ABSTRACT
I am deeply grateful to my supervisor Benoit Deveaud-Pledran for the total freedom, confidence, and endless support he provided me in order to realize the experiments that I have dreamed of. It has been a delightful experience working in his laboratory, because he has a real charisma for choosing the best possible co-workers and creating a fantastic mood in his group. I warmly thank the members of my thesis jury, Jacqueline Bloch, Pierre Meystre, Atac Imamoglu, and Olivier Martin for accepting the tough task of reading the thesis and providing critical remarks. For the realization of this thesis and the exciting results that it includes, many persons have participated either through deep discussions, passing knowledge and know-how, or actually physically contributing with work. The knowledge and know-how that I gained during the last four years is enormous and for this I am deeply indebted to the following friends (rather than colleagues): I deeply thank Augustin Baas and Maxime Richard for the guidance, the knowledge they passed to me, and the great times we had in the lab during the first year with long overnight lab sessions. I am indebted to Le Si Dang for the encouragement and valuable constructive criticism he provided to me. I was blessed to have an extremely competent theoretical group next door, which stimulated fantastic discussions and active theoretical feedback to our experiments, so I am grateful to Vincenzo Savona, Michiel Wouters, Tim Liew and Davide Sarchi. Of course an equally warm thanks to Alexey Kavokin, Tomas Ostatnicky and Yuri Rubo for the stimulation and support they provided me on the hot topic of fractional vortices. I am eternally indebted to Yoan Leger, not only for being my friend, but also for passing to me all his great computational, experimental and communication skills during the last three years of my thesis. Of course, I thank Basia Pietka for putting up with me and for the fun times we had in the lab. I would like to thank my friends Gael and Vanesa, Ounsi, Francois, Taophiq and Giselle, Alain and Isabelle, Francesco, Gabriele, Verena and Rolando for the great times we had together. A great thanks to Claire-Lyse Rouiller without whose help I would be still lost behind mountains of paperwork. I am extremely thankful to Roger Rochat, Yoan and Damian Trolliet and Nicolas Leiser for their invaluable technical support. I also want to thank Aline Gruaz, Sandra Pochon and Ursula Vaucher for their help and good advice. Last, but of course not least, I thank my family who, although being far away, provided me with continuous love and support, my brother Pavlos for the guidance, the great times and adventures we had and, of course, Isaline for the great moments that she has plentifully offered to me.
