TESTWelcome to the newly created Apkarian group webpage. We're still under construction at the moment, so there isn't very much here. The resources section is coming along, though, with presentations from group meetings and useful programs being posted daily. If you'd like the password to access that portion of the webpage, email me at mvanstav at uci dot edu.

About Our Research

Understanding of photophysics and chemical dynamics in condensed media is the major thrust of our research. Both experimental and theoretical studies are conducted on what may be regarded as model systems: systems, such as doped van der Waals solids and fluids, which are simple enough to afford a first principles description of elementary photoprocesses. The challenge in understanding dynamics in condensed media arises from the many-body nature of interactions. Collective electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom must be considered to describe even the simplest of chemical processes, such as the breaking or making of a bond. The development of global many-body potentials that are at once accurate, universal and economical, is a unifying theme in our work. The dynamical consequences of such interactions, is another theme, which is investigated through time frequency resolved spectroscopies using ultrafast lasers. Beside the preparation and interrogation of molecular coherences, quantum control as applied to molecular engineering and quantum computing are subjects that are pursued both theoretically and experimentally.

The experimental studies invariably involve laser-based spectroscopic techniques that are implemented in both frequency and time domain, over the spectral range from far infrared to the deep ultraviolet. The time resolution of studies stretches to the femtosecond domain, a time scale that enables the observation of atomic motions on a freeze-frame basis. This provides the means for following and controlling chemistry as it evolves from reactants to products. To extract the desired atomistic level of understanding from detailed experimental observables, we invariably model the systems with explicit simulations. To this end, we have developed an arsenal of classical, semi-classical, and quantum simulation methods.