Electrons, phonons, and their mutual interactions are crucial for the complex phenomena in strongly correlated materials. In this talk, I will show that electron and phonon dynamics can be investigated at the atomic scale by combining THz pump-probe spectroscopy and a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) [1,2]. [more]

The study of confined fields in plasmonic nanocavities and their interaction with molecules and nanostructures is an area of research with vast applications, including enhanced spectroscopy techniques as well as photoinduced/photocatalytic non-equilibrium phenomena. From the theoretical perspective, either classical electromagnetic models or atomistic/quantum descriptions are usually considered. However, in many cases these models ignore the electronic and nuclear quantum effects arising from the chemical nature and dynamics of a junction, such as tunneling, adsorption geometry, structure of the interface, vibrations, etc., or include them only approximately. Hence, a full quantum dynamical description is sometimes inescapable. [more]