Seminar

K. Birgitta Whaley,

Spin controlled electronic devices for the next generation electronics

The conventional electronic devices such as personal computers and mobile phones are primarily based on the control of electron charge in semiconductors. Although the tremendous progress in micro-fabrication technologies has accelerated the miniaturization of electronic devices, the size of devices will soon encounter the fundamental physical limits of that miniaturization. Further scale reduction beyond these limits will require a radical alteration of the concept of functional devices.

Joonyeon Chang, Korea Institute for Science and Technology

The conventional electronic devices such as personal computer and mobile phones are primarily based on the control of electron charge in semiconductors. Although the tremendous progress in micro-fabrication technologies has accelerated the miniaturization of electronic devices, the size of devices will soon encounter the fundamental physical limits of that miniaturization. Further scale reduction beyond these limits will require a radical alteration of the concept of functional devices.

Chang Liu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

As a standard method for producing correlated photon pairs (biphotons), spontaneous parametric down-conversion in nonlinear crystal usually has a wide bandwidth (terahertz) and very short coherence time (pico-seconds). Within spontaneous four-wave mixing process in cold atom ensembles, here we present a method for producing narrow-band (megahertz) Stokes and anti-Stokes paired photons.

Erika Andersson, Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences Heriot-Watt University

Digital signatures ensure that messages cannot be forged or tampered with. They are widely used to provide security for electronic communications, for example in financial transactions and electronic mail. Importantly, signed messages are also transferrable, meaning that if one recipient accepts a message as genuine, then she is guaranteed that others will also accept the same message if it is forwarded.

Electra Eleftheriadou, University of Strathclyde

In practical applications of communication schemes it is often necessary to amplify the transmitted signals. Because of the intrinsic noise due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, a quantum signal requires an amplification process which is different than the one used for classical signals.

Feihu Xu, University of Toronto

In theory, quantum key distribution (QKD) provides information-theoretic security based on the laws of physics. Owing to the imperfections of real-life implementations, however, there is a big gap between the theory and practice of QKD. This gap has been recently exploited by several quantum hacking activities.

Gregor Weihs, Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Innsbruck

For fundamental tests of quantum physics as well as for quantum communications non-classical states of light are an important tool. In our research we focus on developing semiconductor-based and integrated sources of single photons and entangled photon pairs.

Jérémie Roland - Université Libre de Bruxelles