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Seminar: Quantum many body physics with rare-earth ions
10 July 2022
Professor Andrei Faraon of Caltech speaks about quantum many body physics with rare-earth ions.
HOST: Prof. John Morton
SPEAKER: Andrei Faraon | Professsor of Aplied Physics and Electrical Engineering | California Institute of Technology
TIME & VENUE: Thursday | 21 July 2022 | 11:00 AM | G12 Torrington Place (1-19), UCL
TITLE: Quantum many body physics with rare-earth ions
ABSTRACT: Rare-earth ions coupled with high cooperativity to optical and superconducting resonators are a new platform that enables studying quantum many body physics and enables development of quantum light-matter interfaces for the future quantum internet. Towards this end, we studied an inhomogeneously broadened ensemble of Ytterbium-171 ions doped in yttrium orthovanadate coupled to a nanophotonic cavity with high cooperativity that enables us to observe super-radiance and sub-radiance. Moreover, we study a transparency regime enabled by the many body interference between the emitters and the cavity field. Then I discuss recent experiments where a single rare-earth ion and Hamiltonian engineering is used to engineer quantum states in the nearby nuclear spins. I conclude by addressing remaining challenges for utilizing these systems into future quantum networks.
Dr Andrei Faraon is a Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at California Institute of Technology and is current visiting UCLQ. After earning a B.S. degree in physics with honours in 2004 at California Institute of Technology, he received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and PhD in Applied Physics both from Stanford University in 2009. From 2009 to 2012 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Hewlett Packard Laboratories. During his PhD he was involved in seminal quantum optics experiments using single semiconductor quantum dots coupled to photonic crystal resonators. At HP, he pioneered quantum nano-photonic devices in single crystal diamond coupled to colour centres.
Dr Faraon left HP in 2012 for a faculty position at Caltech where he works on nano-photonic technologies for both classical and quantum applications including: optically addressable quantum bits, optical quantum memories, microwave to optical quantum transduction, metasurfaces and metamaterials for multi-functional imaging applications.
Dr Faraon is the recipient of the 2018 Adolph Lomb Medal of the Optical Society of America that recognizes a noteworthy contribution to optics made by a researcher who is still early in his or her career. He was also awarded the 2015 National Science Foundation CAREER award, the 2015 Air Force Office of Scientific Research young investigator award and the 2016 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.