The amazing atom laser*

Keith R. Burnett

Murray Holland

Scott R. Davis

When systems are engineered to relay or extend “quantum weirdness” from the nanoscopic scale of atoms to the macroscopic scale of humans amazing things can happen. In the last century humans engineered periodic atomic lattices with quantized electronic energies to create semiconductors with bandgaps, thereby enabling the transistor. Similarly, humans captured photons and optical gain media in cavities to create photonic Bose-Einstein condensates, i.e., lasers. These twentieth century quantum systems (the transistor and the laser) ushered in the computer age and the information age, which changed the world. The twenty-first century generation of quantum systems is just emerging, and the disruptive potential is equally tantalizing. Almost all these emergent quantum systems require lasers and photonics, representing both an opportunity and a challenge. In this talk I will discuss the complexity of the lasers-for-quantum space, present the technical and economic landscape, and pose possible paths forward for how lasers and photonics can usher in a new quantum age.

Matthias Freyberger, P. J. Bardroff, C Leichle +2 more

Quantum theory is undeniably one of the most powerful and successful theories in physics. For most of this century physicists have been using quantum theory to predict and explain the behaviour of light and matter in an amazing range of experiments and applications. From high-energy collisions and neutron stars to semiconductors and lasers, the theory has proven itself time and time again.

S. L. Rolston

Alain Aspect

In 1935, Einstein discovered entanglement, an amazing property of quantum mechanics which contradicted his world views. An intense debate with Niels Bohr followed, and was settled only after the discovery by John Bell of the famous inequalities named after him. Bell's theoretical work stimulated experiments, nowadays accessible to university laboratory classes, which demonstrate that entangled twin photons remain a single global object even when at a distance. We must take this conceptual revolution into account in our quantum description of the world. Applications of entanglement are also on the way, and a new field of research, Quantum Information, uses entanglement to develop applications as quantum cryptography and quantum computing. It may well be that we are living a second quantum revolution, which might change our society as strongly as the first quantum revolution did, when it gave us the laser and the transistor (and integrated circuits) at the root of the information and communication society.