November 1, 2018
Our new paper investigating the ultrafast response of the atomic structure of VO2 with pump-probe experiments at the LCLS x-ray free-electron laser and first-principles simulations is published in Science:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6414/572.full
Congratulations to our graduate student Shan Yang, co-first author on the paper, for performing the first-principles calculations of the atomic dynamics across the ultrafast transition!
A movie from ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations, showing the disruption of dimerized vanadium bonds in response to photoexcitation, is shown in this news highlight:
https://pratt.duke.edu/about/news/vo2-messier-transition
Reconstructed movies of the LCLS data showing the (pump-probe) temporal response of diffuse x-ray scattering patterns recorded with the XPP station are shown in supplement of the paper:
This project was a collaboration with SLAC/Stanford and ICFO in Spain: thanks to all our collaborators there!