Functionalities are at the heart of the new cluster of excellence “Advanced Imaging of Matter”. The research project will be funded within Germany’s Excellence Strategy from 1 January 2019 for a period of seven years; it will continue the internationally highly acknowledged research within the “Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging” (CUI) and widen the scope to new questions: The scientists will be performing pioneering work, laying the foundations for future innovations; their basic research will result in new techniques and new perspectives for medicine and material science. “Advanced Imaging of Matter” relies on the outstanding scientific expertise and infrastructure in Hamburg and will lead a revolution in the understanding and control of matter at the molecular scale.
The spokespersons of the new cluster (from left): Prof. Horst Weller, Prof. Klaus Sengstock (both Universität Hamburg), and Prof. Henry Chapman (Universität Hamburg, DESY). Credit: Claudia Höhne
Within the last six years, CUI has become an internationally visible brand, where molecular movies were first created, transient room-temperature superconductivity was first observed, and new methods for imaging of biomolecules with X-rays were developed. The new cluster will exploit this expertise in advanced imaging to take the consequent step.
‘More is different’ – this famous statement by physics Nobel laureate P.W. Anderson captures the essence of the new project. Atoms bind together and form solids, molecules interact and react – new functionalities emerge with increasing complexity and growing system size, enabling new properties such as magnetic information storage, superconducting transport of energy without loss and functionalities essential for life.
“What unites us…”
“What unites us is the question how larger structures with new properties of matter develop from the interplay and motion of atoms and molecules,” say the spokespersons of the cluster, Prof. Henry Chapman (Universität Hamburg, DESY), Prof. Klaus Sengstock und Prof. Horst Weller (both Universität Hamburg). Functionality does not simply arise as a sum of the intrinsic properties of small building blocks, but emerges as a completely new feature at a higher level of hierarchy.
“Observe, understand, and control” is the leitmotif. The scientists will
- image chemical reactions in action and create new reaction pathways,
- drive initially non-conducting material into a superconducting state,
- map the atomic details and motions of proteins.
“As soon as we will have found out how these processes develop, we also want to learn how to control them and create new functionalities which do not occur in nature,” the spokespersons explain. “Because understanding how existing functionalities emerge and new functionalities can be created is the core prerequisite for true innovation.”
The grand challenges of our age
The grand challenges of our age – how to efficiently capture and store energy from the sun, catalyze chemical reaction, encode information at high densities and speed, inhibit infectious agents in our cells, or carry out computations at lower energy cost, will not be met without an in-depth understanding of nature’s functioning principles.
A major challenge in discovering the general principles at all levels of natural hierarchies is to break down the barriers between disciplines. “CUI has already prepared us to combine expertise in femto-chemistry, protein nanocrystallography, the science of nanoparticles, cold quantum gases, condensed matter physics, non-linear X-ray optics, structural biology, and the physics of X-ray-matter interactions,“ Chapman, Sengstock and Weller say.“ This knowledge will lead us to a multi-scale understanding of how functionalities emerge.”
Enormous expertise brought together in Hamburg
The new endeavor is made possible due to the enormous expertise brought together in Hamburg over the past 15 years in the areas of photon and nanoscience. In a joint strategic effort, the partner institutions Universität Hamburg, DESY, MPG, and XFEL have attracted an outstanding and closely coordinated team of international scientists to Hamburg. In the new cluster, 160 scientists from the four institutions will be working closely together. Their common scientific interests and a shared guiding vision to build a world-class research program will push the frontiers of science – making the cluster a motor for the development of the metropolitan area of Hamburg as a science and research location.
The tool best suited to the scientific project is light. The scientists can rely on outstanding large-scale photon facilities, today’s most advanced X-ray radiation sources and extended state-of-the-art lab infrastructure with world-leading ultrafast laser and tabletop instrumentations.
Against this backdrop of infrastructure and cooperating institutions concentrated in Hamburg and which has almost no parallel in Europe, Universität Hamburg, DESY, MPG, and XFEL have developed the theoretical tools to describe complex dynamics in nature, pioneered X-ray imaging on the atomic scale and harnessed light to control quantum matter. As declared by the spokespersons: “With our expertise and infrastructure, we are in a prime position to establish a new field.” Text CUI