by Dr. Saptarishi Chaudhuri, Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru

Abstract

After a brief introduction to the state-of-the-art cold atom experiments and future directions, I shall discuss about the specific applications in Quantum Optics related research with neutral atoms. Cold atoms offer excellent opportunities to be used in the context of quantum sensing and metrology, quantum computation and communication. They can be employed as high precision electric, magnetic and gravitational field sensors, as well as they can be used to explore various quantum interference phenomenon such as Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) for applications in light storage and communications. Very high degree of controllability over interactions between the atoms and the field, long detection time and a much lower decoherence rate compared to room temperature systems are some of the reasons why experiments with cold atoms are proving to be very promising for practical quantum sensor development. Neutral atoms possess “spin”, which undergoes precession in presence of external magnetic field with a characteristic precession frequency which is known as Larmor precession. A careful measurement of Larmor precision in turn leads to measurement of external magnetic field. In this talk, I shall describe our recent experiments at Raman Research Institute exploring the atomic spins both at room temperature and at extremely low. I shall also indicate, how using light, we do indeed control atomic spins to have high resolution measurements of magnetic field. In this context, I shall talk about our experimental system to study a mixture of mass and spin-imbalanced ultra-cold atoms. The focus will be on the many body physics and dynamics of cold atoms in optical and magnetic fields. A major new direction of the study of many body physics is using arbitrary shape of the trapping potential or “structured” optical tweezers for atoms. I shall show how these “array trap”, playground to develop quantum processor technologies going beyond traditional methods. This talk is meant to be accessible to students and researchers with inter-disciplinary interests.