Event
Booz Allen Colloquium: Edo Waks, "Controlled Interactions Between Quantum Dots & Light"
Friday, April 15, 2011
3:00 p.m.
Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building, Rm. 1110
Jess Molina
jmolina2@umd.edu
http://www.ece.umd.edu/colloquium
Booz Allen Hamilton Distinguished Colloquium in Electrical and Computer Engineering
"Controlled Interactions Between Quantum Dots and Light Using Photonic Crystals"
Prof. Edo Waks
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland
Abstract:
Quantum dots (QDs) are stable, bright, semiconductor based light emitters that exhibit a quantized energy spectrum. For these reasons they are excellent candidates for development of lasers, nonlinear optoelectronic components, and basic building blocks for future quantum information technology. Such applications critically depend on the ability to create strong interactions between QDs and photon fields. One method to engineer these strong interactions is to use photonic crystal structures. Photonic crystals are materials with a periodic index of refraction that can guide and confine light on the size scale of an optical wavelength, resulting in extremely strong atom-photon interactions. In this talk I will discuss our recent work on interactions between quantum dots and photonic crystals. I will describe how such interactions can lead to ultra low-power all-optical switching, and how this switching can be extended to implement quantum computation on a semiconductor chip. I will discuss our efforts to realize these quantum devices by exploiting spin properties of QDs under magnetic fields.
Biography:
Edo Waks is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also a member of the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaborative effort between the University of Maryland and NIST, Gaithersburg, dedicated to the study of quantum coherence. Waks received his B.S. and M.S. from Johns Hopkins University, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award as well as a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for the investigation of interactions between quantum dots and nanophotonic structures. His current work focuses coherent control and manipulation semiconductor quantum dots, and their interactions with photonic crystal devices for creating strong atom-photon interactions.
