In occasione della sua visita presso il nostro Dipartimento, il Prof. Gregory D. Scholes, Direttore del Dipartimento di Chimica dell'Università di Princeton, terrà un seminario il giorno 30 Settembre 2024 alle ore 16 presso l'aula A.1.6 (Edificio "Renato Ricamo") dal titolo:
"Coherence Phenomena and Quantum-Like States"
Abstract
There are a rich variety of ways molecules can interact with each other and their environment, and the span of possible timescales—from femtoseconds to nanoseconds. It is desirable to develop experiments that to reveal another “layer” of information—beyond kinetics—to inform sophisticated theoretical models. I will discuss how observing vibrational wavepackets can serve as a molecular-scale probe to give insight into the reaction coordinate of electron transfer (ET) reactions. Valuable insights into electron trans-fer reactions have been established using Marcus theory. However, a complementary theoretical model explaining how vibrational wavepackets evolve during electron transfer reactions has not yet been established. I will describe a “quantum quench” model to address this gap. In the second part of the talk I will explain how to invert the paradigm that complexity diminishes quantum coherence, so that robust quantum-like states emerge from extremely large, unordered, complex systems. I will demonstrate a proposition for the structure of those states, showing how classical systems can indeed mimic the superpositions of products that characterize quantum states.
There are a rich variety of ways molecules can interact with each other and their environment, and the span of possible timescales—from femtoseconds to nanoseconds. It is desirable to develop experiments that to reveal another “layer” of information—beyond kinetics—to inform sophisticated theoretical models. I will discuss how observing vibrational wavepackets can serve as a molecular-scale probe to give insight into the reaction coordinate of electron transfer (ET) reactions. Valuable insights into electron trans-fer reactions have been established using Marcus theory. However, a complementary theoretical model explaining how vibrational wavepackets evolve during electron transfer reactions has not yet been established. I will describe a “quantum quench” model to address this gap. In the second part of the talk I will explain how to invert the paradigm that complexity diminishes quantum coherence, so that robust quantum-like states emerge from extremely large, unordered, complex systems. I will demonstrate a proposition for the structure of those states, showing how classical systems can indeed mimic the superpositions of products that characterize quantum states.
Biography. Greg Scholes is the William S. Tod Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, he later undertook postdoctoral training at Imperial College London and University of California Berkeley. He started his independent career at the University of Toronto (2000-2014) where he was the D.J. LeRoy Distinguished Professor. He was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters in 2019. Dr. Scholes was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (London) in 2019 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2009. He served as Chair of Department at Princeton 2020-2023 and Director of an Energy Frontier Research Center (BioLEC) since 2018.
