The Atomic Dance

Quantum materials feature extraordinary properties such as superconductivity, topologically protected electronic states, or exotic magnetism. These properties emerge because of strong atomic scale interactions that can be extraordinarily complex. In addition to static electronic and magnetic interactions, dynamics such as oscillations in charge density, atomic positions, and magnetic moments can all combine to support states of matter with fundamentally different properties. Intense research is now being undertaken to understand how to tune, and subsequently, control such hybrid states to enable room temperature quantum computing, enhance high temperature superconductivity, improve photovoltaic efficiency, and enable ultra-high efficiency magnetic computing schemes. Progress achieving full control of quantum materials has been held back by our inability to image atomic scale interaction mechanisms in action. However, recent advances in ultrafast measurements using scanning tunneling microscopes have covered enormous ground towards realizing the dream of making an atomically resolved ultrafast movie. This talk will offer a view through this newly opened window into the world of electronic dynamics on the atomic scale. Time-resolution in STMs has been applied to watch single spins relax; it has detected and, in turn, used minute magnetic coupling to control spin relaxation; it has been used to study and manipulate electrons hopping onto individual dopants in semiconductors; it has even been used to watch one molecule vibrate. Each of these experiments targets a single quantum object in unprecedented detail and provides critical information about quantum dissipation and environmental coupling. Exploration of the world now visible to ultrafast STMs is only just beginning. There is untold potential waiting to be tapped as measurements shift focus to strongly correlated electronic materials and to the puzzles they contain. The future of ultrafast STMs will be discussed along with Canada's bright future in the field.

Jacob Burgess received his PhD from the University of Alberta in 2013 where he studied magnetic vortices, torsional magnetometry, and time-resolved scanning tunnelling microscopy under the supervision of Mark Freeman. During his graduate studies he developed novel methods to describe pinning effects in micromagnetic structures and was part of the team that first developed THz-coupled scanning tunnelling microscopy. He then joined the group of Sebastian Loth at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter as a postdoctoral fellow where he studied the dynamics of few-atom magnetic structures using time-resolved scanning tunnelling microscopy. In 2017 he started the Ultrafast Microscopy and Magnetism Research Group at the University of Manitoba which focuses on observing magnetic dynamics at the atomic scale in quantum materials.