Michael Fleischhauer

Michael Fleischhauer is a professor of theoretical physics at Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität (RPTU) Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany. His research includes theoretical quantum optics, coherent processes in atoms and other quantum systems, quantum properties of nonlinear optical processes, quantum information processing with photons and ensembles, matter-wave optics and many-body physics with darkstate polaritons. He served as a research associate at the University of New Mexico, USA and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany before joining the faculty of the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany which is now RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau. He attended Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena and Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München. 

He has led a number of influential international collaborations, is a dedicated mentor, and has served the community through his work on editorial boards, advisory boards, and international conference committees. A pioneer in the field, Fleischhauer’s work has had a profound impact across a range of fields from quantum networking and quantum information science to on-chip optical interconnects for advanced classical computing, and even sensing and metrology. He received the 2024 Herbert Walther Award, "For key contributions in nonlinear quantum optics as well as photonic and atomic quantum technologies - in particular for the development of a toolbox to coherently control multi-level atoms with light, including the concept of dark state polaritons and Rydberg dipole blockade physics."