Watch a 52-minute colloquium talk from Stanford University's Jonathan Simon at the Centre for Quantum Technologies exploring protocols for building and probing many-body states of light. Discover the fascinating parallels between photons in cavity lattices and electrons in solids, with a focus on Hubbard physics in quantum circuits. Learn about demonstrated techniques for creating light crystals through reservoir engineering and disorder-assisted adiabatic preparation of fluids. Explore an innovative ancilla-controlled protocol that entangles fluid states with ancilla states, and understand how this entanglement/disentanglement sequence within an ancilla Ramsey protocol enables system probing. Examine the application of this technique as a thermodynamic probe and its role in enhancing coherence through many-body spin-echo. Consider the potential impact of small quantum computers on quantum matter investigation methods.