Is “ultrafast spectroscopy of quantum materials” the winning square in Buzzword Bingo or a new area of scientific research that will advance the design and discovery of new materials? The recent developments described in this article point definitively to the latter. For decades, chemists and biologists have used light pulses with femtosecond durations to witness phenomena ranging from photodissociation to complex pathways in photosynthesis. Lately, an increasing number of researchers are directing ultrashort laser pulses at quantum materials—systems in which strong electron–electron and electron–lattice interactions lead to a multiplicity of competing phases, such as antiferromagnetism and superconductivity. Many physicists believe that ultrafast spectroscopic techniques will provide new insights into quantum materials by selectively exciting collective and single-particle modes of such phases and tracking in real time their subsequent decay pathways back to the ground state.
The union of the fields of ultrafast spectroscopy and quantum materials, though, has not always...
