To detect or generate complex light beams that are increasingly needed in biology and photonics (light with non-zero angular momentum and non-classical light), it is necessary to rely on bulky and sophisticated setups, considerably limiting their potential. The FORWARD project aims at obtaining the same functionalities with a new generation of optoelectronic components of submicron thickness in the near infrared range. This ambitious objective implies to devise radically new ways of creating and manipulating complex light at the nanoscale. In FORWARD, this challenge will be addressed by hybridizing two classes of artificial media—colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) and metamaterials—and leveraging advanced cooperative behaviours within the hybrids, which will be pumped electrically. This initiative can be seen as the first of its kind that takes a unified and multidisciplinary view at artificial media, opening new horizons for synthetic composite materials in optics, electronics and optoelectronics.

Bio: A. Degiron received the PhD in physics from the University of Strasbourg. In 2005 he became a postdoc at Duke University (USA) and in 2008 he was appointed assistant research professor. In 2009 he returned to France and works at Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies as a tenured CNRS scientist ever since. His current research interests focus on metamaterials, self-assembled nanocrystals and optoelectronics at the nanoscale.