Josef Wachtveitl main focus is to observe fastest chemical and biological reactions in real time by transient ultrafast pump probe spectroscopy on a great variety of molecules from small organic compounds to complex enzymes. This includes molecular systems like optical switches, natural and nonnatural photosynthetic model systems and membrane protein complexes. He investigates fundamental processes in molecular physical chemistry like photoisomerization, energy and electron transfer, reaction dynamics at surfaces and developes new modern methods in quantum optics.
