This research conference is the second in a series which aims to present a forum for discussion on optically induced non-equilibrium dynamics and photoinduced phase transitions in cooperative condensed matter systems. The main focus of the conference is on time dependent properties of fundamental and quasi-particle excitations, induced solid-solid and solid-liquid phase transitions, electronic and magnetic switching phenomena, and ultrafast processes in emergent nanoscale systems.

Ultrafast optical techniques provide the means to investigate phenomena at the fundamental timescales of electronic and atomic motion, offering a unique glimpse into the properties of cooperative condensed matter systems and complementing time-integrated techniques such as optical spectroscopy or inelastic neutron scattering. It is now possible to routinely generate and detect sub-100 femtosecond pulses across the electromagnetic spectrum enabling novel time-resolved spectroscopic investigations. Other techniques such as ultrafast x-ray diffraction and absorption spectroscopy, electron diffraction and photoelectron spectroscopy are being developed and provide complementary dynamical information to conventional ultrafast optical probes. One characteristic of these dynamical techniques is that the system investigated is no longer in strict thermodynamic equilibrium, even though this deviation might be marginal. The material under study may be either in an excited state whose decay into other degrees of freedom is being probed, yielding information unavailable to conventional time-averaged frequency domain spectroscopies, or in a metastable state with fundamentally different physical properties.