The Quantum Light-Matter Cooperative

The Quantum Light-Matter Cooperative’s (QLMC) mission is to understand, design, and ultimately control light-driven physical processes to help solve interconnected socio-technological challenges. We work on groundbreaking frameworks for filming the quantum world – in essence, we are quantum documentary filmmakers. This work is enabled by developing novel instruments that orchestrate and capture images of electronic, atomic, and molecular motion in action with unprecedented precision. One of modern science’s most important quests is to understand how the world works at its smallest and fastest constituents, and filming electronic transitions is the hallmark of today’s frontiers in quantum phenomena. These motions occur in attoseconds timescales, 10-18 seconds or a quintillionth of a second, during which the most elusive yet consequential physical processes determine the functional chemical and biological properties. By documenting these quantum dynamics in action, we are poised to bring remarkable breakthroughs in chemistry, life, energy, and information sciences. For example, the possibility of visualizing quantum reactivity and cooperativity underpins the basic understanding and ability to control all imaginable physical events, such as stewarding climate change-contributing chemical reactions for future zero-carbon technologies, filming photosynthetic centers to understand fundamental oxygen production enabling life on Earth, or enabling personalized medicine through photo-activated protein therapies.