Designing materials with classical and quantum light

In recent years, it has become possible to create short and strong laser pulses with many photons that interact with materials on extremely fast time scales and change the materials’ behavior. By contrast, in the adjacent research field of quantum optics, the quantum fluctuations of light take center stage, with only few virtual photons bubbling in and out of existence in the vacuum. At the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg we are now bridging these two fields and exploring the potential of both classical and quantum light to create designer materials with tailor-made properties that could enable new energy-saving and quantum-technology applications.