Dr. Darrick Chang (Institute for Quantum Information, California Institute of Technology, USA)

Crystallization of strongly interacting photons in a nonlinear optical fiber

Abstract:
Understanding strongly correlated quantum systems is a central problem in many areas of physics. While such systems typically involve massive particles, optical photons can also interact with each other in a nonlinear medium. In practice, however, such interactions are often very weak. We describe a novel technique that allows the creation of a strongly correlated quantum gas of photons using one-dimensional optical systems with tight field confinement and coherent photon trapping techniques. The confinement enables the generation of large, tunable optical nonlinearities via the interaction of photons with a nearby cold atomic gas. In its extreme, we show that a quantum light field can undergo fermionization in such one-dimensional media, which can be probed via standard photon correlation measurements.

2009 年 2 月 20 日
15:40~16:40

RM 112, New Physics Building