Dr David Ayuso

Research summary

My team uses state-of-the-art theoretical and computational modelling to investigate how to create, image, and control ultrafast electronic and nuclear dynamics in molecules with novel light sources. These dynamics occur on attosecond to femtosecond timescales (1 attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second; 1 femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second). We are particularly interested in imaging and manipulating a fundamental property of light and matter: chirality.

Like our hands, something is chiral if it cannot be superimposed on its mirror image. Chiral molecules exhibit fascinating properties, such as the ability to convert angular momentum into linear momentum (like a corkscrew), or vice versa, with potential applications in molecular rotors and spintronics. Distinguishing between opposite versions of the same chiral molecule is vital, e.g. for drug development and medical diagnosis. However, standard chiroptical methods are severely limited by the mismatch between the molecular size and the chiral helix that circularly polarised light draws in space, which leads to weak chiral sensitivity, typically below 0.1%.

Our research aims to overcome these limitations by shaping light’s polarisation in 3D to enable orders-of-magnitude more efficient chiral sensing and manipulation in gas-phase samples and in the liquid phase — the natural environment of chemistry and biology.

Keywords

Nonlinear optics, ultrafast science, chirality, light-matter interactions, atomic and molecular physics, quantum chemistry

Links