Research News

A collaborative team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD), Nanjing University, Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory (SLAB), and international partners has introduced a new method to regulate exotic electronic states in two-dimensional materials. more

Chirality is a fundamental property of matter that determines many biological, chemical and physical phenomena. Chiral solids, for example, offer exciting opportunities for catalysis, sensing and optical devices by enabling unique interactions with chiral molecules and polarized light. These properties are however established when the material is grown, that is, the left- and right-handed enantiomers cannot be converted into one another without melting and recrystallization. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and the University of Oxford have shown that terahertz light can induce chirality in a non-chiral crystal, allowing either left- or right-handed enantiomers to emerge on demand. The finding, reported in Science, opens up exciting possibilities for exploring novel non-equilibrium phenomena in complex materials. more

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and MIT have successfully created a new, long-lasting magnetic state in an antiferromagnetic material using only light. This breakthrough holds significant promise for advancing information processing and memory chip technology. The team reports the direct stimulation of atoms in an antiferromagnetic material with a terahertz laser—a light source oscillating more than a trillion times per second. By tuning the laser’s frequency to match the natural vibrations of the material’s atoms, they induced an ultrafast change in the atomic structure, ultimately driving the system into a novel magnetic state. Their work has been published in Nature. more

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter have made a groundbreaking advancement in light-controlled superconductivity, demonstrating that superconducting properties can be enhanced by coupling materials with quantum light in optical cavities. This study uses magnesium diboride (MgB₂), a well-known phonon-mediated superconductor, and employs state-of-the-art quantum electrodynamical density-functional theory (QEDFT) to reveal how photon vacuum fluctuations inside an optical cavity can increase its superconducting transition temperature. more

Researchers at the MPSD and Brookhaven National Laboratory used two-dimensional terahertz spectroscopy (2DTS) in a non-collinear geometry for the first time to isolate specific terahertz nonlinearities in the cuprate superconductor La_1.83Sr_0.17CuO₄ by their emission direction. Their work has been published in Nature Physics. more

The multiferroic NiI₂ has greater magnetoelectric coupling than any known material of its kind, making it a prime candidate for technology advances, an international research team reports in Nature.  more

Researchers in the Cavalleri group discover that photo-excited YBa₂Cu₃O_6.48, in addition to featuring near zero resistance, also expels a static magnetic field from its interior. Their work has been published in Nature. more

A theory team from the MPSD collaborating with researchers in the United States and Switzerland has explained the key mechanism leading to terahertz amplification in the excitonic insulator candidate Ta₂NiSe₅. The work has been published in Nature Communications. more

An investigation of the Kagome metal AV₃Sb₅ without external perturbations has yielded new insights into this group of materials. The work, now published in Nature Physics, is a crucial step in order to understand the intrinsic electronic ground state of this material.  more

Measurements of the fluctuations of the atomic positions in SrTiO₃ under mid-infrared light yield new insights into the creation of the material’s ferroelectric state. An MPSD research team reports in Nature Materials that the material transforms into a state of permanently ordered electrical dipoles.  more