Ulf Leonhardt from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel is currently visiting us as a guest professor and giving a lecture on the “quantum vacuum” – a topic to which he has made several seminal contributions. Welcome Ulf!

Ulf Leonhardt from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel is currently visiting us as a guest professor and giving a lecture on the “quantum vacuum” – a topic to which he has made several seminal contributions. Welcome Ulf!
In a new publication in Nature, we demonstrate that a disordered medium can be made fully transmitting to all incoming waves by placing a suitably tailored complementary medium in front of it. This project was implemented in a fruitful collaboration with the experimental group of Matthieu Davy in Rennes (France). For more information check out the press releases of TU Wien and of Rennes University. Here are also articles in Physics World and in Optics & Photonics News as well as a YouTube video on our work.
Our roadmap article on “Wavefront Shaping and Deep Imaging in Complex Media” has just been published online in JPhys Photonics. This piece involved 45 authors from 36 institutions in 12 countries – many thanks go to Sylvain Gigan and Ori Katz for coordinating this roadmap!
Andrea Pupic, who carried out her Bachelor thesis on “coherent perfect absorbers” with Kevin Pichler in our group, received the poster price for her research at the event “Celebrating Women in Physics” – congratulations!
In collaboration with the group of Alexander Szameit from Rostock University, we present the first experimental observation of photonic constant-intensity waves in a system of coupled optical fibre loops. From our group, Ivor Krešić was the main driving force behind this project that has now been published in Science Advances – congratulations!
In a new publication in Nature with colleagues in California and in Florida, we present the first time-resolved measurement of the chiral state transfer for parameter variations that exclude an exceptional point. From our group, Alex Schumer was the one most involved in this project – congratulations!
Our work on “Transforming Space with Non-Hermitian Dielectrics” was selected as the cover article of Physical Review Letters. Many thanks go to Ivor Krešić, who first-authored this paper and prepared the figure, and to our collaborators Ulf Leonhardt (Weizmann) and Kostas Makris (Heraklion).
Matthias Kühmayer successfully defended his PhD on “Optimal Wave Fields in Complex Scattering Environments” – congratulations! Many thanks also to Gregor Thalhammer and Thomas Weiss for serving as external referees.
Together with the teams of Mercedeh Khajavikhan, Demetri Christodoulides and Patrick LiKamWa we showed how to create topological lasing modes in a laser cavity that steers light around an exceptional point. Congratulations to Alexander Schumer, who spent several months with our partner groups in the US and now serves as the first author of a joint paper in Science. See also the news highlight in Laser Focus World and the press release from TU Wien.
Three letters involving our group have just been published in the Physical Review. The topics range from atomic frequency combs, an invariance property of the Fisher information, to the optimal detection of targets in complex media. Many thanks go to our collaborators in France, India, Germany and in the Netherlands.