Biography

Alexey KAVOKIN, the director of International Center for Polaritonics, is born on the 7^th of March in 1970 in Leningrad, USSR. He received his master degree in physics with honor from St-Petersburg State Technical University and Ph.D. in Physical and Mathematical Sciences at A.F. Ioffe Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. Afeter a one-year postdoctoral research period at Università degli Studi di Roma II "Tor Vergata", Italie Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettronica, he was nominated as the chairholder, Marie Curie Chair of Excellence “Polariton devices”. From 1998 to 2005, he was the university Professor at Université "Blaise Pascal" Clermont-Ferrand II in France. From 2005, he was the chair of Nanoscience and Photonics and professor of Physics and Astronomy School in University of Southampton. Prof. Kavokin accepted the offer as the director of the International Center of Polaritonics and chair professor in Westlake University In June 2018.

Research

Field of expertise is physics of light-matter coupling and solid state physics, both theoretical and experimental. Research activity and contributions are in many-body quantum physics of excitons and exciton-polaritons. In 1992, he joined the field of Polaritonics and published his first paper on the theory of exciton-polaritons in quantum well, wire and dot structures. In 1993, Prof. Kavokin collaborated with the optical spectroscopy groups of the Universities of Wurzburg and Montpellier on the exciton-related phenomena in diluted magnetic semiconductors. In 1998, he predicted the vertical motional narrowing effect for exciton-polaritons in multiple quantum wells with Lucio Andreani (Pavia). A year earlier the group of Ruben Seysian has discovered the above barrier excitons predicted in his paper of 1995. Being appointed to a permanent position in France, Prof. Kavokin applied for European funding "CLERMONT". This project achieved several ground breaking results: for the first time bosonic stimulation of scattering of exciton-polaritons in microcavities has been evidenced (2000). 

In 2005-2007 Prof. Kavokin took part in the experimental demonstration of the Bose-Einstein condensation of exciton-polaritons. In 2007, polariton lasing at room temperature has been documented. He theoretically predicted new effects, including the Optical Spin Hall effect (predicted in 2005, observed in2007), Bloch oscillations of light (predicted in 2001, observed in 2004), room temperature Bose-Einsteincondensation of exciton-polaritons in GaN microcavities (predicted in 2003, observed in 2008). In 2003together with Guillaume Malpuech, He has published the first text book on Polaritonics ("Cavitypolaritons", Elsevier) which has been followed by "Microcavities". The work on this last book has beencompleted in the United Kingdom in 2005. At the same year, he has been appointed a Chair ofNanophysics and Photonics at the University of Southampton where he created a group of young theorists whosuccessfully collaborated with over 20 experimental laboratories all over the world. The results of thiscollaboration are: prediction (2007) and observation (2009) of half-quantum vortices in polariton condensates,prediction (2006) and observation (2010) of the spin Meissner effect in polariton condensates, prediction(2008) and observation (2011) of polariton spin rings and polarisation multistability, prediction (2009) andobservation (2010) of Tamm plasmons, interpretation of cold exciton spin patterns (2012), concept of BosonicCascade lasing (2013), theory of polariton qubits (2016). This research resulted in over 300 publications inpeer reviewed journals. His research group has formulated several concepts of new polariton devices. Theseare "polariton neurons" for information processing, ultrafast optical switches, micro-lasers working in aterahertz frequency range, polariton based hybrid solar cells, polariton logic gates and spin transistors. 

Representative Publications

1. Alexey Kavokin and Pavlos Lagoudakis, Exciton-Mediated Superconductivity, Nature Materials, 15, 599 (2016)

2. S. Hoefling and A.V. Kavokin, A historic experiment redesigned, Nature, 514, 313-314 (2014).

3. A.V. Kavokin, I.A. Shelykh, T. Taylor and M.M. Glazov, Vertical cavity surface emitting terahertz lasers, Phys. Rev. Lett., 108, 197401 (2012). 

4. A. A. High, J. R. Leonard, A. T. Hammack, M. M. Fogler, L. V. Butov, A. V. Kavokin, K. L. Campman & A. C. Gossard, Spontaneous coherence in a cold exciton gas, Nature, 483, 584 (2012). 

5. E.Wertz, L. Ferrier, D. D. Solnyshkov, R. Johne, D. Sanvitto, A. Lemaître I. Sagnes, R. Grousson, A. V. Kavokin, P. Senellart, G. Malpuech and J. Bloch, Spontaneous formation and optical manipulation of extended polariton condensates, Nature Physics, 6, 860 (2010). 

6. M. Kaliteevski, I. Iorsh, S. Brandt, R.A. Abram, J.M. Chamberlain, A.V. Kavokin, I.A. Shelykh, Tamm plasmon-polaritons: Possible electromagnetic states at the interface of a metal and a dielectric Bragg mirror, Physical Review B 76, 165415 (2010). (cited 380)

7. K. Lagoudakis, T. Ostatnicky, A.V. Kavokin, Y.G. Rubo, R. Andre, and B. Deveaud-Pledran, Observation of Half-Quantum Vortices in an Exciton-Polariton Condensate, Science, 326, 974 (2009). 

8. S. Christopoulos, G. Baldassarri von Högersthal, A. J. Grundy, P. G. Lagoudakis, A. V. Kavokin, J. J. Baumberg, G. Christmann, R. Butté, E. Feltin, J.-F. Carlin, and N. Grandjean, Room-Temperature Polariton Lasing in Semiconductor Microcavities, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 126405 (2007). 

9. C. Leyder, M. Romanelli, J.Ph. Karr, E. Giacobino, T.C.H. Liew, M.M. Glazov, A.V. Kavokin, G. Malpuech, A. Bramati, A., Observation of the optical spin Hall effect, Nature Physics 3, 628 (2007). 

10. M. Richard, J. Kasprzak, R. Andre, R. Romestein, Le Si Dang, G. Malpuech, and A.V. Kavokin, Experimental evidence for non-equilibrium Bose condensation of exciton-polaritons, Phys. Rev. B, 72, 201301 (2005). 

11. E.S. Sedov, I.V. Iorsh, S.M. Arakelian, A.P. Alodjants and Alexey Kavokin, Hyperbolic metamaterials with Bragg polaritons, Physical Review Letters, 114, 237402 (2015).

12. L. Zhang, W. Xie, J. Wang, A. Poddubny, J. Lu, Y. Wang, J. Gu, W. Liu, D. Xu, X. Shen, Y.G. Rubo, B.L. Altshuler, A.V. Kavokin, and Z. Chen, Weak lasing in one-dimensional polariton superlattices, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of United States of America, 112, 1516-1519 (2015).

13. S.V. Andreev, A.A. Varlamov and A.V. Kavokin, Scale invariance and universality in a cold gas of indirect excitons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 036401 (2014).

14. A.V. Kavokin, Polaritons: The rise of the bosonic laser, Nature Photonics, 7, 591 (2013).

15.T.C.H. Liew, M.M. Glazov, K.V. Kavokin, I.A. Shelykh, M.A. Kaliteevski, and A.V. Kavokin, Proposal for a Bosonic Cascade Laser, Phys. Rev. Letters, 110, 047402 (2013).

16. L.V. Butov and A.V. Kavokin, The behavior of exciton-polaritons, Nature Photonics, 6, 2 (2012).

17. I.A. Luk’yanchuk, A.A. Varlamov and A.V. Kavokin, Giant Nernst-Ettingshausen oscillations in semiclassically strong magnetic fields, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 016601 (2011).

18. I.A. Shelykh, T. Taylor and A.V. Kavokin, Rotons in a Hybrid Bose-Fermi System, Phys. Rev. Letters, 105, 140402 (2010).

19. A. Amo, T.C.H. Liew, C. Adrados, R. Houdre, E. Giacobino, A.V. Kavokin and A. Bramati, Exciton-polariton spin switches, Nature Photonics, 4, 361 (2010).

20. A.V. Kavokin, Polariton diode microcavities, Nature Photonics, 3, 135 (2009).

21. T. C. H. Liew, Yuri G. Rubo, and A. V. Kavokin, Generation and dynamics of vortex lattices in coherent exciton-polariton fields , Phys. Rev. Lett., 101, 187401 (2008).