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SUMMARY:Quantum phase transitions of light - Alex Silver\, TCM
DTSTART:20080307T160000Z
DTEND:20080307T163000Z
UID:TALK10639@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:James Kermode
DESCRIPTION:Andrew D. Greentree\, Charles Tahan\, Jared H. Cole and Lloyd 
 C. L. Hollenberg\,\n"Nature Physics 2\, 856 - 861":http://www.nature.com/n
 phys/journal/v2/n12/abs/nphys466.html\n(2006)\n\nThe ability to conduct ex
 periments at length scales and temperatures at\nwhich interesting and pote
 ntially useful quantum-mechanical phenomena\nemerge in condensed-matter or
  atomic systems is now commonplace. In\noptics\, though\, the weakness wit
 h which photons interact with each other\nmakes exploring such behaviour m
 ore difficult. Here we describe an\noptical system that exhibits strongly 
 correlated dynamics on a\nmesoscopic scale. By adding photons to a two-dim
 ensional array of\ncoupled optical cavities each containing a single two-l
 evel atom in the\nphoton-blockade regime\, we form dressed states\, or pol
 aritons\, that are\nboth long-lived and strongly interacting. Our results 
 predict that at\nzero temperature the system will undergo a characteristic
  Mott insulator\n(excitations localized on each site) to superfluid (excit
 ations\ndelocalized across the lattice) quantum phase transition. Moreover
 \, the\nability to couple light to and from individual cavities of this sy
 stem\ncould be useful in the realization of tuneable quantum simulators an
 d\nother quantum-mechanical devices.\n\n
LOCATION:TCM Seminar Room\, Cavendish Laboratory
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