Abstract

In my talk, I will first go over my research following its guiding thread: Symmetries and
conservation laws in light-matter interactions. I will explain how symmetry considerations, besides
allowing to qualitatively understand observations, also provide requirements
to design material structures for achieving particular effects in the interaction with the
electromagnetic field. I will then address the question of "How much broken is a symmetry?",
and show that measures of symmetry breaking solve previous problems in quantifying
properties of material systems, and that a particular definition of symmetry breaking has
a general character and a direct link with experimental measurements. After this, I will
explain why I think that the systematic exploration and exploitation of symmetry
breaking measures can be a very productive research direction.