Professor’s research proposal accepted for experiment at top French lab

Professor's research proposal accepted for experiment at top French lab

A proposal involving a Northwest Missouri State University professor for research at a cutting-edge laboratory in France has been accepted and will be conducted early next year.

Dr. Himadri Chakraborty, a Northwest professor of physics, is the primary proposer of the research team that submitted the proposal, "Photoelectron angular asymmetry to probe fullerene plasmons." Chakraborty will join three resident scientists next January at the Soleil Synchrotron Facility, located just outside of Paris, to run their experiment.

"This was a worldwide competition for the opportunity, and it was exciting to see that the Program Review Committee graded ours as 'Excellent,'" Chakraborty said.

The proposed research will use synchrotron electromagnetic radiation to investigate photoelectron angular asymmetry from fullerene molecules to explore plasmonic phenomena and develop a novel direction of plasmonic spectroscopy.

By measuring full and level-differential photoelectron angular distribution from vapor-phase C60 molecules under linearly polarized light across giant and higher-energy plasmon resonance energy regions, the research team hopes to better understand quantum phase-related asymmetries in electron emission and gain insights into collective electron dynamics driven by plasmonic behavior of the molecules.

"It brings some prestige to the school and opens up a new high-impact research track with opportunities for our students," Chakraborty said, adding that he and another guest scientist developed the computational simulation software being used in the research while he worked in a postdoctoral role at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany.

Chakraborty, a computational nanophysicist who joined the Northwest faculty in 2006, is the recipient of six National Science Foundation grant awards for his research of carbon fullerene molecules and related derived materials, including a grant totaling nearly $500,000 last year.

The work of his research group has appeared in high-impact periodicals, including Physical Review journals, Journal of Physics journals, the European Journal of Physics, and Science Advances, a high-impact multidisciplinary journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In addition to employing a number of post-doctoral researchers through grant funding, Chakraborty has involved about 50 undergraduate students in his research. Those students have gone on to pursue master's and doctoral degrees in physics, chemistry, material science and engineering.

To learn more about Chakraborty's research, visit https://www.nwmissouri.edu/naturalsciences/directory/sites/Chakraborty/.