A fully funded PhD position is available at the Physics Department of Imperial College London (starting Oct 2021 or sooner) in the area of Theoretical and Computational Attosecond Chiral Physics.

Chirality is a ubiquitous geometrical property of light and matter. Chiral molecules appear in pairs of left- and right-handed enantiomers, two non-superimposable “mirror twins”. They behave identically, unless interacting with another chiral “object”, such as chiral light. Traditional chiro-optical methods rely on the helical structure that circularly polarized light creates in space. However, the pitch of this helix is usually orders of magnitude larger than the molecules, making chiral discrimination is difficult, especially on ultrafast time scales.

This PhD project aims to expand the emerging field of Attosecond Chiral Physics by developing new optical methods for efficient chiral discrimination, enantio-separation, and ultrafast imaging and control of chiral electron and nuclear dynamics, which occur at the attosecond to femtosecond timescales. The selected candidate will develop and apply theoretical and numerical approaches, and will have the opportunity to be involved in pioneering experiments.

A more detailed description can be found in https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/research-centres-and-groups/quantum-optics-and-laser-science/public/PhD_Attosecond-Chiral-Physics.pdf

Relevant references:
[1] D. Ayuso et al, Nature Photonics 13, 866-871 (2019)
[2] D. Ayuso et al, arXiv:2004.05191 (2020)
[3] D. Ayuso et al, arXiv:2011.07873 (2020)

For further information please contact Dr David Ayuso on [email protected]