IMF2017

I will present recent experimental studies of ultrafast optical and THz electric-field-driven responses in ferroelectric thin films and nanostructures. Using a combination of femtosecond x-ray, electron, and nonlinear optical probes, these studies enable us to elucidate fundamental time-scales governing the dynamics of the ferroelectric polarization and the associated atomic-scale response. These results show that one can drive large-scale reorientations of the polarization of a ferroelectric thin film on femtosecond time-scales. I will also describe, briefly, recent results probing optically-driven atomic-scale dynamics and structural reorganizations in the hybrid perovskites.