The Quantum Light and Matter (QLM) group encompasses several research topics at the University of Southampton, sharing a common interest in the study of the nanoscale properties of matter (atoms to solids) and their interactions with light.

The group's work aims to advance the fundamental understanding of quantum physics, whilst exploring a broad range of applications in nanoscience and quantum technology. Professor Otto Muskens was appointed Head of Group in August.

"In the QLM group you can find a number of research themes, most of which are rooted in the desire to develop fundamental physical understanding but often lead to significant practical applications," Otto says.

"In recent years the group has seen a rapid growth in novel quantum technologies research primarily involving photons and polaritons, mixed states of light and matter, as carriers of quantum information. Several of our groups are developing and studying advanced materials in contexts such as new nanoelectronic devices, biomedical and energy applications."

Members of the QLM group extend the limits of spectroscopy including terahertz, ultrafast and x-ray imaging. Dr Marcus Newton recently secured a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship in coherent x-ray imaging that highlights the team's strong involvement in the Diamond Light Source synchrotron facility.

The group holds a wide portfolio of funded projects including an EPSRC Programme Grant on Hybrid Polaritonics led by Professor Pavlos Lagoudakis, and many QLM academics are contributing in multi-disciplinary activities such as the ADEPT Advanced Devices by Electroplating and the Metadevices & Metasystems Programme Grants.

"Several groups in QLM are heavily involved in Quantum Technology Hubs, and we are right now seeing new start-up companies emerging from this research," Otto says.

QLM is based in Building 46 on Highfield Campus, with the group currently consisting of 16 academics, 17 researchers and 26 postgraduate students. Several staff have joined the team in recent years, including Dr Patrick Ledingham, who arrived in July, and Professor Ivette Fuentes-Guridi, who started in September.

"Over the years QLM has built very strong links with other parts of Engineering and Physical Sciences and the wider University, driven by joint scientific interests in multi-disciplinary research," Otto says. "For example, the work by Professor Antonios Kanaras on nanomaterials for biomedicine involves many colleagues in the Institute for Life Sciences and General Hospital. The Southampton cleanrooms are a centre point of activity and we see a lot of collaboration between researchers of QLM, the Optoelectronics Research Centre and the Electronics and Computer Science Sustainable Electronic Technologies group.

"The free flow of ideas between these departments is extremely fruitful and our scientific approaches are complementary in many ways which is perhaps why Southampton is so successful in this area of research. The interface between fundamental scientific ideas and state-of-the-art nanofabrication facilities proves an extremely stimulating environment for new and exciting research."

Astronomers have recorded a rare glimpse of a star being shredded into thin streams of spaghetti-like material by a supermassive black hole.

An international research collaboration, including the University of Southampton postgraduate student Tomás E. Müller-Bravo, has reported the sighting of the closed ever observed example of the phenomenon known as a tidal disruption event (TDE).

The burst of light produced during the 'spaghettification' of a star is often obscured by dust and debris. Crucially, the AT 2019qiz TDE was found just a short time after the star was ripped apart, providing rich data that can increase the understanding of supermassive black holes and how matter behaves in extreme gravity environments.

Researchers from the Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects group, known as ePESSTO+, have published their findings this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Mr Müller-Bravo, of the Southampton Astronomy Group, says: "A TDE happens when a star orbits too close to a supermassive black hole and is pulled apart by its immense tidal force. Part of the disrupted star starts orbiting the black hole, while the rest is ejected.

"Due to its unprecedented proximity, this TDE was well monitored in the ultraviolet and optical ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, but also observed in X-rays and radio wavelengths, producing a very rich dataset. From very early observations we were able to see behind the curtain of dust and debris, which allows us to have a better idea of the physical picture behind these events."

The AT 2019qiz event involved a star with roughly the same mass as our own Sun, just over 215 million light-years from Earth in a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Eridanus. Around half of the star's mass was lost to a black hole of over a million times its size.

Researchers carried out observations over a six-month period as the flare grew in luminosity and then faded away.

The collaboration gathered the data using telescopes from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other organisations around the world.

Mr Müller-Bravo is in charge of the data-reduction code for ePESSTO+ that transforms raw data from telescope images into ready-to-use data for the analysis. He performed observations using the New Technology Telescope (NTT) on ESO's La Silla observatory in Chile during the newly published research and supported the collaboration's analysis.

The mysterious disappearance of a black hole some 300 million light-years from Earth may have been caused by a runaway star being torn apart in a new space phenomenon.

An international team of astronomers, including Dr Poshak Gandhi and Dr Diego Altamirano from the University of Southampton, first discovered a striking variation of the accreting black hole in 2018 and have conducted 15 months of observations to understand the cosmic riddle.

Publishing their findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team hypothesise that the disappearance of light from 1ES 1927+654 was caused by fast-moving debris from a star crashing through the disk of gas feeding the black hole.

"The astronomy group at Southampton has long expertise on studies of growing supermassive black holes, but this particular one is pretty unique," Poshak says. "It changed in brightness by a factor of more than 10,000 in just a few months, first fading away, and then rebounding to become even brighter than before. This is pretty unprecedented for such cosmic monsters.

"Our best theories suggest that this was the result of some cataclysmic event. For instance, it is possible that an entire star was ripped to shreds when it happened to venture close to the black hole, disrupting the black hole growth briefly, before being consumed by it. Not many such events are known, especially ones showing such dramatic changes."

Supermassive black holes are located at the centre of nearly every galaxy in the universe, with masses millions or billions of times greater than our Sun. The 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to three scientists whose body of work solidified the idea that these mysterious monsters must be real.

Black holes don't emit or reflect light but can still be studied by observing the X-ray glow of ultrahot particles of gas being drawn into the region of space. This ultrahot gas can sometimes brighten or dim by factors of a few as the black hole feeds, but this is only a fraction of the 1ES 1927+654 event.

Dr Claudio Ricci, lead author and Assistant Professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, Chile, says: "We just don't normally see variations like this in accreting black holes. It was so strange that at first we thought maybe there was something wrong with the data. When we saw it was real, it was very exciting. But we also had no idea what we were dealing with; no one we talked to had seen anything like this."

"What struck me was not only the rebound but that it steadily but surely approached a high constant level of brightness," Poshak adds. "This tells us that this specific level must be important.

"I believe the source is approaching a finely balanced state, where its growth is being self-regulated to maintain such a constant level. Understanding this self-regulatory mechanism can teach us a lot about how the majority of black holes in the cosmos grow."

The international study monitored the black hole using NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station. In total, NICER observed the system 265 times with additional observations of the system undertaken by NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the ESA (the European Space Agency) XMM-Newton observatory.