Professor Keith Nelson Gives Invited Talk at CHTM

August 7, 2018

Keith Nelson

Professor Keith Nelson from the Department of Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) visited CHTM on August 1st to give an invited joint CHTM and OSE seminar. 

His talk was over nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy of quantum materials. Specifically, THz electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) including two-dimensional THz magnetic resonance of magnons and strong coupling of magnons to THz magnetic fields and the possiblity of magnon-polariton Bose-Einstein condensation. 

Recent developments in nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy have revealed important new insights into quantum material behavior and have openedup new possibilities for practical applications including advanced material characteriation and control. Terahertz field interactions with electronic, lattice, and spin degrees of freedom have all be exploited in recent measurement.

He illustrated THz-induced responses including quantum material phase transitions, colossal Stark shifts, and magnetization control.


Dr. Keith Nelson is the Haslam and Dewey Professor of Chemistry at MIT. He has worked on discovery of new light-matter interactions and their exploitation for spectroscopy and control of coherent acoustic waves, lattice and molecular vibrations, excitons, spins, and their admixtures with light. He has studied the roles these excitations can play in structural and electronic phase transitions, thermal transport, chemical reactions, and other collective and molecular phenomena, in some cases controlling and monitoring far-from equilibrium dynamical evolution. He received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Stanford University, and after a postdoctoral stint at UCLA he joined the faculty at MIT in 1982.