysis of the phtotinduced phase transitions. The postdoctoral reseracher will develop his/her anlytical tools, and will carry out experiments at large scale facilities. The hosting group at IPR has expertise in advanced crystallography, photoinduced phase transitions and ultra-fast phenomena, and published several breakthrough papers on these topics.

Activities

Advanced data analysis.

Skills

We look for a very motivated candidate interested in working in a highly collaborative environment. The candidates should have advaced level understanding of materials science and crystallography. It is desirable for candidates to be acquainted with data processing (Python or similar) and be interested in developing experiments.

Work Context

One of the challenges in ultrafast material science is to trigger a macroscopic phase transition using ultra-short light pulse. During such transformations, several degrees of freedom couple, which gives rise to multiscale dynamics in time and space, so fast that they escape the laws of thermodynamics. Non-equilibrium science holds also great technological potential, and prominent examples exploiting the insulator to metal transitions (IMT) already include data storage devices or hardware neural networks for artificial intelligence [doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.17.014040]. In systems undergoing IMT, light excitation generates precursor states where correlations between the degrees of freedom, such as charge or lattice, are transiently modified and they evolve on complex pathways far from equilibrium. A new transformation pathway and photoinduced strain waves as modus-opperandi, was recently discovered in nanocrystals V2O3 [doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3239079/v1], but the full understanding of the driving mechanism requires further in-depth studies.

Constraints and risks

None