Assistant Professor Sergey Alyatkin from the Photonics Center received a V.S. Letokhov medal for young researchers. The researcher was awarded in the Fundamental Research nomination for a series of works on the implementation and control of the parameters of an exciton-polariton system in two-dimensional optically induced arrays.

Exciton-polaritons are composite quasiparticles that arise from the strong interaction of light with matter in semiconductor microresonators — multilayer structures used to enhance this interaction. The competition committee recognized experimental research, which was implemented by Sergey at Skoltech, in the Laboratory of Hybrid Photonics. The first results were obtained back in 2019. A unique experimental setup for optical excitation and spectroscopy of microresonators using space- and time-modulated laser radiation was assembled in the laboratory, which enabled a number of fundamental results across laser physics, optics, and condensed matter physics.

“The news was definitely a pleasant surprise to me, since competition in science is always strong. It is a great honor for me to receive the medal named after Vladilen Stepanovich Letokhov, who worked at the Institute of Spectroscopy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. When I was a student at MIPT, I was lucky enough to begin my academic career in the very laboratory that was once headed by Professor Letokhov, and after that by his student, Professor Viktor Ivanovich Balykin. I got my first skills as an experimentalist under his guidance, for which I am very grateful to the professor. The research that I presented at the competition was conducted at Skoltech, and here I would like to thank the head of the laboratory, Pavlos Lagoudakis, and my colleagues who worked with me in the laboratory for many years and shared all the difficulties daily, while creating a friendly atmosphere. I think that modern science can only be promoted together with like-minded people and I am very glad that there are such people in my environment,” commented Sergey.

The competition for the medal was established by the D.S. Rozhdestvensky Optical Society in honor of Soviet physicist Vladilen Stepanovich Letokhov, one of the founders of laser physics. The medal is awarded to young scientists under the age of 35 for pioneering work in laser physics, spectroscopy, and their applications.