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，从商业上可获得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，单自旋的写入和阅读，单光子的存储，以及新型的耦合物质-光子粒子，它们表现出奇异的性质，例如凝聚成相干态。然而，仅仅在大约过去五年中，才出现了在完全受限的结构中精确制备和控制电子性质的技术，以及制造小体积高性能纳米腔以控制光子性质的技术，从而获得了上述许多非常前瞻性的机会。我们的目标是控制电子和光子的量子态及其相互作用，以在量子信息科学，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计划来实现，该计划包括先进的实验和理论的重要组成部分，以及发展良好的晶体生长和设备技术，无论是在我们自己的实验室还是与英国和欧洲的合作者。我们提出的研究是紧密相连的，并集中在四个相关领域，所有这些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，纳米磁系统，远程量子系统的纠缠，以及在专门设计的光学腔中产生的凝聚高密度态等领域。预计这将导致在实现一些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缩放量子比特系统的开发，超流性和量子振荡受控交互系统。通过EPSRC物理学方案的方案赠款资助请求支持。这种供资是专门为能够开展协调一致的活动而设计的，这些活动能够在国际范围内成功地竞争，并且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.