About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
MS&T25: Materials Science & Technology
|
| Symposium
|
Autonomous Platforms for Designing and Understanding Materials
|
| Presentation Title |
Materials discovery using deep microscopic optics |
| Author(s) |
Pronoy Das, Sathwik Bharadwaj, Zubin Jacob |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Zubin Jacob |
| Abstract Scope |
Conventional optical approaches, which average over microscopic fields via homogenization, fail to capture light-matter interactions accurately at sub-nanometer and sub-lattice scales. We introduce deep-microscopic optics, a framework designed to overcome these limitations by describing the complete electrodynamics at this fundamental level. Deep-microscopic optics unveils the full fluctuation dynamics of microscopic fields and reveals hidden optical phenomena atomistically, particularly leveraging crystal symmetries within solid-state systems. As a testbed, we apply deep-microscopic optics to tellurium (Te), which reveals a previously hidden chiral optical spin texture within the Te lattice. Furthermore, comparing the optical birefringence of Te to other natural materials in the mid-infrared regime highlights its giant anisotropy. These fundamental insights from deep-microscopic electrodynamics offer new avenues for understanding light-matter interactions and are guiding ongoing research toward targeted materials discovery. |