[Physstaff] Reminder: Today 3pm Colloquium "Chiral interaction of light and matter in confined geometries" Arno Rauschenbeutel

[Daniel Oi]

Dear All,

A reminder of today's colloquium at 3pm in JA3.14.

Daniel.

From: Daniel Oi
Sent: 09 October 2015 15:11
To: physstaff at phys.strath.ac.uk
Subject: Colloquium 14/10/15: "Chiral interaction of light and matter in confined geometries" Arno Rauschenbeutel

The next John Anderson Colloquium will be given by Prof Arno Rauschenbeutel (Vienna) on "Chiral interaction of light and matter in confined geometries". As usual, tea/coffee will be available afterwards in the common room.

Title: Chiral interaction of light and matter in confined geometries
Speaker: Arno Rauschenbeutel (Vienna University of Technology)
Venue: John Anderson JA3.14
Time/Date: 3pm Wednesday 14th October 2015

Abstract:
When light is strongly transversally confined, significant local polarization components that point in the direction of propagation arise. In contrast to paraxial light fields, the corresponding intrinsic angular momentum of the light field is position-dependent - an effect referred to as spin-orbit interaction of light. Remarkably, the light's spin can even be perpendicular to the propagation direction. The interaction of emitters with such light fields leads to new and surprising effects. For example, when coupling gold nanoparticles or atoms to the evanescent field surrounding a silica nanophotonic waveguide, the intrinsic mirror symmetry of the particles' emission is broken. This allowed us to realize chiral nanophotonic interfaces in which the emission direction of light into the waveguide is controlled by the polarization of the excitation light [1] or by the internal state of the atoms [2], respectively. Moreover, we employed this chiral interaction to demonstrate nonreciprocal transmission of light at the single-photon level through a silica nanofiber [3]. The resulting optical diode is the first example of a new class of nonreciprocal nanophotonic devices which exploit the chiral interaction between quantum emitters and transversally confined photons.

References:
[1] J. Petersen, J. Volz, and A. Rauschenbeutel, "Chiral nanophotonic waveguide interface based on spin-orbit coupling of light," Science 346, 67 (2014).
[2] R. Mitsch, C. Sayrin, B. Albrecht, P. Schneeweiss and A. Rauschenbeutel, "Quantum state-controlled directional spontaneous emission of photons into a nanophotonic waveguide," Nature Commun. 5, 5713 (2014).
[3] C. Sayrin, C. Junge, R. Mitsch, B. Albrecht, D. O'Shea, P. Schneeweiss, J. Volz and A. Rauschenbeutel, "Optical diode based on the chirality of guided photons," arXiv:1502.01549.

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