A UK-German consortium will trap light inside atom-thin materials and ultra-pure crystals to force photons and electrons into extreme interactions at the nanoscale. This matters because controlling how light and matter exchange energy at tiny scales is the bottleneck for practical quantum technologies. Today’s quantum devices are bulky, fragile, and require extreme cooling. The team will study three exotic systems—Rydberg exciton-polaritons in cuprous oxide, valley phenomena in two-dimensional semiconductors, and quantum dots inside nano-photonic structures—to find new ways to manipulate single photons and electron spins without losing quantum information. If successful, the work could unlock long-term applications in quantum communications (unhackable data transmission) and spintronic devices (electronics that use electron spin rather than charge, reducing heat and power consumption). The project is primarily fundamental science—it seeks to discover new optical and quantum-optical phenomena rather than build a prototype. But similar fundamental work on light-matter interactions has previously given us lasers, LEDs, and fibre-optic internet. A deeper understanding of how excitons behave in extreme nanoscale environments could seed entirely unforeseen technologies.
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We propose a Centre-to-Centre consortium formed of 10 academics from the University of Sheffield (USHEF) and the Technical University of Dortmund (TUD) to exploit light-matter interactions in advanced materials, achieving agenda-setting advances in non-linear optics, single photon phenomena and spin-control on the nanoscale. We will study ultra-pure cuprous oxide, atomically thin two-dimensional semiconductors, and III-V semiconductor nano-structures, all at the forefront of modern day research. The collaboration provides major added value to the UK by enabling cutting-edge research themes supported by close interaction with highest quality scientists at TUD, as well as access to their world-leading experimental infrastructure. The interaction of light and matter is at the heart of a huge range of natural phenomena and applications in physics, chemistry, biology etc. In this project, we will use potentially transformative approaches to harnessing these phenomena by using specially designed nano-structured materials, and exploring non-linear and quantum optical phenomena in micro- and nano-photonic structures. The ambition is to seed and develop new research directions based on enhancing and controlling light-matter interactions in nanoscale structures. To this end we will use a broad base of novel materials including atomically thin layers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), ultra-pure Cu2O, and quantum dots located within III-V semiconductor nano-photonic structures. The consortium will address three inter-related themes having considerable synergy and sharing of techniques and physics including: non-linear and quantum optics with Rydberg exciton-polaritons in cuprous oxide; valley phenomena in van der Waals heterostructures; ultrafast quantum nano-photonics. All three themes involve the harnessing of light-matter interactions in novel material systems. Design on the nanoscale is a common theme throughout enabling the discovery of new optical and quantum-optical phenomena. Furthermore, they all rely on the control of the properties of excitons in extreme limits. As well as leading to ground-breaking new physics, the programme has potential to open up long term applications in quantum communications and in spintronic devices to give just two examples. The highly integrated collaboration programme, exploiting to the full the benefits of the Centre-to-Centre cooperation, will be supported by a total of 60 months of extended visits by postdocs in both directions between Sheffield and Dortmund.
Alexander Tartakovskii (Principal Investigator)Dmtriy Krizhanovskii (Co-Investigator)Jon Heffernan (Co-Investigator)Luke Russell Wilson (Co-Investigator)Mark Fox (Co-Investigator)Maurice Skolnick (Co-Investigator)
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