Theoretical condensed matter physics

This research area in the physics of matter concerns quantum properties and correlations in solids and nanostructures, in particular electronic states (electronic, optical and transport properties), elementary excitations and strong correlation effects. Main research lines:

• Elementary excitations - Surface plasmons and excitons in nanostructures, plasmonic and excitonic polaritons. We study the linear and nonlinear properties, both classical and quantum, related to the radiation-matter interaction.
• Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics - Artificial atoms such as quantum dots in photonic cavities or qubits in superconducting cavities, also for applications such as single photon sources for quantum technologies.
• Many-body and strongly correlated systems - Quantum phase transitions in many-body systems, as well as quantum thermodynamics and the properties of open systems out of equilibrium. Quantum simulations of complex physical systems using quantum hardware (quantum computer on the cloud).

Principal investigators: Lucio Andreani, Dario Gerace, Marco Liscidini
Group members: Davide Nigro, Francesco Scala, Simone Zanotti