Ultrafast and Quantum Photonics

为了获得更快更精确的未来光子技术，我们必须首先了解光和物质在最基本的层面上是如何相互作用的。量子物理学为我们提供了最精确的描述，然而目前的量子光学工具并不适用于这些最短的时间间隔，即在量子水平上对光-物质相互作用的时域描述在很大程度上是缺乏的，技术也是如此。多短算太短？对于大多数在可见-近红外光谱附近工作的光子器件，相互作用的自然时间尺度是几个飞秒[1 fs = 10^（-15）秒]，主要由光波的单次振荡的持续时间和物质中自由电子的惯性来确定。我们的超快和量子光子学团队（femtoQ）通过利用量子增强激光技术和我们内部开发的新型量子计量工具来研究这些制度。我们在短时间间隔上探索量子科学的基础方面，开发高精度脉冲激光技术，并将其用于研究量子光的短脉冲，推导出量子增强传感和量子计量的非经典技术。

In order to derive ever faster and more precise photonic technologies of tomorrow we must first understand how light and matter interact at the most fundamental level. Quantum physics offers us the most precise description of this, however the current tools of quantum optics are not applicable to these shortest time intervals, namely time-domain description of light-matter interaction at the quantum level is largely lacking and so does the technology. How short is too short? For most photonic devices operating around the visible-near-IR spectrum, the natural timescale of interactions is of few femtoseconds [1 fs = 10^(-15) seconds], set primarily by the duration of the single oscillation of the light wave and the inertia of free electrons in matter. Our Ultrafast and Quantum Photonics team (femtoQ) studies these regimes by exploiting quantum-enhanced laser technologies and novel quantum metrology tools we develop in-house. We explore the foundational aspects of quantum science on short time intervals, develop high-precision pulsed laser technology and use it to study short pulses of quantum light, deriving nonclassical technologies for quantum-enhanced sensing and quantum metrology.