Hsing-Ta Chen

Research Interests

The Chen research group is broadly interested in the intersection of chemistry, physics, and materials. Research in the Chen group focuses on developing theoretical tools and using high performance computing facilities aimed at excited-state dynamics and light-matter interactions. The systems studied range from plasmonic excitation of metallic clusters, laser-driven non-adiabatic molecular dynamics, and collective optical response of molecular ensembles. These systems are of key importance for understanding many recent experimental advances that cannot be accurately predicted by current theoretical approaches.

Our focus is quantifying electron transfer and energy conversion processes at the interface between molecules and materials strongly interacting with light. We are particularly interested in non-adiabatic dynamics methods (specifically surface hopping) and many-body quantum simulation (for example, quantum Monte Carlo). Our major goal is to develop reliable theoretical models and simulation methods to guide experimental improvements in next-generation photovoltaic cells and facilitate new design principles for electronic nano-devices.

Selected Publications

• Chen, H. T.; Zhou, Z. Y.; Sukharev, M.; Subotnik, J. E. and Nitzan, A. "Interplay between Disorder and Collective Coherent Response: Superradiance and Spectral Motional Narrowing in the Time Domain" 2022 Physical Review A, 106 (5), 053703. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.106.053703.
• Chen, H.; Chen, J.; Cofer-Shabica, D.; Zhou, Z.; Athavale, V.; Medders, G.; Menger, Maximilian F. S. J.; Subotnik, J. E. and Jin, Z. "Methods to Calculate Electronic Excited-State Dynamics for Molecules on Large Metal Clusters with Many States: Ensuring Fast Overlap Calculations and a Robust Choice of Phase" 2022 Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, 18 (6), pp.3296-3307. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.1c01304.
• Bian, X. Z.; Wu, Y. Z.; Teh, H. H.; Zhou, Z. Y.; Chen, H. T. and Subotnik, J. E. "Modeling Nonadiabatic Dynamics with Degenerate Electronic States, Intersystem Crossing, and Spin Separation: A Key Goal for Chemical Physics" 2021 Journal of Chemical Physics, 154 (11), 110901. DOI: 10.1063/5.0039371.
• Liu, J. J.; Chen, H. T. and Segal, D. "Quantum Nondemolition Photon Counting with a Hybrid Electromechanical Probe" 2020 Physical Review A, 102 (6), 061501. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.102.061501.
• Chen, H. T.; Zhou, Z. Y. and Subotnik, J. E. "On the Proper Derivation of the Floquet-Based Quantum Classical Liouville Equation and Surface Hopping Describing a Molecule Or Material Subject to an External Field" 2020 Journal of Chemical Physics, 153 (4), 044116. DOI: 10.1063/5.0013873.
• Li, T. E.; Chen, H. T.; Nitzan, A. and Subotnik, J. E. "Quasiclassical Modeling of Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics" 2020 Physical Review A, 101 (3), 033831. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.101.033831.