APPH E4901 & E4903 Applied Physics Seminar

Introduction to the 2012 Applied Physics Seminar.

Be sure to download and read Quantum Optomechanics, which appeared in the July 2012 issue of Physics Today.

Optical resonators

• What are the resonant optical frequencies of a cube? Numbers please.
• What are the resonant frequencies of an "optical fiber ring"?
• What is a Fabry-Pérot interferometer? And other types of interferometers, … ?

Richard Feynman's Lecture on "Cavity Resonators"

RSoft Design Group

Lecture Notes for Cavity Resonators

Cold War Optomechanics (1946-1960)

"How the Soviets spied on the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow"

Kevin Murray, who founded Murray Associates, is a leading private consulting firm specializing in technical surveillance countermeasures (TSCM) and business counterespionage. Kevin Murray also compiled the facinating true-story of electromagnetic resonant-cavity evesdropping in the office of Ambassador George Kennan.

Read "The Great Seal Bug Story". Amazing. The optomechanical microphone was invited by Léon Theremin. (Theremin also invented the "theremin", which created the cool space-age sounds in the Beach Boys famous hit, "Good Vibrations". Steve Martin wrote and directed a biographic film about Theremin in 1994.)

• Lecture Notes: understanding The Great Seal Bug
• Scientific American article on radio frequency transmitters, "Little radio transmitters for short-range telemetry" (1968)
• US Patent No. 6,481,286 B1 (Nov 19, 2002) Reentrant Microwave Resonant Cavity Accelerometer

RFID

• HID iClass smart cards
• Lecture notes about contactless detection

Quantum mechanical vibrations (and phonons)

Please read the wonderful article by Keith Schwab and Michael Roukes, Putting Mechanics into Quantum Mechanics, which appeared in Physics Today in July 2005.

• Lecture notes on quantum resonators
• "Approaching the Quantum Limit of a Nanomechanical Resonator", by LaHaye, et al., Science (2004).
• Nature review article on single electron transitors, Nature (2000)

Oct 10

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2012 was awarded jointly to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems"

We'll discuss their research and accomplishments today in class.

• Lecture notes and discussion of David Wineland's major papers
• Link to Nobel's public information, "Particle control in a quantum world"
• Link to Nobel's expert's review, "Scientific Background: Measuring and manipulating individual quantum systems"
• Wineland's Scientific American article (2008) about quantum computing.
• Wineland's "Laser Cooling of Atoms", Physical Review A (1979)
• "Laser cooling to the zero-point energy of motion," Phy. Rev. Lett. (1989)
• "Demonstration of a fundamental quantum logic gate," Phys. Rev. Lett. (1995)

• Lecture Notes: LIGO and Shot Noise
• Excellent review of LIGO: LIGO, Rep. Prog. Phys. 72 (2009)
• Recent work with "squeezed light" to reduce shot noise in LIGO (by about a factor of two), Nature-Physics, 7 (2011)
• A very detailed article by Brian Meersabout LIGO noise and the concept of "recycling" to enhance detection efficiency, Phys. Rev. D, 38 (1999)
• LIGO collaboration site and science information online.

Optical Cooling of Nano-mechanical Resonators

From Nature-Physics, July 2009:

Photons refrigerating phonons, by Andrew Cleland

Lecture notes

Quantum mechanics provokes much popular interest, due to its highly non-intuitive predictions and its unsettling contradictions of everyday experience. Ironically, quantum mechanics has never really been needed to understand mechanical systems. This is because mechanical systems are typically dominated by thermal effects, which destroy the coherence that distinguishes quantum behaviour. Over the past two decades it has become apparent that it should be possible to reach the quantum limit for some mechanical systems, driven by developments in nanoelectromechanical systems, and more recently in optomechanics, in which light is coupled to a mechanical system, enabling use of the full panoply of optical control techniques.

Oct 31

No Class: Annual Meeting of the APS-DPP (Salt Lake City)

"How to make a technical presentation"

• Prof. Jim Callen's "How to make effective scientific talks"
• AP-Seminar Reviewer Card

Monday, November 12:

• Tim Reichmann, Rail and Coil Guns
• Scott Massidda, Metamaterial Lenses

Prof. Chee Wei Wong: Guest Lecture and Lab Tour

Prof. Wong's research is described online at Optical Nanostructures Laboratory

Monday, November 19:

• Eric Sacks, Laser-accelerated Proton Beams and Medical Therapy
• Sean Francis, Solyndra: $500 Million down the drain. What happened?

Wednesday, November 21:

• Kathleen Tatem, Neutrino Oscillations
• Myles Jackson, Nuclear Energy: Pros and Cons of the Use of Thorium

Monday, November 26:

• Dylan Liu, Entanglement in Topological Phases
• Alison Harmon, Hawking Radiation

Wednesday, November 28:

• Prashanta Kharel, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Increasing Photonic Information Content
• Noah Whitehead, ARGO Floats for Oceanographic Research

Monday, December 3:

• Viktor Roytman, Bipolar Junction Transistors
• Gerald D'Arco, Production of Positrons with Intense Lasers

Wednesday, December 5:

• Nick Bikert, Semiconductor Lasers
• Matt Miecnikowski, Quantum critical entanglement in an Anderson model with a pseudogap

Monday, December 10:

• James McGugan, Orbital Mechanics and Maneuvers
• Marshall Rogers-Martinez, Relating Crack Velocity to Strain Rate for Earthquake Prediction

Wednesday, December 12:

• Michael Yoon, Magnetic Resonance Imaging