Molecular Optomechanics From light vibration entanglement to plasmonic nanocavities

Ore: 14.00
Luogo: videoconferenza tramite Zoom (il link di accesso può essere richiesto a df.supportstaff [at] unitn.it)

Speaker

• Christophe Galland, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland

Abstract

Molecular systems offer many degrees of freedom potentially useful for quantum technologies, at frequencies ranging from few MHz to hundreds of THz. Among them, vibrational modes can be addressed in their quantum ground state at room-temperature. I will show how we leverage pulsed vibrational Raman scattering and single photon counting to generate entangled states between light and vibrations at ambient conditions [1], and to demonstrate non-classical statistics of the vibrational excitations [2,3,4]. I will also briefly present plasmonic nanocavities that we develop to boost the optomechanical interaction [5], with the goal to realize single-molecule vibrational state control and implement optomechanical frequency upconversion from the THz and mid-infrared regions to the visible [6]. We found that taming light-matter interaction in these nanoscale resonators still presents unresolved challenges [7,8]. Overall, our results demonstrate that molecular oscillators have a role to play in nanoscale, room-temperature quantum technologies, but that realizing this potential will require a much deeper understanding of metal-molecule interactions and atomic-scale dynamics in plasmonic nanostructures.

[1] S. Tarrago Velez Science Adv. eabb0260 (2020)
[2] M. Anderson Physical Review Letters 120, 233601 (2018)
[3] S. Tarrago Velez Physical Review X 9, 041007 (2019)
[4] S. Tarrago Velez. https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.00213
[5] P. Roelli Nature Nano 11, 164-169 (2016)
[6] P. Roelli Physical Review X 10 (3), 031057
[7] W. Chen Nature Comm. 12, 2731 (2021)
[8] A. Ahmed ACS Photonics (2021)