Optical Control of Quantum States in Semiconductor Nanostructures

固态中光与物质之间的相互作用支撑着各种重要的科学和技术领域，从商业上可用的器件，如发光二极管和激光器，到非常未来的主题，如基于量子力学原理的逻辑门，单自旋的读写，单光子的存储，以及新型耦合物质-光子粒子，表现出奇特的特性，如凝聚成相干状态。然而，直到近五年来，才出现了精确制备和控制全受限结构中电子性质的技术，以及制造小体积高性能纳米腔来控制光子性质的技术，从而获得了上述许多非常具有前瞻性的机会。这导致了本提案的主题领域：我们的目标是控制电子和光子的量子态及其相互作用，从而在量子信息科学、量子光学和相互作用相干系统方面取得新的进展。这将通过一个高度互动的项目来实现，该项目包括先进的实验和理论的基本组成部分，以及在我们自己的实验室和与英国和欧洲的合作者的良好发展的晶体生长和设备技术。我们提出的研究是紧密相连的，并集中在四个相关的领域，都涉及类似的样品，实验技术和理论概念，在超快量子控制，纳米磁性系统，远程量子系统的纠缠，以及在特殊设计的光学腔中产生的凝聚态高密度态。它有望在许多长期目标方面取得重大进展，例如：利用电子自旋的长相干时间进行量子信息处理，半导体系统中的量子逻辑，基于激子或光子的可扩展量子比特系统的开发，以及设计者控制的相互作用系统中的超流动性和量子振荡。支持是通过EPSRC物理项目的项目拨款申请的。这种资金的具体目的是允许开展能够在国际范围内成功竞争的连贯活动，这对我们最近的成功至关重要。

The interactions between light and matter in the solid state underpin a wide variety of important areas of science and technology, ranging from commercially available devices such as light emitting diodes and lasers, to very futuristic topics such as logic gates based on quantum mechanical principles, writing and reading of single spins, storage of single photons, and new types of coupled matter-photon particles exhibiting exotic properties such as condensation into a coherent state. However, it is only within approximately the last five years that the technologies have emerged to accurately prepare and control the properties of electrons in fully confined structures, and to fabricate small volume high performance nano-cavities to control the properties of photons, and thus to access many of the above very forward-looking opportunities.This leads to the subject area of the present proposal: we aim to control the quantum states of electrons and photons and of their mutual interactions to produce new advances in quantum information science, quantum optics and interacting coherent systems. This will be achieved by a highly interactive programme comprising the essential component parts of advanced experimentation and theory, and well developed crystal growth and device technology, both within our own laboratories and with collaborators within the UK and Europe.The research we propose is closely interlinked, and focuses into four related areas, all involving similar samples, experimental techniques and theoretical concepts, in the areas of ultrafast quantum control, nano-magnetic systems, entanglement of remote quantum systems, and the condensed high density state which arises in specially designed optical cavities. It is expected to result in major advances towards a number of long-term goals, for example: the exploitation of the long coherence time of electron spins for quantum information processing, quantum logic in semiconductor systems, the development of scalable qubit systems based either on excitons or photons, and superfluidity and quantum oscillations in designer-controlled interacting systems.Support is requested via Programme Grant funding of the Physics Programme of EPSRC. Such funding is specifically designed to permit the establishment of coherent activities which are able to compete successfully on the international scale, and has been critical to our recent successes.