About QUINST

Quantum mechanics is at the heart of our technology and economy - the laser and the transistor are quantum devices - but its full potential is far from being realized. Recent technological advances in optics, nanoscience and engineering allow experimentalists to create artificial structures or put microscopic and mesoscopic systems under new manipulable conditions in which quantum phenomena play a fundamental role.

Quantum technologies exploit these effects with practical purposes. The objective of Quantum Science is to discover, study, and control quantum efects at a fundamental level. These are two sides of a virtuous circle: new technologies lead to the discovery and study of new phenomena that will lead to new technologies.

Our aim is  to control and understand quantum phenomena in a multidisciplinary intersection of  Quantum Information, Quantum optics and cold atoms, Quantum Control, Spintronics, Quantum metrology, Atom interferometry, Superconducting qubits and Circuit QED and Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.

QUINST is funded in part as a “Grupo Consolidado” from the Basque Government (IT472-10, IT986-16, IT1470-22)  and functions as a network of groups with their own funding, structure, and specific goals.  

Latest events

Seminar

Dr. Alexia Auffèves (Institut Néel-CNRS, Grenoble, France)

When and where

From: 12/2011 To: 12/2016

Description

2010/05/10, Dr. Alexia Auffèves (Institut Néel-CNRS, Grenoble, France)

Place:  Sala de Seminarios del Departamento de Física Teórica e Historia de la Ciencia
Time: 12h.
Title: Quantum dots coupled to solid-state cavities

Abstract
In this talk I will give an overview of our research framework, namely the study of cavity quantum electrodynamics effects (CQED) for solid-state emitters like quantum dots (QDs) coupled to semi-conducting cavities. Thanks to technological progresses in the field of solid-state physics, a wide range of quantum optics experiments previously restricted to atomic physics, can now be implemented using QDs and semi-conducting cavities. Still, a QD is far from being an isolated atom. As a matter of fact, solid state emitters are intrinsically coupled to the matrix they are embedded in, leading to decoherence and phase relaxation that unavoidably broaden any transition between the discrete states of such artificial atoms. At the same time, very high quality factors and ultra small modal volumes are achieved for state of the art cavities. These new conditions open an unexplored regime for CQED so far,  where the emitter's linewidth can be of the same order of magnitude, or even broader than the cavity mode one.