Flat bands exhibit high degeneracy and intrinsic localization, offering a promising platform for enhanced light-matter interactions. Here, we investigate the resonant interaction between a two-level emitter and a chiral flat band hosted by a photonic lattice. In the weak coupling regime, the emitter undergoes Rabi oscillations with a lifted photonic mode whose spatial structure reflects the nature of compact localized states and the onset of Anderson localization. We show that weak hopping disorder induces a delocalization of the lifted mode whereas the effective emitter-field coupling strength, and the associated mode volume experienced by the emitter, remains protected against structural fluctuations. We illustrate our approach using selected flat band lattices. Our findings provide a route to flat band state preparation via quench dynamics and robust cavity-QED control.
We present an analytical study of the dynamics of a qubit coupled to the zigzag edge of a photonic honeycomb lattice. Leveraging a resolvent operator approach and exact lattice Green's functions, we map the spectrum of qubit-photon bound states and complex poles to uncover the long-time scaling laws of the qubit population. Unlike a qubit coupled to the bulk of graphene, the presence of a zero-energy flat band connecting the Dirac points suppresses long-time branch-cut-induced tails, instead driving damped Rabi oscillations. Potential experimental platforms are briefly discussed.
Engineering the photonic environment using lattices of coupled resonators, which we refer to as lattice quantum electrodynamics (QED), provides a route to control both the spontaneous emission of individual quantum emitters and the photon-mediated interactions between them. Here we introduce an optical lattice QED platform based on individual dibenzoterrylene (DBT) molecules embedded in anthracene crystals and coupled to lattices of open optical microcavities. This hybrid architecture benefits from narrow-linewidth molecular emitters, site-resolved optical access, engineered coupled-resonator bands, and compatibility with established molecular frequency-tuning techniques. As a proof-of-principle demonstration, we observe emitter-photon bound states formed when the optical transition of a single molecule is tuned to the band gap of a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) cavity lattice. These in-gap states display directional localization and photon emission on a single sublattice, inherited from the vacancy-induced topological edge modes of the underlying SSH lattice. Our results establish open-cavity lattices coupled to DBT molecules as a versatile architecture for engineering many-emitter quantum optical systems with controllable photon-mediated interactions.
Engineering the on-site frequencies of a photonic lattice provides a powerful route to endow emitted photons with non-trivial dynamical and topological properties, reshaping the way a coupled qubit decays. This thesis investigates the emission dynamics of a qubit weakly coupled to photonic lattices hosting such synthetic potentials, showing how the resulting band structure dictates qualitatively distinct regimes of light-matter interaction.In the first part, we study a qubit coupled to a one-dimensional coupled-cavity array with a linear gradient in the cavity frequencies, which acts on photons as a synthetic force
F. For strong
F, emission becomes reversible and is captured by an effective Jaynes--Cummings model, producing a chiral, time-periodic excitation of an extended region of the array, either to the right or to the left of the qubit depending on its frequency. For weak
F, the decay is non-Markovian and exhibits revivals reminiscent of atoms between mirrors, even though no mirrors are present: the finite bandwidth confines the emitted photon, and the dynamics is well described by a delay differential equation in which the amplitude and period of Bloch oscillations play the role of cavity length and round-trip time.In the second part, we move to two dimensions and couple a giant atom, a qubit with multiple, spatially separated coupling points, non-locally to a honeycomb lattice of resonators with detuned sublattice frequencies. By suitably arranging the coupling points, the giant atom selectively addresses a single valley, a capability unattainable with a local emitter. This valley-selective coupling endows the emitted photons with an effective valley-polarized Berry curvature, giving rise to valley-polarized edge modes at domain walls between regions of opposite sublattice detuning. As a consequence, a giant atom placed near such a domain wall exhibits chiral emission of valley-polarized photons without breaking time-reversal symmetry, suggesting a natural implementation in circuit QED.Together, these results establish synthetic potentials in photonic lattices as a versatile tool for controlling qubit emission, linking waveguide QED to Bloch-oscillation physics and to valleytronics.
Achieving decoherence-free quantum state manipulation is a paramount goal in modern quantum technologies. To this end, we demonstrate its implementation in a two-dimensional dissipative photonic graphene featuring exceptional rings. Employing the resolvent method, we analytically explore the quantum dynamics of emitters coupled to photonic graphene. In the thermodynamic limit, our analysis predicts a dissipation-dependent logarithmic relaxation for a single quantum emitter, alongside a pronounced quantum Zeno effect that slows the decay with increased dissipation. Notably, within a finite lattice, the excitation of single quantum emitter stabilizes in a decoherence-protected quantum state, which is identified as a dissipation-robust quasilocalized state. Interestingly, this state, together with a dark state, facilitates decoherence-free interactions between quantum emitters. This capability can be extended to topological graphenic platforms, where edge states mediate analogous protected interactions among giant atoms. Our findings highlight a promising path toward protecting quantum coherence in practical, high-dimensional photonic environment through dissipation engineering.
We investigate a Lieb lattice of quantum emitters coupled to a two-dimensional waveguide network and demonstrate that this system supports an energetically isolated flat band, enabling localization despite the presence of long-range photon-mediated couplings. We then explore the two-excitation dynamics in both the softcore and hardcore interaction regimes, which arise from the nonlinearity of the emitters. In the softcore regime, we observe interaction-induced photon transport within the flat band, mediated by the formation of bound photon pairs. In the hardcore regime, corresponding to the two-level atom limit, we instead find the emergence of metastable exciton-like dressed states involving both flat and dispersive bands. Our findings highlight how the interplay between the collective behavior of emitters and effective photon-photon interactions can provide a platform for studying highly correlated photonic states in flat-band systems.