Quantum Optics

The word laser usually conjures up an image of a strongly concentrated and continuous light beam. Lasers that produce such light are, in fact, very common and useful. However, science and industry often also require very short and strong pulses of laser light.

The experiment, conducted by teams from the University of Bonn and RPTU (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau), took a cue from an everyday phenomenon – a garden hose filling...

In a development at the intersection of quantum mechanics and general relativity, researchers have made significant strides toward unraveling the mysteries of quantum gravity. This work sheds new light on future experiments that hold promise for resolving one of the most fundamental enigmas in modern physics: the reconciliation of Einstein's theory of gravity with the principles of quantum mechanics.

An international collaboration of researchers, led by Philip Walther at University of Vienna, have achieved a significant breakthrough in quantum technology, with the successful demonstration of quantum interference among several single photons using a novel resource-efficient platform. The work published in Science Advances represents a notable advancement in optical quantum computing that paves the way for more…

A single-photon detector (SPD) is sensitive to incidence of individual quanta of light and has many applications in photonics, such as fluorescence measurements, laser ranging, optical time-domain reflectometer, and quantum optics experiments.

An international collaboration, led by Macquarie University scientists, has introduced a new quantum optics technique that can provide unprecedented access to the fundamental properties of light-matter interactions in semiconductors.

The Rydberg state is prevalent across various physical mediums such as atoms, molecules, and solid materials. Rydberg excitons, which are highly energized, Coulomb-bound electron-hole pair states, were initially identified in the 1950s within the semiconductor material, Cu2O. In a study published

A pair of multidisciplinary teams with many of the same researchers are developing processes that allow scientists to better see into the nanoscale and harness possibilities of the quantum realm.

Using a complex cast of metal-studded pigments, proteins, enzymes, and co-enzymes, photosynthetic organisms can convert the energy in light into the chemical energy for life. And now, thanks to a study published June 14 in Nature, we know that this organic chemical reaction is sensitive to the smallest quantity of light possible—a single photon.

In a new paper published in eLight, a team of scientists led by Professors Haizheng Zhong and Yongyou Zhang from the Beijing Institute of Technology and Professor Haiyan Qin from Zhejiang University have discovered nonlocal effects in large semiconductor nanocrystals. They provide new strategies to achieve high-efficiency multiple excitons for quantum optics and energy conversation applications.

An international team of researchers including scientists from FAU has, for the first time, used X-rays for an imaging technique that exploits a particular quantum characteristic of light. In their article, which has now been published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the researchers detail how this process could be used for imaging non-crystallized macromolecules.

Modern-day technologies like optical computing, integrated photonics, and digital holography require light signals to be manipulated in three dimensions. To achieve this, it is necessary to be able to shape and guide the flow of light according to its desired application. Given that light flow within a medium is governed by the refractive index, specific tailoring of the refractive index is needed to realize…

Stars emit light that travels through empty space without significant attenuation. The visual signal is essentially lossless until detected. After many years and billions of kilometers, starlight-photons may eventually encounter the earth's atmosphere and be decoded as a speck in the night sky by some lucky person's retina and brain.

Or: how telco infrastructure is hacked to get unbreakable security.

Over eighty years ago, Rabi oscillations were proposed to describe the strong coupling and population transfer in a two-level quantum system exposed to an oscillatory driving field. As compared to atoms, molecules have an extra degree of vibration, which adds an additional knob to the Rabi oscillations in light-molecule interactions. However, how such a laser-driven Rabi oscillation during the stretching of…

As buzz grows ever louder over the future of quantum, researchers everywhere are working overtime to discover how best to unlock the promise of super-positioned, entangled, tunneling or otherwise ready-for-primetime quantum particles, the ability of which to occur in two states at once could vastly expand power and efficiency in many applications.

Multimode optical fibers (MMFs) are hair-thin strands of glass that are ubiquitous in light-guiding applications. Their development has gone hand-in-hand with the huge growth in rapid transmission of information across the world.

We changed a lot! An interface redesign, indistinguishable particles, creation operators, element descriptions, and transition matrices. Enjoy!

We describe a pandemic-inspired, modern physics distance lab course, focused both on engaging undergraduate physics majors in scientific research from their homes and on building skills in scientif...

France's Alain Aspect, America's John F. Clauser, and Austrian Anton Zeilinger won the accolade.