Expanding the frontiers of information and communication technology (ICT) remains an important societal challenge, also calling for development of quantum perspectives. In this context, EU considers photonics a key-enabling technology (KET) that can fuel emerging quantum-information processing. While integrated photonic devices suffer from inherently weak, hard-to-control coupling of light with matter, polaritonic configurations have emerged as a new paradigm that drives nanoscale light–matter interactions in solid-state systems to entirely new regimes.

Polaritons represent hybrid light–matter states, in which electromagnetic (EM) waves are coupled with dipole-active matter excitations such as plasmonic electron oscillations in metals, excitonic electron-hole pairs in semiconductors, or phononic lattice vibrations. With the emergence of 2D materials—from crystalline ultrathin metal flakes to graphene and transition-metal-dichalcogenide monolayers—polaritons can be explored and manipulated in flatland, in engineered metasurfaces interfacing light-emitting quantum systems, or serving as light sources themselves. Enabled by concerted efforts from fundamental theory, nano- and quantum-optics experiments, low-dimensional material synthesis, advanced nanofabrication, and atomic-scale material characterization, Center for Polariton-driven Light–Matter Interactions—POLIMA—embraces a curiosity-driven exploration with new paradigms intersecting quantum optics and polaritonic matter.