TUESDAY, October 6

Applied Physics Seminar, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM, 104 Watson
"Schroedinger's Mirrors: Extending Quantum Experiments Using Massive Mechanical Resonators," Professor Markus Aspelmeyer, University of Vienna.

Abstract: Nano- and micromechanical resonators are about to become a new paradigm system for quantum science. They combine features that allow unique approaches in both quantum foundations and quantum applications. For example, their flexibility to couple to a variety of physical systems (photons, electrons, atoms etc.) together with their on-chip integrability promise novel transducer schemes for quantum information processing. At the same time, their mass and size allows access to a hitherto untested parameter regime of macroscopic quantum physics such as quantum superposition states involving objects that are visible to the bare eye.

Quantum optics provides a well-developed toolbox to enter and control the quantum regime of mechanical systems. I will briefly highlight the recent developments of the field and report the current status in our Vienna experiments on laser cooling micromechanical resonators towards their quantum ground state and on strong optomechanical coupling to achieve coherent control. I will also discuss our recent progress towards generating optomechanical quantum entanglement, which is at the heart of Schroedinger's cat paradox.

Biography: Markus Aspelmeyer received his PhD in solid state physics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich, Germany, and a Bachelor in Philosophy from the Munich School of Philosophy. In 2002 he joined Anton Zeilinger’s group at the University of Vienna, Austria, with a Feodor Lynen Post-Doctoral Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He moved to the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Vienna in 2005, where he established a research team working on quantum effects in micro- and nanomechanical systems. Since 2009 he has been a Full Professor at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Vienna. For his work in quantum optics, quantum information and quantum-opto-mechanics he has received several prizes, among them the Fresnel Prize of the European Physical Society, the Ignaz Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Fritz-Kohlrausch Prize of the Austrian Physical Society. His research interests include experiments on the foundations of quantum physics and quantum experiments on nano- and micromechanical systems.