LANS Informal Seminar: Jonathan J. Foley, IV

Seminar Title: Correlated electron dynamics and excited-state plasmons
Speaker: Jonathan J. Foley, IV, Postdoctoral Appointee, Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory

Date/Time: 2013-10-09 15:00
Location: Building 240 Room 1404-1405

Description:
One of the great promises of nanoscience and technology is the ability to control and confine light on lengthscales orders of magnitude smaller than optical wavelengths by exploiting so-called plasmonic excitations in metal nanoparticles. In these excitations, an an optical field drives collective oscillations of conduction electrons. In many plasmonic materials, it is acceptable to treat the electronic motion as being uncorrelated. However, recent work has explored plasmonics in molecular systems where electronic correlation is likely very important. For example, novel plasmon-like excitations between excited states (‘excited-state plasmons’) were predicted in linear Hydrogen chains, which have metallic characteristics but are also strongly correlated. This talk will focus primarily on the numerical methodology we are using to try to understand the correlated electron dynamics in the linear hydrogen chains, but a larger goal will be to motivate conversation about how to enable computational methodology to study correlated electron dynamics in general.