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Engineering quantum materials with chiral optical cavities

Nature Materials volume 20, pages 438–442 (2021)Cite this article

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Strong light–matter coupling in quantum cavities provides a pathway to break fundamental materials symmetries, like time-reversal symmetry in chiral cavities. This Comment discusses the potential to realize non-equilibrium states of matter that have so far been only accessible in ultrafast and ultrastrong laser-driven materials.

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Fig. 1: Cavity modes for different cavity environments leading to symmetry-breaking configurations.
Fig. 2: QED materials engineering and phenomenology.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to S. A. Sato, D. Shin, M. A. Sentef, E. Ronca, S. Latini, D. Basov, J.-M. Triscone, A. Pasupathy, E. Demler, A. Cavalleri, A. Imamoglu, J. Flick, A. Georges and A. Millis for the fruitful discussion. We acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council (ERC-2015-AdG-694097), SNF project 200020_192330 and the Cluster of Excellence Advanced Imaging of Matter (AIM) EXC 2056-390715994. The Flatiron Institute is a division of the Simons Foundation. Support by the Max Planck — New York City Center for Non-Equilibrium Quantum Phenomena is acknowledged.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Hannes Hübener, Umberto De Giovannini.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter and Center for Free Electron Laser Science, Hamburg, Germany

    Hannes Hübener, Umberto De Giovannini, Christian Schäfer, Michael Ruggenthaler & Angel Rubio

  2. ETH Zürich, Institute of Quantum Electronics, Zürich, Switzerland

    Johan Andberger & Jerome Faist

  3. Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ), The Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Angel Rubio

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  1. Hannes Hübener
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  2. Umberto De Giovannini
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Correspondence to Hannes Hübener, Umberto De Giovannini or Angel Rubio.

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Hübener, H., De Giovannini, U., Schäfer, C. et al. Engineering quantum materials with chiral optical cavities. Nat. Mater. 20, 438–442 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-00801-7

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