Strong Light-Matter Interaction in the Deeply Sub-wavelength Regime

The interaction between light - or more broadly, electromagnetic fields - and condensed matter underpins an extremely broad range of modern technology. As devices shrink into the nanoscale, we inevitably enter the deeply sub-wavelength regime for optical frequencies and below.

In this talk, I will present two examples of strong light-matter interaction in such a regime: Terahertz (THz) emission from ultrafast interlayer charge transfer in an atomically-thin semiconductor heterostructure, and the Reststrahlen effect - strong reflectivity in the mid-infrared from optical phonons - in optically-thin films of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). The latter turns out to be an extend-state analogy of the Superradiance effect of discrete quantum emitters.

Speaker: Eric Ma, UC Berkeley