A little about me
A personal journey through physics
I am a theoretical physicist, born in Nice, in southern France, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Alps.
I have always liked to be amazed by simple things. Sometimes it is just the light at the end of the day, the shape of a cloud, the movement of water, or some small detail that most of us pass by without really noticing. I find it incredible that we live in such a rich universe and that even very ordinary things can become fascinating when you stop and look at them carefully.
I guess this curiosity is one of the reasons I chose physics. It gives me an excuse to keep asking why things are the way they are and how.
From quantum foundations to open systems
I completed my PhD in theoretical physics in 2019 under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Durt.
My thesis was rooted in the foundations of quantum mechanics and addressed questions that are as physical as they are philosophical: the measurement problem, the meaning of quantum probability, the emergence of classical behavior, and the possibility of trajectory-based descriptions of quantum dynamics.
Working on these questions also sparked my interest in the boundary between a quantum system and its environment.
How much can we really say about a system without taking into account what surrounds it? How does the environment affect coherence, measurement, or the emergence of classical behavior?
This is how I gradually moved toward open quantum systems, quantum optics, and quantum technologies.
I never really stopped being interested in quantum foundations, though. Now and then, I come back to these questions, sometimes through a research project and sometimes simply because I still enjoy thinking or talking about them.
Teaching before leaving France
A few days after defending my PhD, I joined Aix–Marseille University as an A.T.E.R., a full-time teaching and research assistant.
During that year, I taught more than 200 hours of lectures, tutorials, and laboratory classes at the undergraduate and master’s levels across several areas of physics, mathematics, and scientific computing.
It was intense. I had to prepare a large amount of material, often in subjects quite far from my own research. But it was also one of the richest experiences of my early career.
I have always believed that knowledge is something to be shared, not accumulated and kept for oneself. Meeting students with very different backgrounds, ambitions, and personal projects made teaching much more than an academic duty for me. Being a small part of their progress was genuinely rewarding, and I still keep in touch with several of them.
This period also coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made an already demanding year even more unusual.
Japan
At the end of that contract, I applied for my first postdoctoral position in Japan.
Going to Japan had been a long-standing dream of mine. The scientific opportunity was exciting, but so was the idea of leaving everything familiar behind and learning in a completely different environment.
At the time, Japan’s borders were largely closed because of COVID-19. A short entry window opened, and I did not think twice. I took one of the first flights I could and entered Japan on 18 December 2020.
About a week later, the borders closed again.
After quarantine, I joined the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), where I would spend almost four years. Looking back, those years remain among the most important of my life, scientifically and personally.
Electrons levitating above liquid helium
My first position at OIST was in the Quantum Dynamics Unit, led by Prof. Denis Konstantinov.
It was an experimental group, and I was the theoretician.
That immediately pushed me outside my comfort zone. I had to understand a new experimental platform, learn how experimental constraints shape theoretical questions, and work closely with experimentalists, including my dear friend Ivan Kostylev, on electrons levitating above the surface of liquid helium.
The basic idea is beautiful.
At very low temperatures, helium becomes superfluid. An electron above the helium surface cannot enter the liquid because it faces a large potential barrier at the interface. Instead, it remains trapped a small distance above the surface.
Its vertical motion is not arbitrary. The image potential created by the helium surface produces a hydrogen-like sequence of quantized states, often called Rydberg states of electrons on helium.
These electrons also carry other controllable degrees of freedom, and electric and magnetic fields can be used to manipulate their motion and collective dynamics. This makes electrons on helium a remarkably clean system for studying strongly correlated electrons, quantum transport, and possible quantum-information applications.
I spent a little less than two years in this group. It gave me a great deal of freedom to learn new numerical techniques, read broadly, and become more comfortable moving between theory and experiment.
Quantum machines
Still at OIST, I then moved only a few corridors away and joined the Quantum Machines Unit, led by Prof. Jason Twamley.
This time, I was back in a theoretical group!
Those two years opened an entirely new part of physics to me. I worked on hybrid quantum systems involving magnons, mechanics, spins, photons, and thermal machines, and I discovered areas such as optomagnonics, quantum thermodynamics, spin–mechanical coupling, frequency combs, levitated systems, sensing, and nonclassical-state generation.
One of the things I enjoyed most was the group’s freedom. We could move from a very practical sensing problem to a much more fundamental question, or follow an unexpected idea simply because the physics looked interesting.
The human side mattered just as much; the group gradually felt like a small family. We spent a lot of time discussing physics, but also sharing everyday life, ideas, meals, jokes, and the many small moments that make a place feel like home. I truly feel grateful to Jason and the group for this experience.
I still think about those years in Japan with a lot of affection and, sometimes, a little nostalgia.
Back to Marseille
After almost four years at OIST, I decided to return to France.
I joined the European ARTEMIS project at Institut Fresnel, again working with Prof. Thomas Durt.
In some ways, it felt like coming home after a long scientific journey — except that I was coming back with a very different toolbox and many more stories.
My current work focuses on photon correlations, open quantum systems, quantum metrology, cryptography, and quantum tagging and authentication technologies. ARTEMIS brings together several European laboratories and universities, so much of the work naturally sits at the intersection of theory, experiment, and applications.
I also teach at École Centrale Méditerranée, where I give courses in quantum physics, field theory, quantum information, and numerical methods.
At the same time, I remain involved in more fundamental questions. I currently contribute to supervising research on quantum trajectories in spacetime and the foundations of quantum mechanics.
For me, these different directions are not disconnected. They all return, in one way or another, to the same questions that first attracted me to physics:
For me, these directions are not really disconnected. I keep coming back to questions about how we describe a physical system, what we leave out of the description, and when those neglected details start to matter.
Very often, that is where the interesting physics begins.
To be continued…