Generation of pulsed quantum light
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- At the nanoscale, light can be made to strongly interact with matter, where quantum mechanical effects govern its behavior and the concept of a photon emerges—the branch of physics describing these phenomena is called quantum optics. Throughout the history of quantum optics, experiments and theory focused primarily on understanding the internal dynamics of the matter when interacting with the light field. For instance, in an ion trap quantum computer the motional states of the ions are of interest while the state of the light field is secondary. However, a new paradigm for information processing is becoming experimentally accessible where many quantum-optical devices are integrated in nanophotonic circuits. Then, the relevant information is encoded in the quantum states of the photon wavepackets as they fly around the nanophotonic chip. Hence, the converse problem is now important: the way the state of the photon field changes after interacting with the piece of matter. The effect of an individual device on a photon can now be formally described in a so-called scattering experiment. First, a photon wavepacket is prepared far away from the device. It travels freely towards the device and as it hits the interaction region forms a strongly entangled state of light and matter. Afterwards, the character of the interaction is imprinted on the outgoing wavepacket. This concept of a scattering experiment was originally envisioned in high-energy field theories with static Hamiltonians, and this thesis shows the concept adapted to nanophotonic devices driven by pulses of laser light (corresponding to time-dependent or energy nonconserving Hamiltonians). The formalism developed here will thus be of relevance to design and analysis of quantum information processing systems in which the information is encoded in the state of the photonic field, with the piece of matter implementing either a source of photons or implementing a unitary operation on the photonic state. In summary, for this dissertation I show experiments and theory that fully describe how the quantum state of a laser pulse changes when interacting with nano-sized pieces of matter. In particular, this work covers both a general formalism for photon scattering as well as two standard physical systems as experimental examples that generate quantum light: the quantum two-level system and the Jaynes--Cummings system.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2018; ©2018 |
| Publication date | 2018; 2018 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Fischer, Kevin |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Vuckovic, Jelena |
| Thesis advisor | Vuckovic, Jelena |
| Thesis advisor | Fan, Shanhui, 1972- |
| Thesis advisor | Miller, D. A. B |
| Degree committee member | Fan, Shanhui, 1972- |
| Degree committee member | Miller, D. A. B |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Electrical Engineering. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Kevin Fischer. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2018. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2018 by Kevin Andrew Fischer
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