In collaboration with Ori Katz’s team, we have shown in this Letter how to design an optical cavity such that a weakly absorbing film inside of it can perfectly absorb coherent laser light that is both spatially and spectrally broadband. Congratulations to Helmut and Lena for developing the theory behind this concept and many thanks to Oliver for the nice figure here on top!
Our lecture Quantum Theory I (presented with Oliver Diekmann, David Globosits and Helmut Hörner in the winter semester 23/24) has been selected as one of the top six finalists for the Best Lecture Award of TU Wien. The final decision will be taken on October 3rd during a ceremony in Kuppelsaal. Fingers crossed!
Together with Lukas Rachbauer, Dorian Bouchet and Ulf Leonhardt we published an invited tutorial in JOSAB on how to find the optimal quantum states of light for micromanipulation and metrology. The article is openly accessible at this link.
Together with the team of Dave Phillips in Exeter and our former group member Michael Horodynski, we published an article in Science Advances that demonstrates how shaping the wavefront of light can be used to create efficient optical tweezers (i.e., very stiff traps for particles). For more details see the press releases of Exeter University and of the Austrian Press Agency.
In a nice collaboration with the team of Romain Fleury at EPFL and our former Marie-Curie fellow Nicolas Bachelard from Bordeaux, we published an article in Nature Physics that demonstrates how audible sound can be used to steer and rotate objects in complex environments. See the News&Views article by Emmanuel Fort and the highlight in Physics World for more information. Here is also a video on how an origami lotus flower is moved through our sound technique.
Congratulations to our faculty’s team participating in the university’s Dragon Boat Cup, where we reached the final and came fourth out of fourteen. Particular thanks go to Max and Luca from our group for participating.
In collaboration with the team of Ulrich Kuhl in Nice and with Dorian Bouchet in Grenoble, we published an article in Nature Physics that demonstrates how the information that waves acquire about an object flows from this object to an outside observer. From our group Jakob Hüpfl, Felix Russo and Lukas Rachbauer were principally involved in this study – congratulations! See the News&Views article by Arthur Goetschy, TU Wien’s press release or the Highlights on Pro-Physik or on Physics World for more information.
Together with the team of Coskun Kocabas in Manchester and Sahin Ozdemir from Penn State University, we published a paper in Science showing that thermal emission can be localised at a topological interface. The image shown demonstrates this effect for the example of light emission from the complex boundary of the United Kingdom. Check out the news pieces on our work.
Lukas Rachbauer successfully defended his PhD thesis on “Classical and Quantum Waves in Complex Environments” – congratulations! Many thanks go to Ben Stickler (from Ulm University) and Thomas Juffmann (from the University of Vienna) for serving as external referees and examinators.
In a new theory paper by Oliver and Dmitry just published in Physical Review Letters, we show that placing two atoms into a “fish eye cavity” results in a periodic emission and absorption of a single photon between them – similar to an ultrafast ping-pong game at the speed of light. See the press release of TU Wien for more information.
