Norbert Scherer

About

Norbert Scherer is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Chicago with a research focus on biophysics, materials chemistry, and physical chemistry. His group explores a wide range of experimental and simulation methods to address questions related to formation, structure, and dynamics in driven nonequilibrium optical matter; optical magnetism and collective excitations in nanoplasmonic-based meta-materials; and the connection between transport processes in single and multicellular systems to their functions. His work involves developing new methods such as ultrafast lasers, nonlinear spectroscopy, advanced microscopy, and coupled electrodynamics and Langevin dynamics simulations. Scherer's research has pioneered the self-organization of nanoparticle assemblies into optical matter structures capable of directed motion and collective behavior, including the creation of nanoscale optical machines that convert spin to orbital angular momentum. His studies extend to the optical properties of hybrid nanostructures, including the enhancement of radiative properties of quantum dots within self-organized lattices, with implications for lasing and quantum materials exhibiting entanglement. Additionally, his group investigates novel optical excitations enabled by vector beams of light, such as optical magnetism and dark modes in meta-atoms, advancing the understanding of matter-radiation interactions at the nanoscale. In cellular biophysics, Scherer studies…

Research topics

• Materials science
• Physics
• Optics
• Chemistry
• Molecular physics

Selected publications

• Excitation of Nonradiating Anapoles in Dielectric Nanospheres

  Physical Review Letters · 2020-03-06 · 66 citations

  articleOpen access

  Although the study of nonradiating anapoles has long been part of fundamental physics, the dynamic anapole at optical frequencies was only recently experimentally demonstrated in a specialized silicon nanodisk structure. We report excitation of the electrodynamic anapole state in isotropic silicon nanospheres using radially polarized beam illumination. The superposition of equal and out-of-phase amplitudes of the Cartesian electric and toroidal dipoles produces a pronounced dip in the scattering…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Optical matter machines: angular momentum conversion by collective modes in optically bound nanoparticle arrays

  Optica · 2020-08-12 · 64 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The creation of optically powered self-assembling nano-to-meso-scale machines that do work is a long-standing goal in photonics. We demonstrate an optical matter (OM) machine that converts the spin angular momentum (SAM) of light into orbital angular momentum (OAM) to do mechanical work. The specific OM machine we study is based on a sixfold symmetric hexagonally ordered nanoparticle array that operates as an OM “gear” that is assembled and made to rotate in a circularly polarized Gaussian beam.…

  PublisherDOI

• Mechanical feedback promotes bacterial adaptation to antibiotics

  Nature Physics · 2021-01-04 · 51 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Easily scalable multi-color DMD-based structured illumination microscopy

  Optics Letters · 2023-12-04 · 16 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) achieves super-resolution imaging using a series of phase-shifted sinusoidal illumination patterns to down-modulate high spatial-frequency information of samples. Digital micromirror devices (DMDs) have been increasingly used to generate SIM illumination patterns due to their high speed and moderate cost. However, a DMD micromirror array's blazed grating structure causes strong angular dispersion for different wavelengths of light, thus severely hampering…

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding and design of non-conservative optical matter systems using Markov state models

  Molecular Systems Design & Engineering · 2022-01-01 · 11 citations

  article

  Non-conservative and permutationally-invariant Markov state models inform understanding and control of self-assembling optical matter systems.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Creating and Probing Optical and Material Nonlinearities in Single Nanoparticles, Dimers, Clusters and Arrays

  NSF · $510k · 2006–2009

• NIH Grant R01GM057768

  NIH · $414k · 2001

• NIH Grant R01GM067961

  NIH · $1.1M · 2008

Frequent coauthors

• David C. Arnett

  42 shared

• Stephen K. Gray

  35 shared

• Aaron R. Dinner

  33 shared

• Matthew Pelton

  33 shared

• Zijie Yan

  Shanghai Municipal Center For Disease Control Prevention

  27 shared

• Lewis D. Book

  Northrop Grumman (United States)

  27 shared

• Julie A. Gruetzmacher

  University of Chicago

  26 shared

• René A. Nome

  Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)

  26 shared

Labs

• Scherer LabPI

Education

• NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, Chemsitry

  University of Chicago

  1992

• PhD in Chemical Physics, Chemistry

  California Institute of Technology

  1989

• BS in Chemistry

  University of Chicago

  1982

Awards & honors

• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science…
• Fellow, Optical Society of America 2015
• Peter Debye Prize 2015
• Department of Defense Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship 2014
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship 2006

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Jack W. Szostakh-142
• Guangbin Dongh-76
• Hening Linh-66