News: 2024

An Engel group article in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters describes unexpected behavior observed in electrons passing through a conical intersection. They found the final electronic population had drastically different vibrational coherences from those it started with, a first-of-its-kind observation that is  unexplained by the semiclassical theory on conical intersections.

The Scherer group introduced a method of calculating the entropy production rate of overdamped, non-conservative, N-body systems. Their article in Physical Review E uses a novel collective mode decomposition and force field decomposition to show that the rates of entropy production and power dissipation are equal in these systems, in agreement with a theorem by Seifert.

Sarah King and collaborators at UChicago, Chicago State University, and University of Illinois Chicago were awarded $4.8 million from the NIH BRAIN Initiative toward developing a novel PEEM microscope designed for brain connectomics.

The King group introduced a strategy for functionalizing a sulfur-containing transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) with multimolecular architectures.
Their article in ACS Applied Optical Materials describes how molecular adsorption in the growth and characterization of ion-linked bilayers offers a new pathway to introduce complex molecules onto sulfur-containing TMDs.

The Irvine group created a novel active matter system that can self propel, flock, and form a chiral active phase. Their publication in Nature Physics explains how a suspension of magnetic particles driven to spin at intermediate Reynolds numbers with a rotating magnetic field was able to behave as a synthetic active system.