Arvinder Sandhu

Awards and Honors

• CAREER Award, National Science Foundation (2010)
• Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching, University of Arizona (2010)
• Young Scientist Medal, Indian National Science Academy (2007)

Specific Research Interests

• Efficient generation of isolated attosecond pulses in the XUV regime 
• Attosecond transient absorption and Velocity map imaging
• Attosecond resolved studies of electronic response in strong fields. 
• Correlation driven charge migration in molecules. 
• Electronic relaxation near conical intersections of polyatomics. 
• Ultrafast, high-intensity response of nanomaterials.
• Many-body interactions in carbon nano-structures 

Research Summary

The field of attosecond science provides exciting opportunities for ultrafast measurement and control at the level of electrons. My research is geared towards the new applications of attosecond spectroscopy to address questions in the areas of Atomic and Molecular Physics, Chemical Physics and Nanomaterials research. Recently, we demonstrated the use of extreme ultraviolet, attosecond light bursts to strobe the motion of an electron in a polyatomic molecule and film its coherent evolution near a conical intersection. At this intersection, the simple energy landscape picture breaks down and the electron is essentially at molecular crossroads. Our results shed light on the question of how strongly electrons and nuclei influence each other during charge transfer reactions.