Mission

Honorary Professor

Biography

Benoit Deveaud is now Research Director at Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau (France) Benoît Deveaud was born in France in 1952. In 1971, he enters Ecole Polytechnique in Paris where he specializes in physics. In 1974, he joins the National Center for research in Telecommunications (CNET). He undertakes at the same time studies on the main impurity centers in III-V semiconductors, and continues his studies in physics by preparing a diploma in solid state physics in Rennes. In 1984, he defends his PhD thesis at the University of Grenoble, under the supervision of Gérard Martinez. Meanwhile, his team gets interested in semiconductor microstructures and launches studies on the structural and optical properties of superlattices based on gallium arsenide. These studies highlight for example vertical transport in superlattices as well as the quantification of excitonic energies in a quantum well. In 1986 he joins the team of Daniel Chemla in Bell Laboratories (Holmdel, USA) and takes part in the development of the first luminescence set-up having a temporal resolution better than 1 picosecond. He studies then ultrafast processes in quantum wells. Returning to France in 1988, at CNET, he coaches a laboratory of high-speed studies, interested in the optical and electronic properties of semiconductor materials. Appointed professor in Physics at EPFL in October 1993, his research team studies the physics of ultrafast processes in semiconductor micro and nanostructures and in devices that use them. He has been the Director the Institute of Micro and Optoelectronics since 1998, then of the Institute of Quantum Photonic and Electronics from 2003 to 2008. His team takes an active part in the "Quantum Photonics" National Center of Competence in Research, of which he was the Deputy Director from 2001 to 2005 then the Director from July 2005 till the end of the NCCR in 2013 From 2008 till 2014 he has been Dean for Research at EPFL and president of the research commission. Starting in 2014, he has been head of Physics, till his departure from EPFL in 2017. He has been a divisional editor of Physical Review Letters from 2001 to 2007.

Latest News

Vortices in Polariton condensates We have evidenced vortices in polariton condensates through the change of phase by 2PI around the core. The vortices are stabilized by disorder and provide a strong indication that Bose Einstein condensate of polaritons are indeed superfluid. see : http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v4/n9/full/nphys1051.html Bringing quantum effects out of the cold We have been able to achieve Bose-EInstein condensation in the solid state. Polaritons, i.e. half matter half light particles produced in a semiconductor microcavity, have shown all characteristics of condensation at a temperature of 19K. See the press release at : http://actualites.epfl.ch/presseinfo-com?id=378 Probing carrier dynamics in nanostructures : We have built a new machine capable of unprecedented time and spatial precision. This is a picosecond cathodoluminescence system that allows to follow the movements of electrons in nanostructures. See the press release at : http://sb.epfl.ch/page59263-fr.html