Welcome to the Quantum Theory and Technology group website. We are part of the University of Southampton Quantum Light Matter group.
The Quantum Theory and Technology group investigates quantum phenomena in solid-state systems, with particular interest for their possible applications, both in nanophotonics and in the expanding field of quantum technologies.
We are also interested in public engagement activities aimed at widening the societal understanding of quantum mechanics.
QTT News
- June 2020: Congratulations to Erika Cortese, who has been awarded the Runner-Up of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences with topic "Understanding of nonperturbative light-matter coupling in nanostructures" from Doctoral College Research Awards.
- May 2020: Congratulations to Erika Cortese, who successfully defended her PhD thesis on "Tuning Materials' properties by non-perturbative Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics".
- Viewpoint on Physics: Physics, the showcase journal of the Americas Physical Society, dedicated a Viewpoint to our recent paper: A. I. Fernández-Domínguez, Physics 13, 71 (2020).
- Our paper developing a theory of nonlocal optical response in polar dielectrics has been published in Physical Review X 10, 021027 (2020). This theory allows us to simulate the crystalline dynamics of atom-size objects without requiring cumbersome numerical approaches.
- Together with our experimental colleagues at Vanderbilt and LMU, we theoretically predicted and experimentally observed novel quasiparticles we named Longitudinal-Transverse Phonon Polaritons. The results have recently been published in Nature Communications 10, 1682 (2019). This discovery is an important milestone toward the realization of a novel generation of electrically pumped mid-infrared devices.
- Review on Ultrastrong coupling between light and matter was published, as first paper ever, by the new journal Nature Reviews Physics. To celebrate the new journal this review will remain open access for one year.
- Dr Simone De Liberato won the 2018 Philip Leverhulme Prize in physics.
- Faster than light! Dr Simone De Liberato and his coworkers investigated relativistic effects in non-perturbative cavity quantum electrodynamics: Nature Communications 9, 1924 (2018). We demonstrated that when the coupling becomes non-perturbative, the standard Rabi and Dicke models dramatically fail to describe the system dynamics, predicting unphysical phenomena as the possibility to transmit information faster than light.
- Theoretical prediction verified after ten years. Our recent paper Applied Physics Letters 112, 191106 (2018) was chosen as Featured Paper. This work experimentally demonstrated phonon-mediated scattering between intersubband polaritons, an effect I had theoretically predicted almost ten years ago!
- March 2018: We are pleased to announce vacancies for a PhD student and a post-doctoral researcher to join the group, see Join Us for details.
- The film Approaching Reality, produced by our group has been selected as a finalist for the Quantum Short film festival, receiveing an honorable mention of the jury. The film has been screened around the world, from Glasgow to Singapore.
- January 2017: We were pleased to be invited speakers at the workshop "Virtual photons in ultra-strongly coupled system" organized by the Condensed Matter Reasearch Group directed by Prof. Franco Nori at the Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), RIKEN (Japan).
- We have organised a workshop on the physics of the ultrastrong coupling regime.
- The first trailer of our quantum music composition, Approaching Reality, has been released here.
- February 2015: We are pleased to announce vacancies for a PhD student and a post-doctoral researcher to join the group, see Join Us for details.
- February 2015: We were very forunate to have Dr Ahsan Nazir, University of Manchester, visit the group this week and thank him for his fascinating colloquium on 'Probing emitter-cavity dressed states through environmental transitions'.
- February 2015: The Groups finally has its own website! where we can share our work.