Controlling spontaneous and stimulated emission with photonic quasiparticles

The interaction of the electromagnetic field with matter gives rise to photonic quasiparticles: electromagnetic field excitations that have very different properties from photons in vacuum. When considering how these excitations are absorbed and emitted by electrons, one finds that these differences enable many phenomena that are difficult or even impossible to realize otherwise, promising a host of powerful technologies. In this talk, I will show as examples two of our recent results in this field.

First, I will show how photonic quasiparticles enable novel phenomena in scintillation, in which ionizing radiation converts its kinetic energy into photons. By integrating a scintillating material into a photonic crystal, we show experimentally how the scintillation can be strongly shaped and enhanced. Such nanophotonic scintillators provide a promising concept for low-dose and high-resolution imaging across many disciplines such as medicine, non-destructive inspection, and high-energy physics.

Second, I will introduce a mechanism called Fock lasing, by which a gain medium, undergoing stimulated interactions with a “sharply” nonlinear photonic quasiparticle, lases into a macroscopic Fock state of a cavity. We theoretically show several examples of how this mechanism may be implemented at optical and microwave frequencies, leading to approximate Fock states with up to thousands of photons, providing a path to extending the size of multi-photon Fock states by several orders of magnitude.​

Recording : https://biu365-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/dallate_biu_ac_il/ESdHm…