About The Speaker

Gershon Kurizki holds the G.W. Dunne Professorial Chair in Quantum Optics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is a theoretical pioneer of the fields of quantum open-system control and thermodynamics. He discovered the Anti-Zeno Effect in open quantum systems, found the connection between quantum thermodynamics and the quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno effects and introduced fundamental models of quantum heat machines. He has also made numerous contributions to the theory of quantum measurements and quantum optics. He won the Lamb Award in 2008 and the Humboldt-Meitner Award in 2009 for his discovery of the anti-Zeno effect and his pioneering contributions to the theory of quantum measurements and decoherence control in open quantum systems. Kurizki is Member of the Academia Europea, Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America and the British Institute of Physics. He is the author of “The Quantum Matrix” (Oxford University Press, 2020) and “Thermodynamics and Control of Open Quantum Systems” (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Event Details

In recent works, we have  theoretically  and experimentally demonstrated several novel schemes [1-5] for the detection of quantum noise signatures, allowing us to reach unprecedented, ultrahigh sensitivity to quantum noise deviations from Gaussian, thermal or near-thermal statistics. Conceptually, the general principle behind our schemes is the nonlinear filtering of the quantum noise. It can be effected by frequent measurements of   photon  polarization,  by homodyne measurement or photodetection  of the noise. An alternative to measurements is unitary: nonlinear interferometry of few-mode noise. Both approaches yield nonlinear filtering that transforms thermal or close-to-thermal noise input,  which is almost void of information on random processes in the medium, into a strongly non-thermal/non-Gaussian output that is rich in information  on the medium fluctuations. Work extraction from the output is shown to provide a distinct signature of the photon statistical noisw. I will discuss  our  theoretical and experimental implementations of  these novel approaches:

1. Homodyning measurements of a small fraction of a thermal beam  that renders it non-Gaussian or squeezed and thereby allows work extraction from the beam  [1].
2. Interferometers with giant cross-Kerr nonlinearity [2] between thermal photonic beams in cold Rubidium gas: these interferometers are able to render the photonic states strongly non-Gaussian  and thereby extract work [3]. They can also provide sub-shot noise phase sensitivity for thermal input.
3. Photons undergoing polarization fluctuations, whose temporal correlations are revealed by frequent polarization measurements [4].
4. Strong squeezing of initially thermal spin ensembles by frequent photon-probe measurements [5].

These  nonlinear noise-filtering schemes pave the way to a new generation of quantum noise diagnostic tools, with promising applications in quantum information, quantum interferometry and biomedical diagnostics. References [1] T. Opatrný, A. Misra and G. Kurizki, “Work Generation from Thermal Noise by Quantum Phase-Sensitive Observation”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 040602 (2021). [2] I. Friedler,  D. Petrosyan, M. Fleischhauer and G. Kurizki, “ Long-range interaction and entanglement of slow single-photon pulses”, Phys. Rev. A 72, 043803 (2005);”Strongly interacting photons in  hollow-core waveguides”,  E. Shahmoon et al. Phys Rev. A 83, 033806 (2011). [3] T. Opatrný, Š. Bräuer, A. G. Kofman, A. Misra, N. Meher, O. Firstenberg, E. Poem, and G. Kurizki, “Nonlinear coherent heat machines”, Science  Advances  9, 1070 (2023). [4] S. Virzì,  et al.,, “Quantum Zeno and Anti-Zeno Probes of Noise Correlations in Photon Polarization”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 030401 (2022); “Sensing microscopic noise events by frequent quantum measurements”, arXiv 2212.12530. [5] DBR Dasari  et al.,”Anti-Zeno Purification of Spin Baths by Quantum Probe Measurements”,  Nature  Commun. 13, 7527 (2022).