Imamoglu leads the Quantum Photonics Group at ETH, working at the intersection of quantum optics and condensed matter physics. Research directions: (1) Quantum emitters in 2D semiconductors — TMD monolayers (MoSe2, WSe2) host localized excitons that act as single-photon emitters; electrically tunable quantum dots in TMD heterostructures with high purity and spin-photon entanglement; developing them as quantum sensors of local electronic correlations at nanometer scales; (2) Strongly correlated electron physics — Mott insulator / Wigner crystal phases in moiré TMD bilayers probed optically with single-photon resolution; mapping electronic phases with nanometer spatial resolution; (3) Polariton quantum fluids — exciton-polaritons in 2D semiconductor microcavities; (4) Quantum nonlinear optics — photon-photon interactions via giant Kerr nonlinearities in strongly coupled quantum dots. Quantum sensing angle: quantum emitters as nanoscale probes of correlated phases.
Murthy leads the Nanoscale Quantum Optics group at ETH, studying light-matter interactions in nanostructures to engineer novel quantum states of light. Research directions: (1) Photon-photon interactions — achieving strong effective photon-photon interactions via coupling to quantum emitters in 2D materials and optical nanocavities; exploring photonic Mott insulators and collective quantum phases of light; (2) 2D semiconductor quantum emitters — localized excitons in TMD heterostructures as sources of single photons and entangled photon pairs; (3) Quantum light from cavities — engineering photon statistics and squeezing using cavity-QED with 2D materials; (4) Ultrafast quantum optics — attosecond-scale probing of light-matter entanglement. New group as of ~2023.