Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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SYFC: Symposium Designing Quantum Materials with Light: From Floquet to Cavity Engineering

SYFC 1: Designing Quantum Materials With Light: from Floquet to Cavity Engineering

SYFC 1.2: Invited Talk

Monday, March 9, 2026, 10:00–10:30, HSZ/AUDI

Engineering Quantum Materials through Structured Cavity Vacuum Fluctuations — •Angel Rubio — Max Planck Instittue for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter

Structuring the photon density of states in optical cavities enables control of material properties through strong light*matter coupling. Quantum Electrodynamical Density Functional Theory (QEDFT) extends TDDFT by incorporating quantized electromagnetic fields into electronic structure theory, providing an ab initio framework for predicting cavity-induced phenomena. Experiments such as photon-mediated superconductivity and optically engineered topological phases show that vacuum fluctuations, rather than classical light, can reshape material ground states and drive new quantum phases.

We present an ab initio approach to study cavity effects in two-dimensional materials. Using QEDFT, we show how vacuum fields modify van der Waals systems, inducing charge localization, tunable band gaps, and interlayer spacing that alter ferroelectric and optical responses. A non-perturbative Hartree*Fock framework further reveals cavity-mediated electron interactions in graphene and dichalcogenides, where anisotropic photon modes open Dirac gaps while isotropic ones renormalize the Fermi velocity. Cavity photons thus emerge as a new control parameter for correlated quantum states.