Innsbruck Physics Lecture - Tue, 19 March 2024, 17:15 h (lecture hall A)
Jacqueline Bloch - Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies (C2N)
Jacqueline Bloch is an experimental physicist, Research Director at CNRS and working at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the heart of the Paris Saclay University campus close to Paris. Engineer in Physics and Chemistry, she completed a PhD thesis on the optical properties of semiconductor nanotructures and a post-doctoral stay at Bell Laboratories in the USA. She joined the CNRS in 1994 and has since been exploring light-matter interaction at the nanoscale. She has done pionneering contribution in the physics of quantum fluids of light and their use to explore a huge variety of major modern physics problems. She has received several prestigious prices such as the CNRS Silver Medal (2017) and the Ampère Prize of the French Academy of Sciences (2019). She is a member of the French Academy of Sciences since 2020.
When light sheds light on condensed matter
Fascinating physical phenomena such as electrical conduction, magnetism or superconductivity emerge in condensed matter from the subtle interplay between properties of individual elementary constituents of the material, their mutual coupling and the overall symmetry properties of the system. Interestingly if one implements the main of these ingredients in a different experimental system, it is possible to reproduce these physical phenomena. The advantage of such an analog system is that it may be easier to control, and to probe than the natural system, and can offer the possibility to go beyond what exists in nature.
In the present talk, I will explain how light trapped in arrays of coupled tiny cavities, which are realized using nanotechnology, provides a versatile analog platform to emulate condensed matter phenomena. After a general introduction to the field, I will show how light can mimic electron properties in a benzene molecule, in a monolayer of graphene and can even become superfluid.
I will show how beyond deep understanding of fundamental physical phenomena, these analog simulations enables conceiving novel photonic devices for integrated photonics.
Previous lectures
Rainer Weiss, The beginning of gravitational wave astronomy: current state and future. >>
(19 October 2021)
Joachim Ulrich, Linking the International System of Units to Fundamental Constants. >>
(22 October 2019)
Francis Halzen, IceCube: Opening a New Window on the Universe from the South Pole. >>
(30 October 2018)
Dan Shechtman, QUASI-PERIODIC CRYSTALS – A PARADIGM SHIFT IN CRYSTALLOGRAPHY >>
(17 October 2017)
Paul Corkum, Probi6g quantum systems from the inside – on the attosecond time scale >>
(10 November 2016)
Alain Aspect, Institut d'Optique Graduate School, Palaiseau, France >>
(10 November 2015)
Michael Kramer - Nearly 100 years after General Relativity: Was Einstein right? >>
(04 November 2014)
Immanuel Bloch - Controlling and Exploring Quantum Matter at the Single Atom Level >>
(22 October 2013)
Wim Ubachs - Search for a variation of fundamental constants >>
(13 November 2012)
Reinhard Genzel - Massive Black Holes and Galaxies >>
(4 October 2011)