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Light-Driven Solid State Physics Lab (Hirori Lab)
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A lab that drives materials out of equilibrium with light and explores their dynamics.
AboutAbout the lab
Shaking matter with light to catch its fleeting motion.
The Light-Driven Solid State Physics Lab (Hirori Lab), newly established in 2025, studies the interaction between light and matter.
The lab shines light on materials in which electrons, the lattice, and spins interact, driving them out of equilibrium, and investigates the fundamental interactions between light and matter.
The lab develops its own laser spectroscopy equipment, such as a terahertz light source with the highest intensity in the world, and observes and controls motion that occurs on timescales from femtoseconds to attoseconds.
The lab is located in the Institute for Chemical Research (Uji Campus), and its graduate students belong to the Department of Physics and Astrophysics, Graduate School of Science.
Key terms
- Terahertz light
- Electromagnetic waves with a frequency between visible light and radio waves (oscillating about one trillion times per second)
- Non-equilibrium
- A state pushed away from a settled state by strong disturbance from the outside
- Femtosecond
- One quadrillionth of a second. In this short time, even light travels only 0.3 micrometers
NewsLab news
A paper by Associate Professor Murotani and colleagues was published in Physical Review B
A technique for reading out spin precession with terahertz light has been developed
A paper by Associate Professor Murotani and colleagues was published in Nano Letters
ResearchResearch themes
The lab uses light to excite materials woven from elementary excitations such as electrons, the lattice, and spins into non-equilibrium states, and clarifies the fundamental interactions between light and matter. With original laser spectroscopy setups, it observes and controls the dynamics of elementary excitations from femtoseconds to attoseconds.
*Illustrative imageUnderstanding and Controlling Non-Equilibrium Elementary Excitations
Using metallic metamaterials to enhance the electric and magnetic fields of terahertz pulses, the lab drives electrons, phonons, and spins in semiconductors and magnetic materials.
*Illustrative imageSub-Cycle Quantum Dynamics
The lab aims to directly track and control the ultrafast motion of electrons and holes in solids on the attosecond timescale. It is clarifying a new mechanism of high-harmonic generation under strong electric fields and working on techniques to control its efficiency.
*Illustrative imageNew Measurements with THz-STM
The lab is developing a terahertz scanning tunneling microscope (THz-STM) that combines femtosecond time resolution with atomic-scale spatial resolution.
*Illustrative imageNext-Generation Material Properties Woven with Quantum Light
The lab confines terahertz-range vacuum fields in metamaterial resonators to create ultrastrong coupling states with phonons in materials. In a perovskite semiconductor, it made the first observation in the world of vacuum Rabi splitting of phonons.
MembersFaculty
The Light-Driven Solid State Physics Lab consists of faculty members, doctoral and master's students, and technical assistants.As of 2026
- ProfessorHideki Hirori
- Associate ProfessorYuta Murotani
- Program-Specific Associate ProfessorHiroshi Watanabe
VoicesStudent voices
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Superconducting Metamaterial Waveguide Chip” OJB Quantum / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Understanding and Controlling Non-Equilibrium Elementary Excitations: “T-ray metamaterial semiconductor modulator” Hou-Tong Chen (Los Alamos National Laboratory) / Public domain (cropped)
- Sub-Cycle Quantum Dynamics: “StreakingCamera” FedericoVis / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- New Measurements with THz-STM: “ESR-STM at QNS in Ewha - front view” Rickinasia / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Next-Generation Material Properties Woven with Quantum Light: “Quantum metamaterial with 24 artificial atoms” FMNLab / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Nuclear Radiation Physics Lab): “Sp8-3972” Nnn / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Optical Properties of Matter Lab): “Femtosecond Pulse Laser at Cornell University” paul_houle / CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Inorganic Materials Chemistry Lab): “General structure of Metal-organic frameworks” Russo V, Hmoudah M, Broccoli F, Iesce MR, Jung O-S and Di Serio M (2020) / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Molecular Spectroscopy Lab): “Electrochemical test cell” Hansjoachimkohnke / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
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