On October 21, Professor Angel Rubio, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Germany and a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), visited the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, China (NCNST) and delivered a lecture.

Prof. Rubio presented his team's work on cavity materials engineering. Starting from quantum vacuum fluctuations, he explained the principles and development of quantum electrodynamical density-functional theory, and how this framework describes the coupling between materials and cavity vacuum fluctuations. He then discussed how these fluctuations can change material properties without external illumination, with potential applications such as tuning superconducting transition temperatures.

The lecture drew an enthusiastic response. Faculty members and students held in-depth discussions with Prof. Rubio on the physical mechanisms of cavity tuning of superconducting transition temperatures, related experimental schemes, and computational methods.

The lecture promoted academic exchanges between NCNST and world-leading theoretical physics institutions.