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:
- the design of specially tailored laser pulses to control breaking of chemical bonds and laser cooling of molecules;
- a phase space approach to exact quantum dynamics with an emphasis on attosecond multielectron dynamics;
- the use of complex-valued classical trajectories to solve the time-dependent Schrodinger equation.
- 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.
