Project Grant 2624576

The National Science Foundation Office of Integrative Activities awarded Montana State University $299,247 on December 1, 2026, under the Integrative Activities program (CFDA 47.083) to support an EPSCOR Research Fellows project investigating strongly interacting two-dimensional trion-polaritons for scalable on-chip quantum nonlinearities.

The fellow, an assistant professor at Montana State University, will engineer light-matter interactions at the nanoscale to achieve strong interactions between individual photons on a chip for photonic quantum information processing. The work integrates materials science, nanophotonics, and quantum optics by coupling atomically thin two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides with engineered indium gallium phosphide photonic crystal nanocavities. The project will design, fabricate, and experimentally validate a hybrid quantum polaritonic platform, scaling polaritonic phenomena to the deep-subwavelength regime through both nanophotonic field confinement and strongly nonlinear trion resonances in two-dimensional materials.

Beyond laboratory research, the project will establish advanced nanophotonics fabrication and testing capabilities to build a dedicated prototyping foundry supporting Montana's integrated photonics industry. Training includes a graduate student alongside the fellowship recipient, preparing both in state-of-the-art nanophotonic chip fabrication and optical device measurement techniques to develop a skilled workforce for the state's photonics sector. The work is conducted in collaboration with Professor Galan Moody at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Performance occurs in Santa Barbara, California. The project runs from December 1, 2026, through November 30, 2028.