The physics of strong light-matter coupling has been addressed in different scientific communities in the last 3 decades. Since the early eighties, several as well as single atoms have been coupled to optical and microwave cavities, leading to pioneering demonstrations of cavity quantum electrodynamics, textbook Gedanken experiments, and building blocks for quantum information processing. In the framework of semi-conducting devices, strong coupling was demonstrated in the nineties, allowing to explore the physics of Bose gases in solid state environment in the classical limit, and in the quantum regime, holding the promise to exploit light-matter interaction at the single photon level in scalable architectures. More recently, impressive developments in the so-called circuit QED, involving superconducting quantum bits coupled to microwave cavities, have opened another fundamental playground to revisit cavity quantum electrodynamics and apply the strong coupling concepts to the fields of quantum communication and information processing.

All these approaches are based on specific theoretical and experimental backgrounds. This school aims at developing the necessary interface between the mentioned communities, by providing the future researchers with robust conceptual basis on strong light-matter coupling, as well experimental or theoretical, both in the classical and in the quantum regimes. In addition, a close focus will be devoted to the new forefront research topics currently developed around the physics of strong light-matter interaction in the atomic and solid state scenarii, such as, e.g., strong coupling regime without a cavity, ultra-strong coupling regime and quantum vacuum emission, quantum phase transitions in cavity QED arrays.

Directors of the School
Kwek Leong Chuan (Principal Investigator, CQT, NUS, Singapore)
Kok Khoo Phua (Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, NTU, Singapore)
Christian Miniatura (DR at CNRS, INLN (France), CQT and Physics Department (NUS), IAS Fellow (NTU))

Organizing Committee
Alexia Auffèves (Institute Neel, CNRS, France)
Dario Gerace (Department of Physics “A. Volta,” Univ. of Pavia)
Stefano Portolan (Institute Neel, CNRS, France)
Maxime Richard (Institute Neel, CNRS, France)
Marcelo P. F. Santos (Dept. of Physics, University of Minas Gerais)