Despite its considerable importance, the "Grotthus" mechanism by which an "excess" or deficiency proton in aqueous solution is transmitted through the hydrogen bonds of water molecules remained largely misunderstood.
Full-dimensional quantum calculations carried out by Fabien Gatti of ISMO and his colleagues have made it possible to correctly reproduce the infrared spectra of the hydrated proton and to contribute to the understanding of this mechanism. These results are published in Nature communications

The Japanese Hayabusa2 mission (JAXA) has brought back samples from the carbonaceous primitive asteroid Ryugu. Thanks to the analyses of these samples by an international group led by Prof. Tomoki Nakamura (Tohoku Univ., Japan), it is possible to propose a scenario retracing the history of Ryugu, including its formation after the fragmentation of its parent asteroid.

A collaboration between ICSN, ISMO (SYSTEMAE group) and PPSM has shed light on the spectroscopy and photophysical properties of a new fluorophore family obtained by fusing cinnoline to naphthalimide to give a donor-acceptor system called CinNapht.

All changes of state in matter, like the freezing of water into ice, are characterized by some physical parameter of the system becoming ordered. But in some exceptional cases, the parameter describing the ordered state remains unknown, hiding new physics. Now, an international collaboration led by researchers at ISMO has unveiled how, in one of such mysterious “hidden-order” phases, the interactions between quantum electronic transform under the effect of chemical pressure. This finding sheds new light into what physics is cloaked behind the “hidden-order” veil. Their results have been published in PNAS.

We have just learned the very sad news of the passing of our friend and colleague on June 20, 2021. Roland Lefebvre pursued his brilliant research careers at the CNRS Laboratory of Molecular Photophysics, of which Roland was one of the founders with Sydney Leach, François Legay and Lars Lindqvist, as well as its director from 1982 to 1988.
Professor Roland Lefebvre’s work has focused on the theoretical aspects of Molecular Physics, from electronic correlation and hyperfine structures, paramagnetic resonance, superradiance and photon echoes, quantum collision theory and radiation-matter interaction, to problems of control by intense electromagnetic fields of time and energy-resolved electron-nuclear dynamics.

Researchers from ISMO, University of Luxembourg, University of Konstanz (Germany) and CFM (San Sebastian, Spain) used light to control the dynamics of electrons in a metallic nanocircuit on spatial scales and atomic time. The results of the study have been published in Nature Physics (2019)