Research News

A joint team of scientists from Cornell University, Stanford University and the Max-Planck-Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg have shown that moiré patterns can move coherently when illuminated with light. Their study reveals ultrafast atomic twisting in 2D materials, overturning the existing view that light only causes random heating of the material. This work opens a new pathway for controlling electronic behavior with light in next-generation opto-electronic devices. This work has now been published in Nature. more

Physicists at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg have discovered a striking new form of quantum behavior. In star-shaped Kagome crystals—named after a traditional Japanese bamboo-basket woven pattern—electrons that usually act like a noisy crowd suddenly synchronize, forming a collective “song” that evolves with the crystal’s shape. The study, published in Nature, reveals that geometry itself can tune quantum coherence, opening new possibilities to develop  materials where form defines function. more

Quantum materials are a fascinating platform for future technologies, as they host a variety of exotic phenomena beyond the reach of classical physics. Among them, van der Waals heterostructures stand out: They are created by stacking different two-dimensional layers that can be only one atom thick. These structures are remarkably easy to manipulate, offering unprecedented tunability and a vast realm for exploration. A team from the Max-Planck-Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and Columbia University has found that van der Waals heterostructures can naturally serve as cavities for long-wavelength terahertz (THz) light. This work has been published in Nature Physics. more

Ferroic materials, like ferromagnets and ferroelectrics, are central building blocks of modern data storage technology. Yet, current platforms face fundamental limits. Ferromagnets suffer from low switching speed, while the ferroelectric polarization is generally unstable because of the depolarizing response of the surrounding material. A newly discovered class of materials, which do not suffer from these limitations, are so-called ferroaxials. They are formed by microscopic vortices of electric dipoles that can either be arranged in a clockwise or anticlockwise texture, yet they are extremely difficult to manipulate. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and the University of Oxford have now shown that the bi-stable ferroaxial states can be switched on demand using single ultrashort flashes of circularly polarized terahertz light. This discovery establishes a new mechanism that may lead to light-controlled, ultrafast and stable ferroic switching, and a promising platform for next-generation non-volatile data storage technologies. more

Metal oxides are abundant in nature and central to technologies such as photocatalysis and photovoltaics. Yet, many suffer from poor electrical conduction, caused by strong repulsion between electrons in neighboring metal atoms. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD), Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and partner institutions have shown that light pulses can temporarily weaken these repulsive forces, lowering the energy required for electrons mobility, inducing a metal-like behavior. This discovery, now published in Science Advances, offers a new way to manipulate material properties with light, and holds great potential for more efficient light-based devices. more

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD), in collaboration with international partners, have developed momentum-resolved Floquet optical selection rules. They show how these symmetry-based rules determine the spectral weight distributions of photon-dressed sidebands in time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (TrARPES) experiments across different pump-probe configurations. This fundamental work has now been published in Science Advances. more

An interdisciplinary research team from Hamburg has developed a novel method that allows for time-resolved structural studies of proteins across a wide temperature range, including physiologically relevant conditions. The new approach, called ‘5D serial synchrotron crystallography (5D-SSX)’, enables the collection of temperature-resolved structural snapshots during enzymatic reactions and provides insights into protein function under near-native conditions. Their work has now been published in Nature Communications. more

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have theoretically demonstrated that photons trapped inside an optical cavity carry detailed information about a material placed within it. By measuring properties of the photons leaking out of the cavity, researchers can probe how an optical cavity modifies the properties of the embedded materials. This insight opens new possibilities for experimental techniques to explore entangled light-matter systems. Their work has been published in Physical Review Letters. more

George Trenins and Mariana Rossi of the Lise Meitner Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have developed an efficient technique for simulating the impact of electronic friction on quantum atomic motion at metallic interfaces. Applying it to hydrogen atoms on copper, they explain the physical origin of experimentally observed diffusion rates — offering new insight with implications for heterogeneous catalysis and energy storage. Their work has now been published in Physical Review Letters (PRL). more

An international research team, led by Akitoshi Shiotari of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (FHI, Germany), Mariana Rossi of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD, Germany) and Takashi Kumagai of the Institute for Molecular Science/SOKENDAI (IMS, Japan) has successfully achieved the single-molecule spectroscopic observation of hydrogen (H₂) and deuterium (D₂) confined within a picocavity. The picocavity was formed between a silver nanotip and a silver single-crystal substrate under cryogenic and ultrahigh vacuum conditions, using tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS). more