Quantum Optics: From Basics to Daily Life Applications

During the last two decades quantum optics has become a field of research with many wonders. The counterintuitive phenomena predicted and experimentally tested in this field have already changed our perceptions of optics of materials. For example, it has been shown that one can make a strongly absorptive (opaque) medium transparent while leaving all the electrons in the ground states or we can trap an electron in an excited state despite the fact it naturally wants to decay down to the lower energy states. As exciting and potentially useful as they are, we have been largely unable to take advantage of these effects in our daily life applications including optical devices. In fact, today most of optical device designers and engineers deal with conventional devices with functionalities mostly dictated by the intrinsic optical and material properties of solids. In this talk, I will discuss how one can use some of the exotic effects verified in quantum optics as the main tools of design for various optical devices, including novel laser systems and integrated photonic circuits.

After a brief review of some major effects in quantum optics of atoms, I will explain how these effects can be realized in semiconductors. Then I will show how, when these effects are combined with the fact that we can engineer electron wavefunction in quantum wells, one can propose new photonic band gaps and laser systems. I will discuss fabrication steps of these devices based on conventional industry techniques and highlight their high compatibility for monolithic integration with other devices. At the end, I will touch a new method to generate active nanostructures using combined effects of nonlinear optical processes and semiconductor interface properties.

Dr. Seyed Sadeghi

University of Alabama in Huntsville