Project description
When an outsider cuts in on the dance among groups of exotic light-matter particles
Over the last several decades, technological advances have given us a new window on the interactions of tiny 'bodies' including photons, electrons, fundamental particles or atoms. The number of 'bodies' that can be described simultaneously, both theoretically and experimentally, is growing and with it the field of quantum many-body thermodynamics. It is of critical importance to advances in areas from condensed matter physics to quantum information processing. These intriguing systems can exhibit some of their most complex – and ultimately useful – effects when forced out of equilibrium. The EU-funded QuoMoDys project will shed light on the thermodynamics of such systems with a focus on hybrid light-matter quasi-particles, exciton-polaritons.
Objective
"The project aims as developing novel thermodynamic concepts to understand quantum many-body systems when they are driven out of thermal equilibrium via the coupling to external reservoirs. In particular, we will clarify the specific resources, for thermodynamic protocols, contained in many-body quantum superpositions, which could be stabilized in these systems via the interplay of intrinsic dynamics, external driving and dissipation. Our special focus will be on exciton-polaritons systems, which realize ""quantum fluids of light"" due to the strong coupling of light to electronic excitations confined in semi-conducting micro-cavity. Considering lattices of coupled such microcavities -- realizing the analog of electronic band structures, with hybrid light-matter quasi-particles playing the role of electrons in ordinary metals and insulators -- we shall develop a novel theoretical approach to capture quantum-correlation effects in these quantum fluids. As a specific situation of fundamental interest, which can be realized in the aforementioned exciton-polariton lattices, we will investigate a quantum phase transition where dissipation plays a key role, stabilizing novel states of quantum matter with analogs neither in classical systems out of equilibrium, nor in quantum systems at thermal equilibrium. On the conceptual side, we will extend existing notions of quantum thermodynamics to a many-body realm. On the technical side, we shall develop a new semi-classical theory to describe quantum entanglement in these driven-dissipative quantum systems. This fundamental research, done in collaboration with theoreticians at the forefront of research in quantum thermodynamics, and world-class experimental groups for polaritonics, will open new perspectives for the application of driven-dissipative quantum many-body systems in quantum technologies."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesthermodynamics
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesquantum physicsquantum field theory
- natural sciencesphysical sciencestheoretical physicsparticle physicsphotons
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Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
75794 Paris
France