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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Statistical thermodynamics is one of the most successful theories of physics. It uses statistical methods to describe the macroscopic behavior of sufficiently large systems with many particles. A key prerequisite for the application of the laws of thermodynamics is, that the system is in a state of equilibrium and can be completely characterized by a thermodynamic potential. If there exists no such potential, the system is in a state of nonequilibrium. Due to the groundbreaking developments in the area of ultrafast spectroscopy and nonlinear optics it is now possible to create nonequilibrium states in strongly correlated materials. Modern pumpprobe experiments allow us to directly track and influence the interplay between different ground and metastable states. Based on this approach new and exciting phenomena have been observed in recent years. The theoretical understanding of these observations is a challenge, due to the many degrees of freedom in these systems. In my talk I want to concentrate on non-equilibrium dynamics in superconductors. The focus will be on two effects recently discovered: i) the induction of superconductivity by mid-infrared optical pulses and ii) the excitation of Higgs-Oscillations, which can be used to characterize the superconducting condensate. I will show how a combination of modern numerical methods, such as time dependent variational Monte Carlo simulations, neuronal network quantum states and matrix product states, can be used to understand these effects.
Host: Jianxin Zhu