AMO Special Seminar

Quantum many-body optics: Emergent phenomena and applications

When:

March 03, 2016

Time:

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

Location:

PHYS 242

Speaker:

Thomas Pohl
Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden

Details:

Rooted in our elementary understanding of light lies the notion that photons in vacuum do not interact with one another. Yet, the implications of photonic interactions for both fundamental and applied science would be profound, and have since ushered in research on nonlinear optics at the ultimate quantum level.

While major efforts have been directed towards strong light-coupling to single emitters, recent explorations of many-body effects are opening up converse avenues. The basic concept rests upon the notion that incident light fields induce direct particle interactions that cause correlated states of matter to emerge and – in return – give rise to strong interactions and entanglement between single light quanta. Both sides of the coin are attracting interest from different angles. On the one hand, such light-induced particle interactions can lead to rich (non)equilibrium physics and exotic phases of quantum fluids and solids as well as synthetic quantum magnets. On the other hand, the intricate back-action onto propagating photons opens up a new regime of light-matter interactions where matter excitations and quantum light act on equal footing and conspire to generate materials with unprecedented optical properties.

This talk will present our recent progress in understanding such systems and explore ensuing applications, e.g., for quantum simulations or all-optical processing of quantum information. Alongside, I will discuss related cold-atom experiments based on strong Rydberg-state interactions and outline perspectives of these concepts for solid-state quantum photonics.

Refreshments will be served.