2025 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit

Symposium MQ02-Excitons in Quantum Materials

Electron-hole excitations forming strongly bound excitons are key elementary excitations in low-dimensional systems and quantum materials. They are not only important to develop a fundamental understanding in the underlying light-matter interactions in those modern materials, but also for applications e.g. in the sectors of solar-energy conversion, information technology, (quantum) sensing and quantum photonics. In recent years, fascinating new excitonic phenomena have been observed in twisted moiré structures, 2D magnetic crystals, strongly correlated materials, hybrid and chiral perovskites, and other materials. The tremendous interest in these phenomena has created a new field at the frontier of optics, electronics and materials science. The symposium Excitons in Quantum Materials will provide an overview of recent milestones and present the latest progress on contemporary exciton physics.

The symposium will bring together researchers with scientific backgrounds as diverse as the field of quantum materials itself. This naturally fosters the exchange of new ideas and incentivizes cross-disciplinary collaborations. Beyond inviting distinguished experts in the field, a particular focus will be placed on promoting the young researchers who have made important contributions to the field. Many of them are newly appointed faculty members that represent the material scientists and leading optics experts of tomorrow.

Topics will include:

Excitonic effects in quantum materials: 2D magnetic, ferroelectric & multiferroic crystals, 2D semiconductors / transition-metal dichalcogenides, Twisted heterostructures & moiré materials, Strongly correlated materials, Superatomic crystals, Lead-halide, hybrid & chiral perovskites, Group IV, II-VI and III-V semiconductors, Colloidal nanostructures
Excitons probing novel quantum phenomena: (Anti-) Ferromagnetism, Ferroelectricity & Multiferroicity, Kinetic magnetism, Strong correlations: Mott insulators, Wigner crystals, Excitonic insulators, Fractional Quantum Hall states, Bose-Einstein condensation, Structural & electronic phase transitions
Different types of excitons: Magnetic excitons, Wannier-Mott excitons, Frenkel excitons, Charge-transfer excitons, Mott-Hubbard excitons
Theoretical modeling of excitons: First-principles developments, Effective models for excitons, Correlated phenomena, Exciton-phonon coupling, Exciton-magnon coupling, Exciton dynamics
Exciton complexes: Bi-exciton, Trion / Fermi polaron, Bright and dark excitons, Exciton-magnon polaron, Exciton-phonon polaron
Strong light-matter coupling: Exciton-polariton physics, Excitons in microcavities, plasmonic cavities & nanoresonators, Polariton condensation & superfluidity, Polariton simulators & neuromorphic computation
Excitonic devices: Exciton transistor, light-emitting devices & lasers, Quantum defects & single photon sources, Nanomechanical resonators, Straintronics
Optical spectroscopy: Pump-probe spectroscopy, Ultrafast emission microscopy, Non-linear spectroscopy, Spatio-temporal spectroscopy, Hanbury-Brown-Twiss experiments
Engineering of interlayer exciton physics: Electrostatic control of interlayer excitons, Moiré interlayer excitons, Layer-engineering of interlayer excitons, Hybridized excitonic states
Spintronics, valleytronics and multiferroics: Spin-dependent phenomena in semiconductors, Excitons in magnetic fields, Coupled spin-valley dynamics, Magnetic phenomena in 2D semiconductors

Invited Speakers:

Swagata Acharya (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA)
Stéphane Berciaud (Université de Strasbourg, France)
Andrey Chaves (Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil)
Alexey Chernikov (Technische Universität Dresden, Germany)
Mirko Chinchetti (Technische Universität, Germany)
Felipe H. da Jornada (Stanford University, USA)
Milan Delor (Columbia University, USA)
Geoffrey Diederich (University of Washington, USA)
Matthias Florian (University of Michigan, USA)
Daniel Hernangómez Pérez (CIC nanoGUNE, Spain)
Alex High (The University of Chicago, USA)
Ataç Imamoglu (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
Kai-Qiang Lin (Xiamen University, China)
Je-Geun Park (Seoul National University, Republic of Korea)
Gabriele Pasquale (Harvard University, USA)
Paulina Plochocka (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France)
Diana Y. Qiu (Yale University, USA)
Talat S. Rahman (University of Central Florida, USA)
Sivan Refaely-Abramson (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel)
Su-Fei Shi (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
Tomasz Smolenski (Universität of Basel, Switzerland)
Andreas Stier (Technische Universität München, Germany)
Farsane Tabataba Vakili (Technische Universität University of Braunschweig, Germany)
Volodymyr Turkowski (University of Central Florida, USA)
Nathan Wilson (Technische Universität München, Germany)
Xiaoyang Zhu (Columbia University, USA)