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The prix Jean-Ricard is a prize awarded by the Société française de physique (SFP) to a French physicist for remarkable and original work. The prize has been awarded each year since 1971, and in 2019 to Xavier Marie, NanoX founder and director.

Translation of the original article of the SFP.

Xavier Marie, 52, is a professor at INSA Toulouse, junior and then senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, an indisputable reference in the international community.

Xavier Marie is a pioneering experimental physicist in ultra-fast optical spectroscopy of semiconductor nano-objects. Within the Laboratory of Physics and Chemistry of Nano-Objects (LPCNO) of Toulouse (CNRS, INSA Toulouse, University of Toulouse III Paul Sabatier), he leads a particularly efficient team, a pioneer in the field of spin dynamics in semiconductors, more specifically of spin coherence and spin addressing in heterostructures, the control of the spin of a single carrier in a quantum dot as well as the coupling to nuclear spins, the study and control of these by optical methods.

His contributions and those of his team to spin electronics in hybrid ferro / semiconductor nanostructures have led to the realization of the best “spin-LEDs”, and his approach to semiconductor electronic strip engineering has a significant impact on applications in optical and photovoltaic telecommunications devices.

In the early 2010s, Xavier Marie was one of the first to work on two-dimensional semiconductor-based materials. His work on transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers such as molybdenum disulphide has shown that these nanostructures have new and promising properties for various applications in both the fields of optics, electronics and technology. spintronics. His team was thus a pioneer by experimentally demonstrating the optical initialization of the valley degree of freedom. More recently, she has also successfully measured the giant exciton binding energy in such structures, demonstrated the fine structure of the exciton, and measured record spin / valley relaxation times of several microseconds.

Its scientific production is rich with nearly 300 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He has personally given over 130 invited presentations and seminars. It has also been a driving force in the establishment of numerous international collaborations, in particular with Russia (Ioffe Institute, 54 joint publications), China (31 joint articles), Japan (24 joint articles) and the United States. He was a lecturer at the European Masters in Photonics and at the University of Essex in the 2000s.

Xavier Marie has always played a very important role in structuring the scientific community: creation and management of LPCNO (UMR 5215) from 2007 to 2010, vice-president of the scientific council of INSA Toulouse from 2008 to 2014, founder an director of labex NEXT since 2011 then EUR NanoX since 2018. He is a regular expert and member of committees for funding agencies in France and abroad: Department of Energy (USA), EPSRC (GB), DFG (Germany) , MIUR (Italy), SFI (Ireland), CAS (China), ERC (Europe), ANR / HCERES (France) …

He has trained many students and post-docs, now active, professors or researchers, on all continents.

The SFP Grand Prix jury is pleased to award the Jean Ricard Prize to Xavier Marie for the very high quality of all of his work.