Baykusheva Group

Ultrafast Quantum Phases and Spectroscopy

Solids with strongly correlated electrons often host co-existing and competing quantum phases (such as superconductivity, topologically non-trivial states, or electronic liquid crystal phases) that can be manipulated by external stimuli. Over the last decade, light-matter interactions mediated by intense ultrashort laser fields have emerged as a non-thermal pathway to control these phases dynamically, enabling the stabilization of transient states that completely lack an equilibrium counterpart.

Despite these exciting developments, ultrafast light-matter interactions have so far been predominantly viewed from a “semiclassical perspective”, i.e., treating matter quantum mechanically while imposing a classical description of the electromagnetic field. Light states with non-classical photon statistics, on the other hand, might open new avenues in spectroscopy and technology by enabling new types of responses or new control knobs to manipulate matter excitations.

The overarching goal of our research group will be to bridge this gap and bring ultrafast spectroscopy to the fully quantum regime. Our primary focus is on developing the spectroscopic tools to sample photon correlation functions in the time domain and generate ultrabroadband quantum light displaying features like anti-bunching, squeezing, and entanglement, to directly excite correlated many-body states inside complex materials. The ability to map the photon correlations onto matter and vice versa may provide a fresh perspective on many phenomena situated at the foundations of quantum electrodynamics, enable the direct detection and manipulation of multipartite quantum states of matter with light, and ultimately lead to the discovery of new functionalities.