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Recent experimental developments offer platforms to investigate the interaction between light and matter at the quantum level, encouraging the buildup of theoretical tools to describe their dynamics. The great control over the system parameters also permits to tune many-body Hamiltonians, opening the way to explore novel quantum phases. In this talk, I will first introduce a nano-engine device composed of a quantum dot coupled to external environments, and show that vacuum symmetry breaking generates a rectified current flowing through the device. I will then present a stochastic approach which aims at computing the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of spin-boson models. This approach permits to explore the strong coupling regime of the Rabi model, which is the simplest model of interaction between light and matter, and to investigate the quantum phase transition in the ohmic spinboson model, which describes a two-level system interacting with a dissipative environment. I will also present an hybrid setup comprising a double quantum dot coupled to a microwave cavity, which was realized recently. This system produces a highly entangled state of light and matter in relation to Kondo physics.

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Loic Henriet, Ecole Polytechnique, France
Seminarroom 0.02, ETP
Contact: Sebastian Diehl