Mikhail Lukin
Harvard University
Friday, October
3, 2008
4:00 pm in SPL 57
Sensing single nuclei and lighting nanowires: new frontiers of quantum optical science
Abstract: Controlling quantum behavior of light and matter recently emerged as an outstanding challenge in modern science and engineering. It is at the heart of many modern developments in diverse areas ranging from quantum information science and quantum optics, to nano-science and many-body physics of strongly correlated systems. Two examples of these developments, will be described in this talk. We will discuss our recent work involving development of a new nanoscale magnetic sensor based on single spin impurities in diamond, which is capable of detecting individual nuclear spins. We will also describe a novel approach to controlling light-matter interactions that make use of sub-wavelength localization of optical fields on metallic nano-sized wires.
Looking forward, we will describe the potential applications of these techniques. These include creating strongly interacting many-body systems of photons, controlling quantum states of single spins in complex molecules and manipulating nano-mechanical motion, as well as magnetic imaging in biological systems.
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