Maximum coherence in optical transitions in rare earth ion-activated solids

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Coherent electromagnetic radiation in the form of laser light holds enormous promise for future information technology but only if suitable materials capable of capturing and efficiently maintaining the coherence can be found or developed.Our idea is to investigate strong coupling between the optical field and the quantum system that may be achieved in the limit of purely radiative decay of the excited states. This project will perform experiments to study the formation and dissipation of the coherence in a special class of crystalline materials containing resonantly absorbing rare earth ions having promising nearly radiative-limited decoherence properties.The goal is to find a solid material that would allow a large number of operations (instead of currently feasible few operations) before the system loses track of its coherent or entanglement state. If successful, such systems will provide the key components of future quantum super-computers as well as eavesdropping-proof data communication systems.Broader impacts of the work will include the training of students in these fields and collaborations with local technological industry.