FIP Seminar -"A Solitonic Route to High-Temperature Macroscopic Quantum Order"

Presenter: Dr. Kenan Gundogdu, Professor of Physics, North Carolina State University

Superfluorescence (SF) is a hallmark of macroscopic quantum coherence, in which an initially incoherent ensemble of quantum emitters spontaneously synchronizes, leading to a burst of coherent light. Traditionally, this process requires cryogenic conditions to suppress dephasing, as the emergence of coherence demands that the collective light-matter coupling outpace decoherence processes.

In this talk, I will present the discovery of an unconventional form of SF that persists at room temperature in lead-halide perovskites, enabled by the formation of solitons-self-organized quantum islands of coherence embedded in an incoherent background. These solitonic regions act as localized macroscopic quantum states that are vibrationally isolated from the thermal lattice via a mechanism we term Quantum Analog of Vibration Isolation (QAVI). While conventional SF relies on radiative coupling to induce phase synchronization, solitonic SF emerges from a nonlinear, density-driven structural transition governed by exciton-lattice interactions.

This phenomenon not only challenges long-standing assumptions about coherence limits in solids, but also points to a broader framework for realizing macroscopic quantum phases in thermally disordered environments-where self-localization and collective order can coexist without global symmetry breaking.

Kenan Gundogdu received his B.S. in Physics from Boğaziçi University in 1999 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Iowa in 2004, where he studied spin dynamics in semiconductors. He completed two postdoctoral appointments-first in the Chemistry Department at the University of Iowa and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 2008, he has been a faculty member in the Department of Physics at North Carolina State University. His research focuses on ultrafast spectroscopy, quantum coherence, and emergent phenomena in quantum materials, including recent work on room-temperature solitonic superfluorescence in lead-halide perovskites.