Condensed Matter Seminar (News&Views series): Thursday 30 Sept 2021 at 11:00 am

[CMSP Seminars Secretariat]

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Virtual - Zoom Meeting

CMSP News & Views Seminar
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/The News & Views Seminars are meant to address our section as a whole, 
and therefore include an extensive pedagogical introduction to the 
topic, and present the main physical ideas of the research in a way 
understandable by everybody in the section. The goal is to bridge 
distances among different subgroups of our diverse CMSP section. //The 
diversity in our section makes it a unique place for crossing bridges 
among different topics, and for cross-fertilization among seemingly 
distant fields. /
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** * * Thursday, 30 September 2021 at 11:00 a.m.*** * **

Speaker: *Emilio Artacho*
(University of Cambridge, UK,  and NanoGUNE, Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain)

Title: *Theory and simulation of electronic stopping of nuclear 
projectiles traversing matter *

Register in advance at:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcucuyrqD0jH9KJw7_cxnYhgTmoSt48BWnw

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing 
information about joining the seminar.


_Abstract_:


Nuclei shooting through matter transfer energy to the electrons along 
its trajectory at rates of up to keV per Angstrom. This rate depends on 
the projectile velocity, peaking when this velocity is similar to 
average electron velocities in the system, typically around two to five 
percent of the speed of light. Because of its interest to radiation 
damage in various contexts (mostly nuclear, aerospace, and medical), the 
problem hasbeen studied for over a century, but surprisingly there is 
still a lot to be learned about the microscopic processes taking place 
beyond what obtained from perturbative approaches. The reason is that, 
although it is a quite fundamental, general, unsophisticated problem 
(charged point particles moving through condensed matter), it is 
strongly non-adiabatic and very strongly far from equilibrium. It is 
also nanoscopic (around the projectile) and of quantum nature.

I will present our efforts in advancing our understanding of such 
processes by means of simulations based on time-dependent 
density-functional theory in real time, but also some notes on 
theoretical and methodological advances prompted by the problem. In 
particular, a Floquet formulation for constant-velocity projectiles 
traveling along periodic directions in solids, as well as, time 
permitting, on geometrical aspects of dealing with quantum evolution in 
an evolving Hilbert space, which we had to face given our use of atomic 
orbitals as basis sets.


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CMSP Seminars support:OnlineCMSP at ictp.it  

CMSP, Condensed Matter & Statistical Physics Section
http://www.ictp.it/research/cmsp.aspx

The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics
https://www.ictp.it/

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