Few-electron ultrastrong light-matter coupling at 300 GHz with nanogap hybrid LC microcavities

[object Object]Ultrastrong light-matter coupling allows the exploration of new states of matter through the interaction of strong vacuum fields with huge electronic dipoles. By using hybrid dipole antenna-split ring resonator-based cavities with extremely small effective mode volumes Veff/?03 ? 6 × 10-10 and surfaces Seff/?02 ? 3.5 × 10-7, we probe the ultrastrong light-matter coupling at 300 GHz to less than 100 electrons located in the last occupied Landau level of a high mobility two-dimensional electron gas, measuring a normalized coupling ratio of ?R/?c = 0.36. Effects of the extremely reduced cavity dimensions are observed as the light-matter coupled system is better described by an effective mass heavier than the uncoupled one. These results open the way to ultrastrong coupling at the single-electron level in two-dimensional electron systems.