Fluids of light in semiconductor lattices

Jacqueline Bloch (Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Marcoussis)— February 6, 2018

Abstract :
When confining photons in semiconductor lattices, their physical properties can be deeply modified. Photons can behave as massive, or even infinitely massive, particles, photons can propagate along edge states without back scattering, photons can become superfluid, photons can behave as interacting particles. These are just a few examples of the properties that can be imprinted into fluids of light in semiconductor lattices. Such manipulation of light presents not only potential for applications in photonics, but it is also a great promise for fundamental studies. One can design artificial media with very exotic physical properties at the single particle level or even more interestingly with many-body interactions.
I will illustrate the variety of physical systems we can emulate with fluids of light by presenting a few recent experiments. Perspectives in terms of quantum simulation will be discussed.

Biography :
Jacqueline Bloch is a CNRS Research director at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (C2N) in Marcoussis. She is an experimentalist, expert in light matter coupling in semiconductors. Using the state of the art nanotechnology facilities available at C2N, her group has made pioneering contributions in the study of quantum fluids of light, exploring a large variety of physical problems, from superfluidity to acoustic black hole, flat band and Dirac physics, or topology. She is Professeur Chargée de Cours at Ecole Polytechnique. She was awarded the 2015 Jean Ricard Prize and the 2017 CNRS Silver Medal.

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