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Highlights of Research

Prof. David Tannor is a theoretical chemist, who studies quantum mechanics effects on the motion of molecules. His work currently has four main directions:  

  1. the design of specially tailored laser pulses to control breaking of chemical bonds and laser cooling of molecules;
  2. a phase space approach to exact quantum dynamics with an emphasis on attosecond multielectron dynamics;
  3. the use of complex-valued classical trajectories to solve the time-dependent Schrodinger equation.
  4. the calculation of chemical reaction probabilities and rate constants, using quantum mechanical and semiclassical methods;

In all these areas Tannor uses time dependent quantum mechanics, where a moving wavepacket is the central dynamical object. The wavepacket is the closest analog there is in quantum mechanics to a classical trajectory, and thus this approach is conceptually simple, and often numerically advantageous as well. Below, each of these three research areas is described.