BIO:

Javier García de Abajo is an ICREA Research Professor and leader of the Nanophotonics Theory Group at ICFO–Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques in Barcelona. His interests include electron microscopy, light-matter interactions, quantum optics, condensed matter physics, ultrafast phenomena, and nanophotonics. His group applies state-of-the-art theoretical and computational methods to investigate new phenomena and explore their potential application in microscopy, sensing, and information processing. He has co-authored 400+ papers cited 61,000+ times with an h index of 118 (G. Scholar, May 2024). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the Electromagnetic Academy.

TALK: "Electron beam spectroscopies for nanophotonics"

The synergetic combination of electron microscopy and ultrafast optics has given birth to ultrafast electron microscopy as a research area aiming to investigate material excitations with an unprecedented combination of spatiotemporal resolution. In this context, we will overview the fundamental principles ruling the interactions between free electrons, light, and photonic nanostructures, with an emphasis on exploring quantum aspects that include electron decoherence caused by coupling to radiative modes and the generation of quantum states of light. In particular, radiative decoherence could be potentially useful to sense the presence of distant objects and measure the vacuum temperature, while the study of quantum correlations between electrons and surface polaritons enables the generation of single and entangled photons heralded by the detection of electrons that have experienced specific amounts of energy losses and angular deflections.