Lightmatters
The Mann lab
We are here to show that light in matter... matters. By structuring the material using nanophotonic engineering, light can play a dominant role in many material properties! This is well-known for the color: strong coupling between a material transition and an optical resonance results in a dramatically altered absorption spectrum. In the Lightmatters group we are extending this light-matter paradigm far beyond the color of a material. If you are interested, please see if there are vacancies available or reach out.
January 15th, 2026: We have just completed a lab move and renovation, and our laser system is currently being installed: we finally get to go from theory only to theory and experiment!
September 8th, 2025: Rein, Stéphanie, Wouter, and Vera join the group! Welcome to all, very exciting and good luck with your thesis projects.
Click for more news.
Publications. Some recent papers from the group are:
- Broadband topological slow light through Brillouin zone winding, Physical Review Letters 127 (2021).
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Nonreciprocal Cavities and the Time-Bandwidth Limit, Optica 6 (2019).
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Intersubband polaritonic metasurfaces for high-contrast ultra-fast power limiting and optical switching, npj Nanophotonics 1 (2024).
To see a full list of publications, click here.
Vacancies. We are enthusiastically looking for a PhD students to join the group for a project on metasurfaces for ultracold atoms, in collaboration with Klaasjan van Druten! Get in touch to learn more.
Contact
Address
Office: C4.239
Institute of Physics
University of Amsterdam
Science Park 904
1098 XH, Amsterdam
The Netherlands