Mengkun Liu

Mengkun Liu is Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University, with a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He leads the Ultrafast & Near-field Infrared Laboratory (UNI-Lab), which develops advanced infrared and terahertz near-field microscopy techniques. His research focuses on light-matter interactions in quantum materials including transition metal oxides, Dirac/Weyl microstructures, superconductors, and multiferroics.

Liu's laboratory specializes in nano-Fourier transform IR spectroscopy achieving spatial resolution over 1000 times higher than conventional optics. Current research explores Mott physics, many-body effects, and quantum phenomena at nanoscale dimensions. His work has been published in leading journals including Nature Nanotechnology, Science Advances, and ACS Photonics.

The UNI-Lab utilizes techniques such as scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) and time-resolved spectroscopy to investigate electronic and lattice dynamics at native time and length scales. Recent projects examine Landau-phonon polaritons in Dirac heterostructures, quantum Hall phenomena, and phase transitions in correlated oxides.