PhoQuS was a European Horizon 2020 FET project dedicated to analogue quantum simulation with fluids of light. Coordinated by Sorbonne Université, the project ran from October 2018 to March 2022 under grant agreement No. 820392, with an EU contribution of approximately €3 million.
Optical nonlinearities make photons interact and allow a light field to display collective behaviour usually associated with quantum gases: superfluid flow, sound-like excitations, vortices and turbulence. PhoQuS brought together complementary photon-fluid platforms—including semiconductor polaritons, propagating fluids of light and photon condensates—to use these phenomena as controllable quantum simulators.
The programme focused on three connected goals:
PhoQuS established tools for measuring excitation spectra with high resolution, controlling the geometry and dimensionality of driven photonic systems, and generating long-lived topological excitations. The consortium also explored analogue horizons, phase transitions and routes towards strongly correlated photonic states.
These results helped turn fluids of light from a hydrodynamic analogy into a versatile experimental platform for quantum simulation. They now underpin several of the group’s current research directions, from paraxial superfluids and vortex dynamics to quantum-field simulations in tailored effective spacetimes.
Read the official PhoQuS project report on CORDIS.