Welcome to the Light-Matter Group

If you are curious and enjoy a healthy dose of photonics, solid-state physics, quantum mechanics and materials science, then you have come to the right place. We are a research group in the department of Engineering Physics at Polytechnique Montréal. In the Light-Matter Group, we study the physics of optoelectronic materials and use what we learn to design state-of-the-art devices. Our group members make world-record efficiency optoelectronic devices such as light-emitting diodes and solar cells, but also more exotic quantum devices such as polariton (light-matter!) lasers and single-photon sources.

Our work often involves understanding how new materials interact with light and building tiny optical structures that can tune this interaction. For this, we use advanced spectroscopic techniques (fast lasers!) and various nanofabrication tools to make really tiny things. You can check out our equipment at Infrastructure and learn more about some of our Research.

The group is based at Polytechnique Montréal, one of Canada’s top engineering research universities and led by Prof. Stéphane Kéna-Cohen.

We are passionate about technologies that can have an impact. If you want to use your curiosity, passion and creativity to solve challenging problems and develop the next generation of optical components, then join us! (more info)

Prospective students: For many years now, Montréal has been ranked by QS as the World’s best student city.


We are lucky to collaborate with excellent groups both locally [e.g. Francoeur, Martinu, Skene, Seletskiy, Moutanabbir] and internationally [e.g. Arnold, Rand, Sanvitto, Menon, Yuen-Zhou], who help make much of our work possible.

We are members of two indersciplinary strategic groups in Québec, the Regroupement Québécois sur les Matériaux de Pointe (RQMP) and the Institut Transdisciplinaire d’Information Quantique (INTRIQ).

We are also very grateful for continued funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chairs, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Fonds de Recherche Québécois Nature et Technolgies. Previous research was also supported by the Army Research Office, the Department of National Defense and the Samsung Global Research Office.

News

4 October 22

Openings for postdoc and PhD students here and here.

10 June 2022

A collaboration on polariton XY simulators led by Wei Bao was published in Nature Materials.

20 May 2022

Soufiane Kaghad wins a prize for best presentation at the Quantum Technology Bootcamp. Congrats!

11 March 22022

Tomohiro was awarded a JSPS Post-doc fellowship! Congrats!

18 February 2022

The new Montana cryostat has arrived!

25 January 2022

Our new website is live!

15 January 2022

Stéphane’s Tier 2 Canada Research Chair is renewed! Polytechnique Montreal Press Release.

... see all News