Ultrafast energy dynamics of two dimensional semiconducting and topological materials

The search for faster computing and better electronic devices has led to the opening up of several promising routes, which are being actively researched. These include spintronics, valleytronics, topological computing, quantum computing and exotic two-dimensional (2D) material based systems, to name a few. Each field has seen a tremendous amount of effort in the past decade. Broadly, this thesis explores some of the fundamental aspects of 2D semiconducting and topological materials, via an optical spectroscopy approach. The technique of choice is femtosecond ultrafast pump and probe laser spectroscopy, which has proven to be a powerful tool for investigating fundamental microscopic phenomena.