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Recent experimental developments in quantum optics have opened up possibilities to create strongly correlated states of matter with sizable electromagnetic or photonic components. Enabled by strong atom-photon coupling on the single-quantum level, for example in cavity QED and with Rydberg atoms, it is now possible to study the statistical, and generically far-from-equilibrium, physics of photons in new regimes far beyond what is know from the laser theory developed in the 1970's. Here, I will survey our first attempts to classify such phases of photonic matter into universality classes including glasses, superradiant Fermi gases, and attractive quantum liquids. In the second part, I will consider electronic materials in which frustration and interactions are so strong that, collective excitations made out of electronic spins behave as emergent photons, and compute new observable signatures thereof. Further information: http://www.thp.uni-koeln.de/~strack/

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P. Strack, Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln
Seminarraum Theoretische Physik
Contact: not specified