Over the last few years, my group has been developing the fluctuational and quantum electrodynamics of polaritons - collective oscillations of light and matter. This endeavor led us to discover a unique singular resonance in moving media that causes a giant increase in vacuum friction, the fluctuationaldrag force exerted by vacuum on bodies in relative motion.  I will discuss the possibility of observing such a resonance and its underlying connections to other QED phenomena.

These forces are intimately tied to Van der Waals (VdW) interactions which occur due to fluctuating dipoles. I will describe my group’s experimental efforts to engineer virtual polariton exchange (dipole-dipole VdW coupling) between quantum emitters, a prized goal in quantum photonics.

I will also discuss our experiments to probe strong coupling in light-matter interaction using the unconventional route of electron energy loss spectroscopy. We have isolated the role of a spatially dispersive material response in the polaritonic excitations as opposed to the temporally dispersive dielectric constant used for photons. I will briefly mention my group’s nanofabrication expertise and our recent elucidation of Ferrel-Berreman modes in nanostructured media known previously in plasmas.

Even though polaritons form excellent candidates to enhance quantum effects, absorption in polaritonic media poses a significant challenge to the field. To this end, we show how redefining total internal reflection can surprisingly confine light beyond the diffraction limit. We are now exploiting this phenomenon to build a platform for strong light-matter interaction.

Finally, I will touch upon future plans to steer my group’s quantum photonics research away from equilibrium.

Zubin Jacob is currently an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is also a visiting faculty member at the International Center for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. He completed his PhD from Purdue University (2010) and M.S.E.E. from Princeton University (2007). He serves on the editorial board of Scientific Reports (a journal by the nature publishing group) and Journal of Optics (UK Institute of Physics). He is also the technical chair of the metamaterials sessions at Meta 2015 New York and serves on the scientific committee of multiple international conferences. Zubin was invited to present his group’s recent achievements at over 20 leading nanophotonics conferences worldwide (2013 and 2014).