Congratulations to Hélène Ollivier, post-doctoral fellow, GOSS team - photonics department, winner of the Physics of Waves and Matter (PhOM) 2021 thesis prize from the Graduate School of Physics of the Paris-Saclay University.

In 2013, Hélène Ollivier joined the Institut d'Optique engineering school, then in 2014 the ENS Paris-Saclay. In 2017, she obtained both degrees as well as her Master 2 research in laser-optics-matter.
Hélène started her PhD in quantum photonics in the group of Pascale Senellart, CNRS Research Director at C2N, with the objective of building bright semiconductor sources of entangled photon pairs, based on the coupling between quantum boxes and micropillar cavities. She demonstrated the reproducibility of the single-photon sources fabricated in the C2N Nanotechnology Facility by conducting a systematic study of their performance, which led to a better understanding of the physics of the sources.

In the framework of a collaboration initiated with a group of quantum optics theorists from the University of Calgary (Canada), Hélène developed and experimentally verified a model that allows a more accurate characterization of single photon sources. Finally, she succeeded in showing experimental control of the symmetry of quantum boxes (which is of great interest for the generation of entangled photon pairs), and used finite element simulations to better understand the mechanisms involved.

She won the Aggregation in Physics in 2016 and currently teaches physics and chemistry in a high school in the Paris region. She has just obtained a teaching position (PRAG) in an engineering school in Brittany (ESIR), where she will be teaching the physics of materials from September 2022.