Experimental Quantum Seminar - Wenchao Xu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Quantum nonlinear optics with Rydberg polaritons”

“Quantum nonlinear optics with Rydberg polaritons”
Photons interact weakly in a vacuum. Finding an optical medium that manifests optical nonlinearity at an individual photon level is fascinating, as it opens the possibility to build up all-optical quantum devices, and form novel quantum many-body states of lights. In this talk, I will present our approach to engineering a quantum nonlinear medium with Rydberg polaritons; with this, strong mutual interactions between photons are realized. These interactions range from attraction to repulsion, which leads to the observation of emergent spatial structures of photons. Besides, we can build an ultrafast non-destructive Rydberg detector with this quantum nonlinear medium. This novel quantum detector can be implemented for a wide range of research, from quantum simulation to quantum computing.
Host: Bonnie Fleming