Date and Time:  17-May-2022  9:30AM

Speaker:  Prof. Vinod Menon, Chair of Physics, City College & Graduate Center - CUNY

Host: Qi-Hua Xiong (Tsinghua Univ.& BAQIS）

Title: Strong exciton-photon interaction in van der Waals materials

Abstract: 

Strong exciton-photon interaction results in the formation of half-light half-matter quasiparticles called exciton-polaritons (EPs) that take on the properties of both its constituents. In this talk, I will first introduce polariton formation in 2D semiconductors  [1] followed by a discussion of Rydberg excitons [2] and dipolar excitons  [3] to realize highly nonlinear interactions to achieve polariton blockade. Following this, I will discuss the use of strain to control exciton flow and nonlinear response  [4].  Finally, I will present some recent results on EPs in correlated van der Waals materials and their potential to realize hybridization between excitons, photons and magnons [5]. 

[1] X. Liu et al., Nat. Photonics 9, 30 (2015).

[2] J. Gu et al., Nat. Commun. 12, 2269 (2021).

[3] B. Datta et al., ArXiv2110.13326 (2021).

[4] F. Dirnberger et al., Sci. Adv. 7, 3066 (2021).

[5] F. Dirnberger et al. ArXiv 2203.06129 (2022)

About the Speaker:

Vinod Menon is a Professor of Physics and currently the Chair of the Physics Department at the City College of New York and doctoral faculty at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in Photonics (2018-2020). He joined CUNY in fall 2004 as part of the initiative in photonics. Prior to joining CUNY, he was at Princeton University (2001-2004) where he was the Lucent Bell Labs Post-Doctoral Fellow in Photonics. He received his MSc in Physics from the University of Hyderabad, India in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Massachusetts in 2001. He has held visiting positions at MIT, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, and Princeton University. He also serves on the editorial board of Optica, an OSA journal. His current research interests include cavity QED with two-dimensional semiconductors and organic molecules, Hamiltonian simulators with light, and engineered nonlinear optical materials. More details about his group can be found at www.lanmp.org .