Embedded Files
In recent years, significant advancements have been made at the intersection of quantum materials and quantum optics, opening a new platform to explore phases of matter inaccessible in equilibrium. Light can coherently couple and control many collective modes of solids (such as phonons, excitons) as well as individual electrons leading to light-induced or enhanced phenomena such as superconductivity, ferroelectricity, and magnetism. Our group is interested in exploring two very different scenarios for light-material interaction achieved by (a) shinning classical laser field and (b) confining photon modes inside a cavity. While the set-up (a) is more common so far in experiments, set-up (b) achieves a strong light-matter interaction through vacuum/thermal fluctuations in cavity which can affect the electrons or phonons without shinning light onto the material. Even without pumping the cavity, non-equilibrium effects can still be important, as the cavity mirrors can be at different temperature from the electrons/phonons.
Focusing on recent experiments on pump-induced polar ordering in the quantum paraelectric, our group in interested in understanding of how nonlinear coupling between phonons stabilize light-induced order without optical strain and how quantum fluctuations affect these light-induced phases.
In addition to laser-induced manipulation of quantum materials, our group investigates novel quantum light-matter interaction in cavities. Long range nature of the interaction beteween cavity photons and quantum matter introduces new possibilities of manipulating quantum material by exploiting state-of-the-art engineering to prepare non-Gaussian states of light. Our group is investigating how to engineer exotic non-equilibrium states in quantum matter by manipulating it with non-thermal light. How does the nature of the light-matter interaction (via Yukawa coupling) change if cavity photons are prepared in non-thermal density matrices? How does the non-thermal nature of the mediator of the interaction affect the collective phenomena, such as superconductivity and other instabilities like charge density wave or nematic order?
Laser-induced ferroelectricity in quantum paraelectric from Phys. Rev. B 107, 224307
Manipulating collective phenomena by quantum light from arXiv:2207.07131
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse