THE FIRST 300 FS: AN X-RAY VIEW OF CHARGE, SPIN AND LATTICE DYNAMICS

Program Description

Material properties are governed on the nanometer lengthscale by the fundamental properties of the electron, its charge and spin, evolving on the femtosecond timescale. Charge and orbital ordering phenomena can lead to metal-insulator transitions in transition metal oxides with temperature or chemical doping. Spin excitations are thought to mediate superconductivity in high Tc cuprates. Optical control of ferromagnetic order in metallic alloys will lead to new functionality. Here I will give an overview how time resolved resonant x- ray spectroscopy ideally probes such phenomena in space and time allowing us to directly observe the flow of energy and angular momentum between electronic, spin and lattice degrees of freedom.