The coherent manipulation of macroscopic quantum systems with light is a frontier for controlling materials properties. Ultrafast pump-probe experiments have enabled the selective manipulation of quantum states in materials, while advances in coupling quantum materials to photons in a resonant cavity promise to extend quantum-optical techniques and cavity quantum electrodynamics to correlated electron systems. In this talk, I will discuss how quantum-optical control and measurement techniques can provide a useful window into the nature of many-body states in quantum materials which are strongly coupled to photons or far from thermal equilibrium. I will first describe how recent Floquet pump-probe experiments on a one-dimensional Mott insulator can be viewed through the lens of standard single-emitter control protocols. I will argue that leveraging the quantum-geometric structure of electronic wavefunctions can provide a bottom-up design principle for achieving strong coupling of photons and matter. I will then discuss how placing correlated materials inside optical cavities can lead to pronounced antibunching of photons transmitted through the cavity, observable via the second-order photon coherence g⁽²⁾(t) that measures the statistical correlation of photon pairs. Near a quantum critical point, such systems can realize a many-body photon blockade regime, enabling the generation of single photons or Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs via leveraging strong matter fluctuations.
*You will need to bring your cell phone, so you can sign in using the QR code outside of ATL 2400. You will need to submit your first and last name, email, and affiliation on the form by 11:15am to be able to get lunch after the seminar. Lunch is first come, first served.*
At 4pm, there will be a tea in ATL 2117 for our speaker and students/postdocs - this is a chance to ask questions directly to our speaker. Refreshments will be served.