Recent remarkable progress in tailoring light-matter interactions has provided unprecedented access to strong effective photon-photon interaction regimes and to engineering various models such as artificial gauge fields with photons. Consequently, such advances have stimulated further pursuit of realization of many-body correlated states of photons in the context of quantum simulators. Photonic systems are naturally open and dissipative, and therefore they must be externally driven. This driven-dissipative property makes non-equilibrium physics an essential element in understanding these systems. For example, a theoretical question that is of central interest is the identification of many-body phenomena that emerge exclusively in driven-dissipative settings and have no Hamiltonian counterparts.

The goal of this conference is to survey recent experimental advances in achieving strong effective photon-photon interaction and controlling various Hamiltonian models and to discuss theoretical proposals for further studies of many-body correlated states of photons.  Various photonic platforms will be covered in this conference, including exciton-polaritons, highly excited Rydberg atoms, circuit-QED architecture, silicon photonics and solid-state emitters and optomechanics.