Kyan Louisia is a PhD Student in the Department of Physics at King’s College London, within the Photonics and Nanotechnology Group under the supervision of Francisco Rodriguez-Fortuno. His current work aligns with the META4D initiative, which brings together research teams from King’s, Imperial College London, and the University of Exeter to explore a new generation of metamaterials that can be dynamically modulated in time.

He previously completed an MSci in Physics and Philosophy at King’s. During his Master’s thesis research, he worked with Dr Tiann-Tevong You on particle physics, applying on-shell methods to calculate interaction amplitudes for massless and massive particles. His third-year project with Professor Sarben Sarkar focused on supersymmetric quantum mechanics and its potential connections to the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function.

In 2024, Kyan was a PSI Start Research Fellow at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, working with Dr Takato Mori on holography—the duality between bulk gravitational theories and boundary quantum systems. His work combined theoretical and numerical approaches to study how correlation measures behave across the duality.

Research Interests

Kyan’s research focuses on the theory and simulation of time-varying and space–time–modulated metamaterials, as part of the META4D programme. For example, his work examines how dynamic modulations of material properties influence conserved quantities during light–matter interactions, and how synthetic and real motion combine to give rise to new optical effects. More broadly, he is interested in how space–time periodicity and time-crystalline behaviour can be harnessed to control electromagnetic fields and design novel photonic systems.

Kyan maintains wider interests in theoretical and mathematical physics. He is particularly drawn to exploring structural parallels between different domains of physics and to understanding how shared principles of symmetry, conservation, and information can provide a unified perspective on physical phenomena.

Though his work is mainly analytic and numerical, he is keen to collaborate with experimental researchers, particularly in photonics and metamaterials.

• Time-varying and space–time–modulated metamaterials
• Space–time synthetic motion and dynamic media
• Time-crystalline and space–time periodic photonic media
• Light-Matter Interactions
• Reconfigurable and programmable photonic systems
• Analogue optical computation and signal processing
• Quantum phenomena in spacetime modulated metamaterials

Thesis title and abstract

Light Matter Interactions in Time-Varying Metamaterials