Ultrafast science is a branch of photonics with far reaching applications in and out- side the realm of physics. Ultrashort laser pulses on the order of femtoseconds (1 fs = 1 × $10^{−15}$ s) are widely used for ultrafast science. Many lasers can produce pulses on the order of 100 fs, with state of the art, high end lasers being capable of producing pulses around 30 fs. However, many...
High-Harmonic Sidebands for Time-Resolved Spectroscopy
In the semi-classical picture of high-harmonic generation (HHG), a strong ($10^{18}-10^{20}W/m^2$) laser field is applied to an atom, repeatedly accelerating one of its valence electrons into the continuum and back to the parent atom. Upon recollision with the parent atom, the electron emits photons of odd-integer harmonics of the...
We consider a dilute gas of bosons in a slowly rotating toroidal trap, focusing on the two-mode regime consisting of a non-rotating mode and a rotating mode corresponding to a single vortex. With the help of the single-particle density matrix we track the presence of Bose-condensates in this system which can occur in one mode, both modes or superpositions of the two. We also compare an...
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) has reached a level of maturity sufficient for commercial implementation. However, to-date transmission distances remain curtailed due to absorption losses. Satellite links have been proposed as a solution to scale up the distances of quantum communication networks. By using orbiting satellites as nodes between ground stations, the signal-to-noise ratio is...
Integrating single photon sources to existing telecommunication (telecom) networks is an on-going challenge due to the wavelength mismatch between the photon sources and the telecom optical fibers. A solution is to develop frequency conversion devices that can convert the optical frequency of the photon sources to the appropriate telecom frequencies. However, these solutions are difficult to...
As the demand for secure communication has grown in recent years, so has the need for robust implementations of quantum key distribution (QKD). Polarization encoding schemes suffer from phase drifts when encoded pulses pass through optical fibres, making the use of active phase compensation essential. These drifts arise due to ambient temperature changes and mechanical stresses on the fibre,...
The King plot technique widely used for isotopes of heavy atoms is
extended to light heliumlike ions by taking second differences to
eliminate large mass polarization corrections [1]. The effect of a
hypothetical electron-neutron interaction propagated by light bosons is
included and a comprehensive survey of all second-King plot transitions
for all states of Li$^+$ up to $n = 10$ and $L...
The optimization of quantum systems using Quantum Optimal Control Theory (QOCT) is very important in many fields such as quantum information, photocatalysis, and atomic and molecular physics. The goal of QOCT is to optimize an external field shape such that it drives a quantum system to a target state. When applied to the real world, QOCT can be used to develop quantum gates in quantum...
Ultracold neutral atoms are an excellent test-bed for novel quantum control techniques due to their stability, and efficient coupling to fields in the radio, microwave, and optical regimes. Various control protocols which could be used in quantum information processing (QIP) may first be investigated in ultracold atoms to prove their efficacy before being generalized to other more established...
