Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter

With twelve Synergy Grants, the Max Planck Society claims top spot in the ERC ranking

The Magnetic Multiscale Modelling Suite supports the development of magnets without rare earth elements

This result puts Max Planck in second place in a Europe-wide comparison

Max Planck–New York Center for Nonequilibrium Quantum Phenomena inaugurated in New York City

Researchers from Hamburg, Potsdam and Toronto watch work of an enzyme in unprecedented detail

To alter properties of materials with light as if with the wave of a magic wand: that is Andrea Cavalleri’s mission. The Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg uses lasers to change the behavior of crystals, fleetingly producing superconductors that conduct electricity without loss at room temperature.

Whether or not crystal structures are mirror symmetric determines how their electrons behave. Researchers at the MPSD, working with an international team, have shown that, surprisingly, the electrons of the Kagome superconductor CsV₃Sb₅ display a chiral behaviour, despite their achiral crystal structure. An emergent electronic order breaks the mirror symmetry – a newly discovered phenomenon – and this order can be switched by magnetic fields. Such a switchable chirality could play an important role for future technologies.

In recent years, it has become possible to create short and strong laser pulses with many photons that interact with materials on extremely fast time scales and change the materials’ behavior. By contrast, in the adjacent research field of quantum optics, the quantum fluctuations of light take center stage, with only few virtual photons bubbling in and out of existence in the vacuum. At the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg we are now bridging these two fields and exploring the potential of both classical and quantum light to create designer materials with tailor-made properties that could enable new energy-saving and quantum-technology applications.

Just how has nature optimized certain biological structures to optimally transduce chemistry into living systems? In the area of barrier-crossing, which takes around 100 femtoseconds, there is a proposal that nature has optimized form and function to exploit quantum effects by environmental engineering to extend coherences - even electronic coherences - on the timescale relevant to electronic motions sensitive to the environment fluctuations. In enzymatic processes lasting microseconds and above, stochastic thermally driven motions need to steer the chemistry to drive biological functions.

Superconductors at very low temperatures show the remarkable property of being able to conduct electrical current without any resistance. However, the use of these materials in everyday life applications is severely limited by the need for cooling to at least minus 70 degrees Celsius. In carbon-based molecules, irradiation with intense mid-infrared laser light has now enabled to induce a short-lived transient superconducting state at higher temperatures. The knowledge gained might help in the development of materials that become superconducting at significantly higher temperatures.

The properties of matter, e.g., the conductivity, can be tailored with light. This can be done with a lot of photons that are part of a laser beam, or in certain cases only a few photons are enough. In the theory department of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg, researchers use both extreme cases to investigate novel states of matter: a laser allows theoretically generating hitherto unobserved states of matter and via a few photons chemical reactions can be altered.