Physical Society Colloquium

Terahertz Dynamics and Control in Complex Materials

Richard Averitt

Department of Physics
Boston University

The past decade has seen enormous advances in materials and spectroscopy spanning from classical to quantum physics. On the classical front, metamaterials are artificial composites with unique electromagnetic properties that derive from their sub-wavelength structure. Metamaterials enable new ways to control light with negative refractive index and cloaking as two examples of considerable interest. Moving to the quantum realm, correlated electron materials exhibit fascinating phenomena ranging from superconductivity to metal-insulator transitions. Many of these materials exhibit colossal changes to small perturbations, which includes electromagnetic excitation. This opens up exciting possibilities such as photoinduced phase transitions with a goal being to create metastable states with unique properties. Following an introduction to this research field, I will show examples of our work using picosecond terahertz pulses to probe and control matter including our recent demonstration of a metamaterial enhanced electric field driven insulator-to-metal transition in vanadium dioxide.