SEMINAR+WEBINAR ANNOUNCEMENT

Wednesday, 30^th of September 2026 at 12:00
UPC campus nord, B4-212 (aula seminari)
https://meet.google.com/whq-mkve-aja

Arturo Camacho Guardian

Instituto de Física - Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

“Many-Body Physics of Light: From Photon Condensates to Polaron-Polaritons at IFUNAM”

Abstract

The interplay between light, matter, interactions, and dissipation provides a versatile platform for exploring collective quantum phenomena. In this talk, I will discuss recent developments ranging from photon Bose–Einstein condensation to strongly interacting and non-Hermitian polaritonic systems.

I will first present recent experiments on photon condensation and discuss their theoretical description, focusing on how the dispersion and dimensionality of the photonic system determine its equilibrium and critical properties. I will then turn to exciton-polaritons, where strong light–matter coupling produces hybrid quasiparticles whose properties can be controlled through their photonic and matter components.

Finally, I will discuss the interplay between strong light–matter coupling and many-body correlations when the matter component is itself dressed by interactions with a quantum environment. This gives rise to polaron-polaritons, quasiparticles combining photonic, excitonic, and many-body character. I will show that, in the presence of dissipation, these many-body quasiparticles can exhibit exceptional points, where their complex eigenenergies and eigenstates coalesce. These results reveal an interplay between many-body dressing and non-Hermitian physics, and illustrate how photonic platforms can be used to explore quantum matter under controlled interactions and dissipation.

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