Dr. Doron Azoury

In condensed matter physics, progress in the field of “quantum materials” – systems that exhibit a variety of exotic quantum phenomena stemming from strong correlations between their internal quantum degrees of freedom – has led to landmark discoveries. Yet the ability to understand, control and design these systems strongly depends on the availability of experimental methods that can disentangle the different degrees of freedom. Light-matter interaction based measurements can fulfill this requirement through manipulation of the fundamental properties of light.

During his PhD, in the Department of Physics of Complex Systems at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Dr. Azoury developed a variety of spectroscopy and control schemes for studying extremely non-linear light-matter interactions by combining attosecond metrology (1 attosecond =10^-18 seconds) with the concept of interferometry (using superimposed electromagnetic waves to extract phase information). Applying these schemes led to observations of fundamental electron dynamics in atomic and molecular systems, as well as the detection of weak chiral interactions (providing distinguishability between the mirror-image forms of asymmetric structures), in the extreme ultraviolet range.

At MIT, in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics, Dr. Azoury plans to implement state-of-the-art attosecond metrology together with time- and angle- resolved photo-emission measurements, aiming to resolve hitherto unexplored phenomena in quantum materials. He hopes his work will eventually help to observe, understand and control electron dynamics in quantum materials in a completely new way.