Research Interests:
My research interests are currently in two broad areas: active control of quantum dynamical processes and the properties of confined liquids and interfaces.
In the first category, the goal is to develop theoretical understanding of methods to achieve control of selectivity of product formation in a chemical reaction. At present the focus of the research effort is on extending the theory of control to reactions in condensed media, and developing a version of the general theory that is useful when applied to large molecules.
In the second category, the aim is to understand the properties of inhomogeneous liquids (e.g. the structure of the liquid-vapor and liquid-solid interfaces) and, more generally, the properties of quasi-two dimensional systems. Among the questions of interest are: How do the properties of phase changes in quasi-two dimensional systems depend on the intermolecular potential? What are the dynamical properties of two-dimensional liquids? Do confined assemblies of nanoparticles have unique properties? How do those properties differ from those of other confined system?
Selected References
Adiabatic Population Transfer with Control Fields. With Mustafa Demirplak. J. Phys. Chem. A 107, 9937-9945 (2003).
Density Distribution in the Liquid Hg-Sapphire Interface. With Meishan Zhao, J. Phys. Chem. A, 115, 3859-3866 (2010).
Control of Dynamical Processes in Solution: An Overview and Personal Perspective, Israel Journal of Chemistry 52, 384-396 (2012).
Selective Vibrational Population Transfer using Combined STIRAP and Counter-Diabatic Fields. With Shumpei Masuda, J. Phys. Chem. C 119, 14532-14523 (2015).
Controlling Quantum Dynamics with Assisted Adiabatic Processes. With Shumpei Masuda, Advances in Chemical Physics 159, 51-135 (2016)
Analytic Solution of the Ornstein-Zernike Relation for Inhomogeneous Liquids. With Yan He and Xinliang Xu. J. Chem. Phys. 145, 234508-1-8 (2016).
Direct Visualization of Barrier Crossing Dynamics in a Driven Optical Matter System. With Patrick Figliozzi, Curtis W. Peterson, and Norbert F. Scherer. ACS Nano 12, 5168-5175 (2018).
Transient Structured Fluctuations in a Two-Dimensional System with Multiple Ordered Phases. With Zach Krebs, Ari B. Roitman, Linsey M. Nowack, Christopher Liepold and Binhua Lin. J. Chem. Phys. 149, 034503-1-11 (2018).
Pair and Many-body Interactions Between Ligated Au Nanoparticles. With Christopher Liepold, Alex Smith, Binhua Lin, and Juan de Pablo. J. Chem. Phys. 150, 044904-1-14 (2019).
Controlling the Dynamics and Optical Binding of Nanoparticle Homo-Dimers with Transverse Phase Gradients. With Curtis W. Peterson, John Parker and Norbert F. Scherer. Nano Lett. 19, 897-903 (2019).