Seeing is believing: nonlinear optics on ferroic materials

3rd March 2022

Timing : 2 pm EST

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For millennia, ferromagnetism was the only form of ferroic order known to humankind. Now, however, a large variety of magnetic, electrical and mechanical types of ferroic phenomena are being discussed. Nonlinear, that is, frequency-converting coherent optical processes are very sensitive to these. Even the simplest nonlinear optical process, doubling of the frequency of the light, termed "second harmonic generation" (SHG) couples to ferroic order parameters and accesses important aspects that are often inaccessible to non-optical techniques. In particular, the coexistence of different types of ferroic order in a material can be imaged by SHG in the same experiment. SHG thus became an invaluable tool for resolving the magnetoelectric coupling of domains in these so-called "multiferroics" as materials uniting magnetic and ferroelectric order. In my talk I will give an overview of the most important milestones in the classification of (multi-)ferroic materials by nonlinear optics. This will cover basic questions such as the search for yet unknown types of ferroic order, but also application issues such as the use of SHG as a new in-situ characterization technique that tracks the emergence of ferroic order in thin films during the growth process.



Snow
Manfred Fiebig
Department of Materials
ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Professor Manfred Fiebig is known for his work in light-matter interaction in systems with strong electronic correlations. Multiferroics are of particular interest to him. Professor Fiebig obtained a degree in physics (Diploma) at the University of Dortmund, Germany, in 1992 and his PhD at the same university in 1996. From 1997 to 1999, he was a Japan Science and Technology Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo, Department of Applied Physics. In 1999 he returned to the University of Dortmund, where he headed a Junior Research Group and was habilitated in 2001. From 2002 to 2006, Professor Fiebig worked as a Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the Max Born Institute for Non-Linear Optics and Short-Pulse Spectroscopy in Berlin. In 2006 he was appointed Professor of Experimental Solid-State Physics at the University of Bonn, a position he held until 2011. Since 2011, Manfred has been Professor of Multifunctional Ferroic Materials in the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich where he now heads a group of about 20 people from, presently, 15 different countries. He served as head and deputy head of the Department from 2014- 2018. He is the leader of the Working Group Magnetism in the German Physical Society (DPG). His recent honors include an APS Fellowship and an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant with a Proof of Concept upgrade. In 2021 he was elected as a member of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), and he was appointed as Fellow of the Academy of the Sciences and Literature Mainz (Germany).