Innsbruck Physics Lecture 2024
with Prof. 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.
Past Lectures
The Innsbruck Physics Lecture has welcomed many distinguished researchers to Innsbruck, among them several Nobel laureates, offering insights into current discoveries and central questions in modern physics. The archive reflects the wide range of topics covered by the series.
Rainer Weiss
19 October 2021
The beginning of gravitational wave astronomy: current state and future
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Joachim Ullrich
22 October 2019
Linking the International System of Units to Fundamental Constants
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Francis Halzen
30 October 2018
IceCube: Opening a New Window on the Universe from the South Pole
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Dan Shechtman
17 October 2017
Quasi-Periodic Crystals – A Paradigm Shift in Crystallography
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Paul Corkum
10 November 2016
Probing quantum systems from the inside – on the attosecond time scale
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Alain Aspect
10 November 2015
From the Einstein-Bohr debate to entangled qubits: a new quantum revolution
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Michael Kramer
4 November 2014
Nearly 100 years after General Relativity: Was Einstein right?
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Immanuel Bloch
22 October 2013
Controlling and Exploring Quantum Matter at the Single Atom Level
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Wim Ubachs
13 November 2012
Search for a variation of fundamental constants
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Reinhard Genzel
4 October 2011
Massive Black Holes and Galaxies
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