Ultrafast Physics in One Dimension
Susan L. Dexheimer
Department of Physics and Materials Science Program
Washington State University
Low dimensional materials, and in particular, quasi-one-dimensional systems
have attracted considerable interest owing to their unusual electronic properties.
In many of these systems, strong electron-phonon couplings can lead to the
formation of nonlinear excitations such as self-trapped excitons, in which
an electronic excitation is localized as a result of lattice distortions
that occur in response to the excitation. I will present our recent
results on femtosecond time-resolved experiments in which we have studied
the electronic and vibrational dynamics associated with the formation and
evolution of the self-trapped exciton in mixed-valence metal-halide linear
chain (MX) complexes.