Research line

Waveguide QED

Modifying the electromagnetic field can deeply affect atom-photon interactions, leading to spectacular effects such as the emission and full reabsorption of a photon in a cavity, a longstanding effect of quantum optics. Current technology, e.g. through fabrication of arrays of coupled cavities, today allows to constrain the field within structures of unprecedented geometry such as waveguides or 2D lattices. Also, artificial atoms interacting non-locally with the field are now available in the lab, which breaks the traditional electric dipole approximation. These developments are opening up an entirely new chapter of quantum optics with both fundamental and applicative implications, concerning in particular the implementation of quantum information processing tasks. Currently, at Qunipa we are especially interested in unveiling unprecedented atom-photon interactions phenomena that occur in electromagnetic environments with tailored topological and/or non-Hermitian properties, whose experimental observation is yet within reach or not far-fetched with current setups.

atom dressed by an orbiting photon in the photonic Haldane model
atom dressed by an orbiting photon in the photonic Haldane model

Projects

Recent publications 31

All 31 papers in waveguide qed
  1. Enabling Deterministic Passive Quantum State Transfer with Giant Atoms
    Oliver Diekmann, Enrico Di Benedetto, Nicolas Jungwirth, Daniele De Bernardis, Zeyu Kuang, Francesco Ciccarello, Stefan Rotter, Peter Rabl, Alejandro González-Tudela and Carlos Gonzalez-Ballestero
    PRX Quantum 7, 043013 (2026)
  2. Emergent cavity-QED dynamics along the edge of a photonic lattice
    Enrico Di Benedetto, Xuejian Sun, Marcel A Pinto, Luca Leonforte, Chih-Ying Chang, Vincent Jouanny, Léo Peyruchat, Pasquale Scarlino and Francesco Ciccarello
    Quantum Sci. Technol. 11, 045055 (2026)
  3. Many-body quantum optics in a Bose-Hubbard waveguide
    Phys. Rev. Research 8, L032022 (2026)
  4. Enhancement of charge correlations and real-space topological marker on an interacting non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model
    Sebastião dos A. Sousa-Júnior, Pedro B. Melo, Rubem Mondaini, Arnob Kumar Ghosh and Rodrigo Arouca
    Preprint Preprint, arXiv:2606.06466 (2026)
  5. Multimode-cavity picture of non-Markovian waveguide QED
    Dario Cilluffo, Luca Ferialdi, G. Massimo Palma, Giuseppe Calajò and Francesco Ciccarello
    Phys. Rev. Res. 8, 023172 (2026)
  6. Giant-atom-enabled quantum optics with valley-polarized photons
    Marcel A. Pinto, Giovanni Luca Sferrazza, Silvia Casulleras, Alejandro Gonzalez-Tudela, Daniele De Bernardis and Francesco Ciccarello
    Preprint Preprint, arXiv:2605.06771 (2026)
  7. Atom-Photon Bound States in Fractal Photonic Lattices: Localization Length and Anomalous Diffusion
    Florian Bönsel, Flore K. Kunst and Federico Roccati
    Preprint Preprint, arXiv:2605.23625 (2026)
  8. Perspective: Interactions and Nonlinearity in Non-Hermitian Physics
    Federico Roccati and Federico Balducci
    Preprint Preprint, arXiv:2603.13526 (2026)