Welcome to the Tscherbul Group

We are a theoretical research group at the University of Nevada, Reno exploring the interface of theoretical atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, quantum theory of open systems, and quantum many-body theory. We develop theoretical and computational methods to elucidate and control the quantum dynamics of complex molecular systems, both isolated and in the presence of an external environment.

Recent advances in molecular cooling and trapping have enabled the experimental study of molecular collisions and chemical reactivity at a new frontier, where nontrivial quantum effects, such as resonance scattering, threshold laws, and quantum coherence, can be used to control the outcome of a chemical reaction. Motivated by these advances, we seek to gain theoretical insight into the quantum dynamics of ultracold molecular collisions and chemical reactions in the presence of external electromagnetic fields through the development and deployment of numerically exact quantum scattering methodology.

Quantum coherence, the remarkable ability of quantum superposition states to behave like waves and to exhibit interference effects, lies at the heart of quantum mechanics and serves as a key resource for emerging quantum technologies, such as quantum information processing and quantum sensing. We seek to understand and control quantum coherence and decoherence in a variety of atomic and molecular systems, including photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes, Rydberg aggregates, impurity atoms and molecules trapped in inert solid matrices, and superflud helium nanodroplets. We also explore new quantum many-body physics with ultracold polar molecules, with a focus on quantum impurity models of molecular rotation in quantum many-body environments.

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We also develop and implement theoretical methods to study quantum dynamics of atoms and molecules. These include numerically exact quantum coupled-channel methods for low-temperature molecular collisions in external fields, quantum master equations for open quantum systems, and diagrammatic Monte Carlo techniques for molecular impurities interacting with quantum many-body environments.

We are looking for motivated PhD students, Postdocs, and Master students to join the group (more info) !

We are grateful for funding from UNR, NSF, and DoD AFOSR.