The best part about this blog is we can post attractive but unconventional scientific stuff. This is a lovely “table-of-contents” style graphic that Triet has made about our recently developed realtime dynamics code. It nicely sums up our efforts in this area. The data is real too.

A broadband ‘light’ impulse of duration 0.07 atomic units is applied along the x-axis at time t=0. The electronic dynamics includes our dissipation theory, although this short time (~20fs) is not enough to watch the electron relax back to it’s ground state position. If you pay close attention to the atoms on the central line you can see the average ‘slosh’ of the density (on a timescale of about 1/frame which is roughly 1fs). The excitation is mostly due to rearrangement of the density onto lead from iodine. If you look at the surronding iodine atoms you can see their p-density rotate, responding to the central density oscillation, that’s what you’d call ‘dynamic screening’. (Click the image to animate)

It’s unlikely that our research group would exist without the work of Father Theodore Hesburgh, a remarkably successful and dynamic personality who devoted his life to other people. We pay our respects (http://hesburgh.nd.edu/).