PME Quantum Colloquium - Hui Deng

New regimes of coherent light-matter interaction in van der Waals materials

Many van der Waals semiconductors feature large oscillator strengths and at the same the flexibility to construct heterostructure and to integrate with a variety of substrates. They allow coherent light-matter interactions in regimes that have been difficult to access in traditional materials. We will discuss a few examples, including collective Lamb shift and perfect absorption in a monolayer, versatile slab photonic-crystal polaritons, 2D magnet-photonic crystal polaritons that couple atomic and photonic lattice anisotropies, and moiré polaritons that combine 0D quantum confinement with 2D cooperativity to obtain strong nonlinearities. At last, we will discuss a proposed system that utilizes some of these unusual features to enable a dynamic matter-light hybrid Chern insulator. These systems open new pathways to novel photonic devices.