Professor Alexey Kavokin has been honoured with the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors (ISCS) Quantum Devices Award for a scientific discovery that led to a novel form of semiconductor lasers.

The theoretical physicist, who is based at the University of Southampton and Westlake University, China, predicted the room temperature Bose-Einstein condensation of exciton-polaritons, also known as 'liquid light'.

The finding triggered the development of energy efficient polariton lasers capable of ultra-low threshold lasing.

ISCS award winners have been announced today as part of international Compound Semiconductor Week (CSW). This year’s gathering has been cancelled during the coronavirus pandemic so Alexey will receive his prize in a ceremony at CSW 2021 in Sweden.

The ISCS Quantum Devices Award was established in 2000 by Fujitsu Quantum Devices and recognises advances in compound semiconductor devices and quantum nanostructure devices, which have made a major scientific or technological impact in the past 20 years.

"It is a great honour to be recognised as making a pioneering contribution in my field," Alexey says. "This award highlights results that I consider as the most important in my research career so far and I hope that the ongoing studies will continue to realise the full potential of polariton lasers."

Exciton-polaritons, or 'liquid light', are a fluid made of hybrid quasiparticles that combine properties of light and matter. Liquid light is much slower than conventional light in vacuum and can form droplets and vortices that can be controlled by electric and magnetic fields.

Alexey's group was the first to predict the Bose-Einstein condensation of liquid light at the room temperature around 20 years ago. He coordinated a European research network aimed at the experimental verification of this prediction and in 2007, together with current and former Southampton professors Pavlos Lagoudakis and Jeremy Baumberg, reported the first observation of this phenomenon at 300K, or 26oC.

"I hope to realise two more research proposals by our group: the realisation of light-induced superconductivity in polariton lasers with embedded conducting layers and the creation of quantum networks based on polariton qubits (quantum bits of information)," Alexey says. "Over 10 research labs all over the world are involved in these studies."

Dr Marcus Newton will use novel X-ray imaging to expand the understanding of multifunctional ferroic materials in a new Future Leaders Fellowship at the University of Southampton.

The Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy will work with the Diamond Light Source synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire to investigate the materials that simultaneously exhibit more than one property, such as electricity, elasticity or magnetism.

Scientists predict that multiferroics could help realise computer memory chips that are more energy efficient by two orders or magnitude and mobile phone batteries that retain charge for a year. This new Southampton materials research could also prove revolutionary for astronomy.

"Certain materials have structural defects that share the same symmetry as that of the early universe," Marcus explains. "The image in 3D could tell us about the structure of the early universe – it could help cosmologists understand how the universe was made."

The £1.1m programme, called Time Resolved Imaging of Multifunctional Materials in Three Dimensions (TRIMM-3D), is the fourth Future Leaders Fellowship from UKRI to be awarded to the University of Southampton.

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Southampton space physicists are appealing for thousands of members of the public to help them discover more about the phenomenon of the Northern Lights Aurora Borealis.

Aurora are formed when charged particles from space collide with gas particles in the Earth's atmosphere producing a beautiful natural display with a rich variety of shapes and movements on many different scales.

Scientists in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton are keen to understand more about this natural phenomenon and have developed a citizen science project Aurora Zoo that invites the public to find and classify the Aurora Borealis.

Participants will be able to help the research team classify thousands of images of the Northern Lights to make discoveries of new types of aurora and explore the processes of the upper atmosphere. The pictures have been taken by the Auroral Structure and Kinetics (ASK) camera system located on Svalbard in the high Arctic, halfway between Norway and the North Pole. The research team returned there earlier this year to further their observations into the Northern Lights and to calibrate and upgrade the instrumentation. They documented their expedition in a daily blog.

Project leader Dr Daniel Whiter said: "There's still so much we don't understand about small-scale structure in the aurora. With the help of the public, we can identify the aurora and build a database of the different structures and movements present at different times. Using other sensory data recorded during those times, it will be possible for the team to get a better understanding of the mechanisms behind the creation of these structures.

"Strong electric fields and currents in the upper atmosphere are associated with the aurora, and these heat the atmosphere much like a current heats a resistor. As the atmosphere is heated, chemical reaction rates vary, and so the composition and dynamics of the atmosphere change in ways which need to be included in atmospheric, meteorological and climate models.

"We're also investigating the interaction between the Sun's and Earth's magnetic fields, which will help us learn how space weather might affect spacecraft and space technology, and studying waves and processes in plasma, which has applications in areas such as fusion reactors and spacecraft propulsion systems."

Aurora Zoo contributors, need no prior knowledge of physics and astronomy and a tutorial and field guide are available to help them classify auroral features. Images are processed several times and compared when they are compiled for researchers.

To find out more or to become involved in classifying the Northern Lights images click here.

A Southampton Physics and Astronomy associate professor has received a prestigious Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant to explore the role of quantum effects in the energy transfer that occurs after light is absorbed by photosynthetic bio-molecules.

Dr Luca Sapienza, an Associate Professor of Physics, has been awarded nearly $2m from the Foundation that was set up in the USA to create positive outcomes for future generations by fostering path-breaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements and the preservation of the special character of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Luca, who leads the University's Solid-State Quantum Optics Group, will use the funding to work on research towards Revealing unambiguous signatures of quantum coherence in photosynthetic complexes on a photonic chip with Dr Alexandra Olaya-Castro, a Professor of Physics at University College London.

Together they will study how quantum phenomena could be involved in the way photosynthetic molecules transfer the energy they absorb from light. As well as the fundamental interest, they are hoping that by reverse-engineering natural processes optimised by nature during billions of years, they will be able to improve the performance of energy harvesting devices.

Luca said: "This energy transfer process within photosynthetic bio-molecules is much more efficient than the one achieved in current manmade photovoltaic devices, but the origin of this feature is still under debate.

"One hypothesis is that quantum phenomena could be involved. We will use nanophotonic techniques developed for semiconductor solid-state emitters to isolate single biomolecules that we will place within on-chip nanofabricated devices. By studying their emission properties under laser excitation, we aim to understand the role of quantum coherence in the energy transfer.

He added: "By understanding the fundamental processes in biosystems, we could reverse-engineer them to realise more efficient energy harvesters. Furthermore, the idea that room temperature, liquid phase, disordered systems could preserve coherence is tantalising - if we can understand how this happens, we could realise highly-coherent quantum emitters that could be used in quantum communication and quantum computing protocols relying on the storage of information in single photons.

"The support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation will allow us to use our expertise in quantum optics and nano fabrication to explore the properties of biological systems - a novel approach that I hope will provide new insights in the field of quantum biology. I am very excited about this interdisciplinary project as it will take my research group in a new research direction."

Particle physicist Dr Ömer Gürdoğan will explore Quantum Field Theory as one of the country's first Stephen Hawking Fellows at the University of Southampton.

He is one of just nine UK-based academics selected by UK Research and Innovation for the prestigious new fellowships, which seek to further Professor Hawking's legacy by furthering our understanding of the universe and communicating the wonders of science to the public.

Ömer will focus on scattering amplitudes, which are the quantum probabilities of the interactions of fundamental particles, as he seeks to answer questions about how nature works at microscopic scales.

He will also conduct outreach activities including art exhibitions inspired by the geometric nature of his research, and interactive demonstrations using virtual reality.

The new fellowship will start within Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy in January when Ömer returns from recent work as a post-doctoral researcher at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford.

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