Quantum Polaritonics
An international research partnership of state-of-the-art experimental laboratories and theoretical groups between the University of Cambridge, MIT-Skoltech, and the University of Southampton.
Our team consists of a tripartite international research partnership of state-of-the-art experimental laboratories and theoretical groups between the University of Cambridge, MIT-Skoltech, and the University of Southampton.
Principal investigators
Prof Pavlos Lagoudakis is Director of the Hybrid Photonics Laboratories at Skoltech & the University of Southampton. His research spans the fields of photonics, strong light-matter coupling, semiconductor and condensed matter physics. Link to CV.
Natalia Berloff is Professor at the Centre for Photonics and Quantum Materials at Skoltech, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Jesus College. Her research interests are in quantum hydrodynamics, understanding and exploiting coherence in non-equilibrium quantum systems: Bose Condensation of excitons and polaritons, magnons, atomic gases, and superfluid helium.
Simone De Liberato, Royal Society University Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the University of Southampton, is a theoretical physicist and an entrepreneur. He leads the Quantum Theory and Technology group, investigating solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics for both fundamental and technological applications.
Sakellaris Mailis is an Assistant Professor at at the Centre for Photonics and Quantum Materials at Skoltech. His line of research focuses on using UV lasers to write waveguide circuits on semiconductor microcavities, with an aim towards polaritons fluids on a chip.
Senior scientists
Dr Alexis Askitopoulos completed his PhD on the dynamics of spinor polariton condensates and now is developing control methods for programming extended polariton lattices at the MIT-Skoltech.
Dr Mael Brossard is the Deputy Director for Operations at the Hybrid Photonics Laboratories at MIT-Skoltech. He completed his PhD in the field of Hybrid Photonics at the University of Southampton and in 2015 he moved to MIT-Skoltech, where he assumed the responsibility of managing the infrastructure and build-up of the Hybrid Photonics Laboratories. He contributes to the research of hybrid LED and PVs through co-supervision of interns, master and PhD students.
Dr Giannis Chatzopoulos, completed his PhD in quantum optics and is currently developing techniques for phase retrieval utilising polariton lattices at the University of Southampton.
Dr Fauzia Jabeen is working on the fabrication of a new generation of semiconductor microcavities for polariton simulators in collaboration with the University of Wuertzburg.
Dr Dmitry Mikulik is investigating the optical properties of novel organic/inorganic semiconductors in search for new materials for room temperature polaritonics the at MIT-Skoltech.
Dr Denis Sanikov is working on polariton lattices in organic microcavities towards room temperature polariton simulators in collaboration with IBM and the University of Sheffield at MIT-Skoltech.
Dr Helgi Sigurdsson is investigating problems of complexity and scalability utilising polariton graphs.
Dr Anton Zasedatelev is investigating the potential of polariton amplifiers at ambient conditions as ultrafast optical modulators in collaboration with IBM at MIT-Skoltech.
Junior scientists
Sergey Alyatkin joined the polaritonics team to investigate the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in extended polariton lattices at MIT-Skoltech.
PhD students
Anton Baranikov is pursuing his PhD at MIT-Skoltech on organic polariton condensates in collaboration with IBM.
Stepan Baryshev is pursuing a PhD on inorganics polaritonics at MIT-SK, where he works on correlation measurements of polariton condensates.
Tamsin Cookson is pursuing her PhD on polariton condensation in novel organic materials and polariton graphs for polariton simulators at the University of Southampton.
Stella Harrison is pursuing her MPHYS with Research at the University of Southampton developing machine learning algorithms for optimising and automising the generation of polariton graphs.
Kirill Kalinin is pursuing his PhD at the University of Cambridge specialising in modelling of various aspects of polariton condensates including spin degree of freedom, dynamics, interactions between condensates, fundamentals of polariton graph optimisers.
Lucy Pickup is pursuing her PhD on spinor bistability, Bloch bands and topological defect sites in polariton lattices at the University of Southampton.
Kirill Sitnik completed his research internship on developing and characterising a setup for time-resolved photoluminescence excitation and is currently pursuing his PhD on organic polaritonics at MIT-Skoltech.
Julian Toepfer did his Diploma on developing new methods for controlling the interactions between polariton condensates and investigating the formation of giant vortices at the University of Southampton and at MIT-SK. He is currently pursuing a PhD following his master thesis in Southampton.
Timur Yagafarov is pursuing a PhD on organic polaritonics at MIT-SK, where he works on looking into the possibility of polariton ballistic propagation in organic microcavities and exploring the interaction between two organic polariton condensates .
Research interns
Alexander Averchenko is a research intern at MIT-SK, assisting Dr. Zasedatelev in the on-going development of an inorganic polaritonics setup focused on correlation measurements.
Vladislava Bulgakova is a research intern at MIT-SK, where she works with on developing a fully automated time-resolved photo-luminescence emission (PLE) setup.
Timur Ermatov is a research intern at MIT-SK assisting in the development and maintenance of the simulator's components at MIT-SK.
Master students
Igor Agafonov is a first year master student at Skoltech. Within the framework of the joint research program with St Petersburg Academic University, he will carry on a project on using time-resolved spectroscopy to characterize microdisk resonators.
Ivan Gnusov is a second year master student at Skoltech, currently working on developing a time-resolved polarimeter as a master project.
Administration
Nicky Brooks is administrative assistant to Prof Lagoudakis at Southampton University.
Alumni
Prof. Constantinos Valagiannopoulos is an Associate Professor at the Department of Physics of Nazarbayev University (NU), Astana, KZ. He leads the NU Metamaterial Modeling and Design Group and his research pertains to inverse design of photonic devices with use of metamaterials and 2D media.
Dr Matteo Silva completed his PhD on the experimental realisation of polariton simulators and currently investigates frustration in extended polariton lattices; here enjoying a glass of prosecco for defending his thesis in record time (less than 3 years). He is now working as a systems engineer for Huawei.
Dr Elena Kamman completed her PhD on the dynamics of spinor condensates in microcavities in Southampton in 2012. She went to on hold managing and engineering positions at Attocube and at MTG Telescope Optics and is currently working for the European Space Agency.
Dr. Pasquale Cilibrizzi completed his PhD on the study of fluidics, linear and nonlinear phenomena in polariton microcavities in 2015 in Southampton, where he stayed until 2017 as a postdoctoral fellow. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center at University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Niccolo Somaschi completed his PhD on engineering nonlinearities in organic and hybrid microcavities in Southampton in 2014. He followed his thesis with a postdoctoral position with Pascale Sellenart at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Saclay near Paris. He recently co-founded Quandela, a start-up offering high brighness single photon sources integrated into custom cryosystems.