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Microscale Material Coherence Lab
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The lab uses light to probe and control the quantum properties of materials.
AboutAbout the lab
Exploring science through light
The Ashida Lab (Microscale Material Coherence) conducts research aimed at elucidating and controlling the quantum-mechanical properties of materials using light.
Light is not only a tool for probing the properties of materials, but can also be used as a tool for controlling their properties and motion.
The research falls broadly into three areas: optical control of materials, creation of new optical technologies, and quantum effects explored with light.
In the master's program, students first learn basic spectroscopy techniques, regardless of their research topic.
Key terms
- Optical manipulation
- A technique that transfers the momentum of light to a material in order to control the material's state of motion.
- Quantum dot
- A nanometer-sized semiconductor particle. It has discrete energy levels that depend on its size and shape.
- Terahertz wave
- An electromagnetic wave with a frequency of roughly 0.1–10 THz. It passes through paper, cloth, and plastic, which are opaque to visible light.
NewsLab news
A paper by doctoral students and others was published in ACS Nano (sorting of fluorescent nanodiamonds)
A paper by master's students and others was published in Optics Letters (terahertz magneto-optical ellipsometry)
A doctoral student received an Encouragement Award at the 36th Optical Properties Research Meeting
A master's student received the Best Poster Award at the Photonics Symposium
A master's student received the Student Excellent Presentation Award (Division 5) from the Physical Society of Japan
ResearchResearch themes
The lab uses light to elucidate and control the quantum-mechanical properties of materials, and also works on developing new optical technologies. Its research themes fall broadly into three: optical control of materials, creation of new optical technologies, and quantum effects explored with light.
Manipulating nanoparticles with light
Using optical manipulation, the lab traps and immobilizes nanometer-sized particles. It has succeeded in size-selecting quantum dots by using the resonant absorption of light, and is also working on precise control of their motion.
*Illustrative imagePioneering terahertz optics
The lab studies the properties of terahertz waves (generally 0.1–10 THz) in materials, as well as terahertz electromagnetic-wave technology. It is working to make light sources with ultrabroad bandwidth, high intensity, and high efficiency, and has developed a technique for displaying the waveform of light from 1 to 150 THz and a method for controlling polarization with simple elements.
*Illustrative imageStrong interaction between excitons and light
The lab makes its own high-quality thin films and has succeeded in extending the quantum confinement effect of excitons (particles in which an electron and a hole are bound together) up to a large, sub-μm scale. In a state where the light wave and the exciton wavefunction overlap, it has obtained an ultrafast, ultra-efficient optical response on the order of 100 fs.
*Illustrative imageOptical properties of strongly correlated materials
Using ultrabroadband terahertz light sources, the lab investigates the properties of strongly correlated electron systems, in which many degrees of freedom such as charge, spin, and lattice influence one another. It explores material properties using light that covers a wide range of energy scales as a tool.
MembersFaculty
The Ashida Lab members consist of faculty, administrative assistants, students in the doctoral, master's, and undergraduate programs, and invited staff.As of 2026
- ProfessorMasaaki Ashida
- Associate ProfessorMasaya Nagai
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: “Levitated nanoparticle” StephTr / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Pioneering terahertz optics: “Spectroscopy; Terahertz spectroscopy; Biomolecule dynamics ( )” National Institute of Standards and Technology / Public domain (cropped)
- Strong interaction between excitons and light: “Reflection in a soap bubble edit” Brocken Inaglory. The image was edited by user:Alvesgaspar / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Optical properties of strongly correlated materials: “Terahertz freq. metamaterial modulator” Hou-Tong Chen (Los Alamos National Laboratory) / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (Functional Characterization of Strongly Correlated Materials Lab): “Superconducting magnet cutaway” Hzofia74 / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Emergent Quantum Materials Science Lab): “Apparatus for measuring vapor pressures - DPLA - 96907cd46db76b056b34c2cda439c64d” 作者不詳 / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (Ion Trap Quantum Metrology Lab): “Ion Trap ( )” National Institute of Standards and Technology / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (Strongly Correlated Systems Theory Lab): “Levitation meissner” Julien Bobroff (user:Jubobroff), Frederic Bouquet (user:Fbouquet), LPS, Orsay, France / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
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