Professor Alex McLeod at ECE Spring 2023 Colloquium

Unveiling the realm of quantum materials with nano-optics

Toolsets wielded by condensed matter researchers over the past century have expanded meteorically into frontiers of the ultra-small and ultra-fast. Nevertheless, resolving condensed matter through optical spectroscopies has remained largely arrested by the diffraction limit since the 19th century. In this talk, I review and celebrate the the marriage of “conventional” optics with scanning probes to circumvent the diffraction limit, particularly into regimes of low temperature for fundamental studies of quantum materials. I showcase investigations of collective excitations in 2-dimensional media like graphene, electronic phase competition in correlated electron solids, and on-demand control of optical properties in strongly interacting materials. I will share my ambitious perspectives for the future of nano-optical probes for quantum materials, a future that is simultaneously ultra-bright and ultra-small, and fundamentally transformative for optical spectroscopies of complex matter.

About Prof. Alex McLeod:

Professor Alexander S. McLeod has pioneered the application of optical nano-probes and multi-messenger nano-imaging to explore inhomogeneous quantum matter, including correlated electron systems and van der Waals materials. His recent interests include harnessing hybrid excitations of light and matter – so-called polaritons – as real-space probes of electronic structure, and tailoring nano-scale light-matter interactions to realize new states of matter. Previously, McLeod was a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow with the Columbia Nano Initiative at Columbia University (2017-2021). He holds a BA in Physics and Astrophysics (2009) from the University of California Berkeley and a PhD in Physics (2017) from the University of California San Diego.