New research group on Ultrafast Optics in Nanostructured Solids
- Reiter
Modern technology makes it possible today to produce structures in the size range of a few nanometers, i.e. thousands of these nanostructures fit into the diameter of a hair. For the movement of the particles in these structures, a trillionth of a second, i.e. a picosecond, is already a small eternity. On these extreme scales, completely new effects arise compared to what we know from our everyday life, because quantum physics dominates there. These effects can be studied with laser pulses and even the dynamics in the nanostructures can be controlled. Understanding them requires theoretical description and computer-aided simulations, which is the focus of our work. We consider structures made of semiconductor materials, especially so-called quantum dots, as well as metallic structures that act like antennas for visible light. The simulations allow us to predict how to control the dynamics, which is of crucial importance for applications in quantum information technology.