Hanbury Brown and Twiss and other atom-atom correlations: from photon to atom quantum optics
Alain Aspect
Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l’Inst. d’Optique, France
Abstract: Fifty years ago, R. Hanbury Brown and R. Q. Twiss, invented a new method to measure the angular diameter of stars, based on the observation of correlations in light. The analysis of their experiment led to the development of modern quantum optics, based on photon-photon correlation experiments.
Similar quantum correlations can be observed with bosonic and fermionic atoms. I will present such experiments, after recalling the significance of the HBT landmark experiment.
Biography: Born in 1947, Alain Aspect studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan and Université d’Orsay. After a three years teaching assignment in Cameroon, he started in 1974, a series of experiments on the foundations of quantum mechanics. His "Experimental Tests of Bell's Inequalities with Correlated Photons", were the subject of his doctorate thesis presented in 1983. In 1983-86, with his student Philippe Grangier, he developed the first source of single photons and made fundamental experiments on wave-particle duality of light.
From 1985 to 1992 he worked with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji at the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel de l’ENS and Collège de France, on cooling atoms with lasers, in particular “cooling below the one photon recoil”.
Since 1991, he is head of the group of Atom Optics that he has established at the Institut d’Optique, now in Palaiseau. Recent scientific production concerns mainly Bose Einstein Condensates, Atom Lasers, Quantum Atom Optics with metastable Helium, Anderson localization of ultracold atoms.
A CNRS senior scientist (”Directeur de recherché CNRS”) at Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l’Institut d’Optique, Alain Aspect is also professor at Institut d’Optique and Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau.
He is member of the French Académie des Sciences, and of the Académie des Technologies, as well as of foreign academies (USA, Austria). He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America, of the European Optical Society, of the American Physical Society, and has received several honorary doctorates (Ecole Polytechnique and University of Montreal, National Australian University at Canberra, Herriott Watt University at Glasgow). He is frequently invited as a distinguished lecturer, and has received major awards, among them: the OSA Max Born award (1999), the CNRS Gold Medal (2005), the Quantum Optics senior prize of the European Physical Society (2009), the Wolf prize in Physics (2010). |
The Biophysics of Gene Regulation, Studied One Molecule at a Time
Steven M. Block
Stanford Univ., USA
Abstract: Advances have led to a new field, single molecule biophysics. Prominent among the enabling technologies is the laser-based optical trap, or optical tweezers. This lecture will focus on our current work on single biological macromolecules.
Biography: Steven M. Block is the S.W. Ascherman Chair of Sciences in the departments of Applied Physics and Biology at Stanford University. He holds degrees from Oxford University (B.A. 1974; M.A. 1978) and the California Institute of Technology (Ph.D. 1983).
After postdoctoral work at Stanford (1983-87), he served as staff scientist at the Rowland Institute for Science, Lecturer at Harvard University (1987-1993), and then Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University (1994-1999) prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 1999.
Block is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Biophysical Society.
He is a recipient of the Delbrück Prize in Biological Physics from the American Physical Society (2008), the Young Investigator (1994) and Outstanding Investigator in Single Molecule Biophysics Awards from the BPS (2008), and served as the Biophysical Society’s National Program Chair (1999) and President (2005-2006).
Block’s research lies at the interface of physics and biology, particularly in the study of molecular motors, such as kinesin and RNA polymerase, and the folding of nucleic acid-based structures. His laboratory has pioneered the use of laser-based optical traps, also known as ‘optical tweezers,’ to study the nanoscale motions of individual biomolecules.
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APS Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science
The Arthur L. Schawlow Prize recognizes outstanding contributions to basic research which uses lasers to advance our knowledge of the fundamental physical properties of materials and their interaction with light.
2010 Recipients: Henry C. Kapteyn of Kapteyn-Murnane Labs, USA and Margaret M. Murnane of JILA, University of Colorado, USA
Citation: For critical advances in the science and technology of high-harmonics generation, with particular relevance to sub-femtosecond pulse generation and related attosecond-scale physics.
Schawlow Prize Lecture Title: "Attosecond Light and Science at the Time-scale of the Electron - Coherent X-Rays from Tabletop Ultrafast Lasers"
Abstract: Using the extreme nonlinear process of high harmonic generation, light from an ultrafast laser can be coherently upshifted, generating bright ultrafast coherent beams extending into the soft and soon hard x-ray regions of the spectrum. Applications in molecular and materials dynamics, as well as nano- and attosecond science, will be discussed.
Biographies: Henry Kapteyn and Margaret Murnane have made important contributions to the development of coherent x-ray sources and have helped establish the foundations of attosecond science. In the 1990s, they led the development of new ultrafast laser technologies using Ti:sapphire to generate unprecedented high peak power pulses only a few optical cycles in duration. They then did pioneering work in developing an understanding of extreme nonlinear optics to efficiently upshift femtosecond laser light into the soft X-ray region of the spectrum.
Henry Kapteyn isProfessor of Physics and Fellow of JILA, University of Colorado, Boulder. He holds a B.S. from Harvey Mudd College, M.S. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He previously held faculty positions at Washington State University and the University of Michigan. He is a Fellow of OSA, APS, and AAAS, and recipient of the OSA Adolph Lomb Medal, the ACS Ahmed Zewail Award, and the R.W. Wood Prize.
Margaret Murnane is Professor of Physics and Fellow of JILA, University of Colorado Boulder. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from University College Cork, Ireland, and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She previously held faculty positions at Washington State University and the University of Michigan. She is member of the NAS, a Fellow of OSA, APS and AAAS, and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the ACS Ahmed Zewail Award and the R.W. Wood Prize.
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OSA Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Endowment
2010 Recipient: Joseph H. Eberly, University of Rochester, U.S.A.
Citation: For many important research contributions to quantum optics and optical physics, his leadership as a teacher and educator, and his tireless and visionary service to the optics community
Ives Medal Address Title: “When Malus tangles with Euclid, who wins?"
Biography: Joseph Eberly has a B.S. degree from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph. D from Stanford University. Eberly has been teaching graduate and undergraduate classes in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester since the 1970s. He is currently the Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics and also a Professor of Optics.
His long-time research interests in quantum optics and radiation physics have led to a number of discoveries and innovations; including the initial description of the spontaneous collapse and revival effect, the first observation of Bessel beams, predictions of the recently observed non-spreading localized states of electrons in atoms, and the sudden-death effect in quantum entanglement.
Eberly received the Charles Hard Townes Award from OSA, the Goergen Award for Creative Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Rochester and has been designated a Distinguished Alumnus of the Penn State College of Science. He was awarded the Smoluchowski Medal by the Polish Physical Society. Eberly has mentored more than 35 Ph.D. graduates and published more than 350 research papers, as well as three graduate texts: Optical Resonance and Two-Level Atoms with L. Allen; Lasers and Laser Physics, both with P.W. Milonni.
He is the founding editor of the journal Optics Express, and he has served as president of OSA and chair of the APS Division of Laser Physics, on the APS Council and the AIP Board of Governors, and as a member of the Advisory Boards of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and ITAMP-Harvard. He is a Fellow of OSA and APS and he is an elected Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Science. |