Orateur
Description
I will present our work on the development of cavities and metamaterials operating in the Terahertz (THz) frequency range and using a surface plasmonic mechanism for light confinement. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss equilibrium properties of this system and how the plasmonic approach enables the confinement of THz photons to volumes up to 10⁻⁸ times smaller than the free-space diffraction limit [1]. In such an extreme regime, the cavities approach the ultimate spatial scale permitted by plasmonics, where phenomena such as nonlocal light–matter interactions begin to emerge and allow to probe finite momentum properties of the electron gas with free space radiation. In the second part, I will focus on the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of periodically driven plasmonic cavities through the recent realization of a photonic time crystal [2]. This approach enables the engineering of emergent photonic properties and light–matter interactions from a temporal perspective, complementing the traditional spatial approach. [1] I. Aupiais et al. Nature Communications, 14(1), 2023. [2] T. Guo et al. arXiv 2510.02845
