A new ERC Consolidator for CESQ

Johannes Schachenmayer, researcher at the European Center for Quantum Sciences, is awarded with a European Research Council "Consolidator" grant for his project MATHLOCCA (Many-body Theory of Local Chemistry in Cavities). 

Recent experiments have demonstrated that chemical reactivity can be modified by coupling molecules to the electro-magnetic modes of a cavity, leading to a new emerging research field of "polaritonic chemistry". Despite substantial progress, fundamental underlying theoretical mechanisms still remain unclear up to date. MATHLOCCA will develop a quantum optics theory to address this challenge, uncovering new emergent quantum many-body physics in minimal molecular models with coupled electronic, nuclear, and photonic degrees of freedom.

Johannes Schachenmayer received his PhD in 2012 from the University of Innsbruck (Austria). He then completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at JILA in Boulder (USA) before joining the CNRS in Strasbourg as a Chargé de Recherche in 2016. He is currently leading research on computational quantum many-body theory at the Centre Européen de Sciences Quantiques (CESQ) within the Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) of the University of Strasbourg and the CNRS. His work, supported by national (ANR, CNRS Emergence, LabEx/IdEx/ITI, Prix Espoirs de l’Université de Strasbourg, etc.) and EU-funded projects (MSCA-DN), uses advanced computational methods to explore emergent phenomena in many-body systems, with applications in cold atoms, condensed matter, quantum computing, and chemistry. He has recently pioneered an interdisciplinary approach, developing quantum theory models for polaritonic chemistry—an emerging field at the intersection of quantum physics and chemistry.