De Sterke is a theorist-experimentalist of nonlinear and structured photonics. The group's signature recent contribution is the pure-quartic soliton: by engineering the dispersion of a waveguide so that the group velocity depends on the third power of frequency, they produce solitons with a different energy-width scaling from conventional ones, with direct consequences for mode-locked laser and frequency-comb design. The group also works on topological and non-Hermitian photonics and on THz metamaterials. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the relevance is to the light side of the search rather than the spin side: dispersion-engineered comb and soliton sources are the local oscillators and reference clocks that any optical readout of a pT/sqrt(Hz) sensor ultimately depends on. Borderline inclusion; kept for the fundamental-light-physics criterion.

Kante's group explores topological and non-Hermitian (parity-time-symmetric) photonic structures, including magnetless nonreciprocal metasurfaces and topological lasers, to control light-matter interaction in nanophotonic devices in ways not accessible to conventional photonics.

Kuhlmey works on structured electromagnetic materials across an unusually wide frequency range: microstructured optical fibres, metamaterials, non-reciprocal and time-varying media, and — the newest and most sensing-relevant thread — quantum terahertz photonics, in collaboration with ENS Paris and CSIRO. The THz programme is explicitly aimed at single-photon/single-electron coupling in the THz band, which if it works would allow quantum devices to operate at a few kelvin rather than millikelvin. The group runs a THz time-domain spectroscopy lab with cryogenic capability. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the THz band is the one part of the spectrum where neither superconducting circuits nor NV ensembles currently offer quantum-limited detection, so this is a genuine gap-filling programme rather than a variation on existing pT/sqrt(Hz) approaches.