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Atomic Physics Seminar
Building materials from light: Photonic Landau levels and Rydberg-mediated interactions
Date: Tuesday, January 31st
Time: 12:00 pm
Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
Speaker: Ariel Sommer, MIT
Abstract: Advances in the control of light propagation and photon-photon interactions have lead to a new notion of photonic materials -- states of light that resemble material systems. I will describe our experimental approach to photonic materials, in which we use a degenerate non-planar optical resonator to realize a two-dimensional photon gas with an effective magnetic field. We observe photonic Landau levels, indicating a strong effective magnetic field, and a singularity of spatial curvature arising from the effectively conical geometry of our photon gas. Spatial curvature provides a novel probe of quantum Hall states, allowing us to make the first experimental measurement of the mean orbital spin, which characterizes topological phases. To realize photon-photon interactions, we demonstrate hybridization of photons in an optical resonator with atomic Rydberg excitations. Future work will investigate ordered states of interacting photons, including crystalline and fractional quantum Hall states.
Host: Thad Walker
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