About The Speaker

Prof. Ofer Firstenberg obtained his PhD at the Technion, Israel, working on quantum memories and atomic physics in hot vapor systems. He did his postdoctoral training at Harvard and MIT on photon-photon interactions with ultracold atoms. Since 2014, he has been heading the Light-vs-Matter lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The lab studies quantum nonlinear optics with Rydberg atoms, long-lived quantum memories, and quantum-enhanced sensors.

Event Details

I will discuss the experimental realization of strong photon-photon interactions in a quantum nonlinear medium based on ultracold Rydberg atoms. This interaction results in a faster phase accumulation for copropagating photon pairs, producing a quantum vortex-antivortex pair within the two-photon wavefunction. The “conditional”  phase localized between these vortices could be employed for deterministic quantum logic operations. Moreover, triplets of photons produce vortex lines and a vortex ring, giving rise to a  conditional phase. The deviation from the  conditional phase, expected for a quantum Kerr-nonlinear medium, attests to genuine three-photon interaction.