BIO:

Angel Rubio is the Director of the Theory Department of the Max Plank Institute for Structure and Dynamics of Matter at Hamburg where his research focuses on the modeling and theory of electronic and structural properties of condensed matter. His group works on developing novel theoretical tools, such as time-dependent functional theory for quantum electrodynamics and computational codes for the ab initio description and control of the dynamics of decoherence and dissipation in quantum many-body systems, and on characterizing new nonequilibrium states of matter.

His work  has been recognized by several awards, including the 2018 Max Born medal and prize, 2016 Medal of the Spanish Royal Physical Society, the 2014 Premio Rey Jaime I for basic research, the 2006 DuPont Prize in nanotechnology, the 2005 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Humboldt Foundation, and two European Research Council advanced grants (2011 and 2016). He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the European Physical Society,  the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the European Academy of Sciences, the Academia Europaea, and a foreign associate member of the National Academy of Sciences. 

ABSTRACT:

We present our recent studies on the thermodynamical stability, mechanical, electronic, structural and optoelectronic properties of 2D materials. We will discuss new states of matter that are optically induced and have no equilibrium counterparts, and we will identify the fingerprints of these novel states that will be probed with pump-probe spectroscopies. We will pursue the question of whether it is possible to create these new states of materials. To this end we will show how the emerging (vacuum) dressed states resembles metastable states in driven systems. A particular appeal of light dressing is the possibility to engineer symmetry breaking with tailored optical cavities that can lead to novel properties of materials. We will discuss the potential to realize non-equilibrium states of matter that have so far been only accessible in ultrafast and ultrastrong laser-driven materials. A particular appeal of light dressing is the possibility to engineer symmetry breaking, which can lead to novel properties of materials, e.g coupling to circularly polarized photons leads to local breaking of time-reversal symmetry, enabling the control over a large variety of materials properties (e.g., topology). We will illustrate the realization of those ideas in molecular complexes and 2D materials and show that the combination of cavity-materials engineering and 2D twisted van der Waals heterostructures provides a novel and unique platform for the seamless realization of a plethora of interacting quantum phenomena, including exotic and elusive correlated and topological phases of matter. For example, by controlling the Berry curvature in 2D layered materials (metal/insulator transition metal dichalcogenides, or TMD), a new class of quantum Hall states can be induced. In these states, the valley degree of freedom can be tuned with light. We will briefly introduce our newly developed quantum electrodynamics density-functional formalism (QEDFT) as a first-principles theoretical framework to predict, characterize, and control the spontaneous appearance of those ordered phases of strongly interacting light-matter hybrids.

HOST: Prof. Dr. Jens Biegert