Public conference as part of the Search for a professor in Theoretical physics.

Summary: Light offers a versatile handle for tailoring quantum materials. I will outline two complementary examples focusing on their theoretical and computational nonequilibrium quantum many-body descriptions: (i) Ultrafast optical drives can transiently reshape a solid’s symmetry and electronic structure, where for the latter Floquet engineering provides the framework for accessing and stabilising novel non-equilibrium phases [1]. (ii) Embedding a material in an optical cavity couples it to quantised photon modes, unlocking new many-body phenomena in the realm of cavity quantum electrodynamics [2]. I will close with an outlook on merging these strategies with the flexibility of two-dimensional heterostructures to enable on-demand design of quantum functionalities [3].
[1] Rev. Mod. Phys. 93, 041002 (2021), [2] Appl. Phys. Rev. 9, 011312 (2022), [3] Nat. Phys. 17, 155 (2021)