Arjun Ashoka, PhD

We investigate how the local, temporal fluctuations of electrons, ions, and atoms dictate the macroscopic thermodynamic properties of condensed matter. Utilizing ultrafast nonlinear and laser optics, we develop tools to directly measure these fluctuations, aiming to uncover the fundamental laws governing energy dissipation, phase transitions, and decoherence. While conventional ultrafast spectroscopy is often limited to studying systems out-of-equilibrium, where a perturbation starts off choreographed, repeatable dynamics, like the many takes of a movie, our goal is to make ultrafast documentaries, where the system is in its natural thermodynamic ground state and the dynamics are stochastic. With this we hope to shed light on the connections between material specific microscopic fluctuations and macroscopic thermodynamic variables.