MSE Seminar/NanoColloquium: Dmitri Basov, Columbia University
Friday, February 9, 2018
1:00 p.m.
2110 Chem/Nuc Engineering Building
For More Information:
Robert Briber
rbriber@umd.edu

Title: Polaritons in van der Waals materials: Insights from near field nano-optics

Abstract:

In 1944 Hans Bethe reported on “the diffraction of electromagnetic radiation by a hole small compared with the wave-length.” This seminal paper was among the early precursors to a new and vibrant area of research: near field nano-optics.  In this seminar, Dr. Basov will discuss recent nano-optical experiments on van der Waals materials including graphene and transition metal dichalocogenides. Central to the nano-optical exploration of quantum materials is the notion of polaritons: hybrid light matter modes that are omnipresent in polarizable media. Infrared nano-optics allows one to directly image polaritonic standing waves yielding rich insights into the electronic phenomena of the host material supporting polaritons. Dr. Basov will give a progress report on the search for the role of the Berry phase in the properties of graphene via transient polaritonic imaging.

Background:

Dmitri Basov received the M.S. degree (1988) from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and his Ph.D. (1991) from the Lebedev Physics Institute, Academy of Sciences of Russia. He was a postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Regensburg (1991) and McMaster University (1992-1996). In 1996, he held an Assistant Physicist appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He joined the faculty of the University of California, San Diego, as an Assistant Professor in 1997 and was promoted to Professor in 2001. Currently, he is a Professor of Physics at Columbia University in New York. Dr. Basov is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (’05) and has received several awards for his contributions to science, including the NSF Career Award (1998), the Ludwig Genzel Prize (2004), the Humboldt Research Award (2009) and the Frank Isakson Prize for Optical Effects in Solids (APS, 2012). Dr. Basov has developed and used various infrared techniques to investigate novel electronic and magnetic phenomena in a wide variety of materials including high-Tc superconductors, transition metal oxides, ferromagnetic semiconductors, organic materials, and most recently, graphene. An element of his research is the exploration of optical phenomena originating from many body effects and electronic correlations.