XII International Workshop on Quantum Optics (IWQO-2015) is a regular conference on relevant problems of quantum optics.It is held in Russia with the participation of representatives of foreign research groups.The first workshop was organized in October 1989 in Kazan by Prof. Vitaly Samartsev (Zavoisky Institute of Physics and Technology, Kazan, Russia).Currently the Workshops are held quadrennially in different places of Russia (2003 -St.Petersburg, 2007 -Samara, 2011 -Volgograd).IWQO-2015 was held in Moscow (south-west and Troitsk city districts) on the base of Moscow State Pedagogical University (www.mpgu.edu)and Institute for Spectroscopy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (www.isan.troitsk.ru).The Workshop was included into the list of events of the International Year of Light and Light-based technologies (IYL-2015).Chairmens of the Program Committee: Prof.
XII International Workshop on Quantum Optics (IWQO-2015) is a regular conference on relevant problems of quantum optics.It is held in Russia with the participation of representatives of foreign research groups.The first workshop was organized in October 1989 in Kazan by Prof. Vitaly Samartsev (Zavoisky Institute of Physics and Technology, Kazan, Russia).Currently the Workshops are held quadrennially in different places of Russia (2003 -St.Petersburg, 2007 -Samara, 2011 -Volgograd).IWQO-2015 was held in Moscow (south-west and Troitsk city districts) on the base of Moscow State Pedagogical University (www.mpgu.edu)and Institute for Spectroscopy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (www.isan.troitsk.ru).The Workshop was included into the list of events of the International Year of Light and Light-based technologies (IYL-2015).Chairmens of the Program Committee: Prof.
Much of our present understanding of the microscopic world is based on quantum mechanics. The field owes much of its existence to the venerable science of optics, since the fundamental ideas on the nature of the interaction between light and matter lie at the roots of its origin. We have now reached one century of quantum mechanics. In contrast, the splendid blossoming of quantum optics began only after the comparatively recent invention of the laser. Since then, it has become an exciting and always expanding area at the cutting-edge of research, in part because theory and experiment are more closely connected in this field than any other. Moreover, the technological distance between fundamental studies and practical applications has always been very short in quantum optics. As a result, modern engineering is increasingly based on quantum rather than classical physics; we are facing a transition similar to the one society confronted 200 years ago, at the start of the Industrial Revolution. In parallel with this, the physics community is witnessing the recent and vigorous emergence of quantum information. It aims at exploring the physical foundations of information and at developing efficient methods for processing quantum information. The questions driving this field reveal a profound change in attitude towards fundamental aspects of quantum theory. The photon turns out to be a tool extremely well suited to exploring theoretical quantum information schemes and their experimental implementations. Mirroring this continued progress has been the growth and development of the series of annual Central European Workshops on Quantum Optics (CEWQO). The series started at the beginning of the 1990s, as rather small meetings of physicists from a few countries in central-eastern Europe. In two decades, the workshops have transformed into important events that reach well beyond the original rather restricted geographical limits. The history of CEWQOs can be found in the preface to the proceedings of the 15th CEWQO ( Physica Scripta 2009 T135 011005 ). The 18th edition of CEWQO (CEWQO11) was held in Madrid in 2011. There were about 250 participants, from practically every European country. Many colleagues from other continents also joined the event, including well-established researchers in the field. This is a clear demonstration that these meetings provide an excellent chance to hear about the latest results and new directions of research. The organization of CEWQO11 was carried out by a committee consisting of members active in this topic in Madrid. From Universidad Complutense, Alberto Galindo and Luis L Sánchez-Soto; from Universidad Autónoma, Jose Calleja and Carlos Tejedor; from Universidad Politécnica, Enrique Calleja; from Universidad Carlos III, Alberto Ibort; and from the National Research Council (CSIC), Juan León and Juan J García-Ripoll. Special thanks go to the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation, Universidad Complutense and the Quitemad Consortium for financial support. The proceedings of the 16th CEWQO held at the University of Turku, Finland and the 17th CEWQO held at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK are also available ( Physica Scripta 2010 T140 and Physica Scripta 2011 T143 ). The present Topical Issue is a collection of papers presented in Madrid; they represent an illustrative sample of the major achievements and trends in this area. In turn, they reflect the wide range of interests in this rapidly evolving field. Some collaborators from different scientific centres who could not, due to different reasons, come to Madrid, but participated in previous CEWQOs and plan to participate in future CEWQOs, also contributed to this issue. The papers are arranged alphabetically by the name of the first author. Special thanks goes to Roger Wäppling, the Managing Editor of Physica Scripta , and Graeme Watt, the Publisher, for the opportunity to publish CEWQO11. From a Physica Scripta Editorial Board meeting it was decided that Physica Scripta could offer a poster prize (200 euros + certificate) for young scientists (less than 30 years old) at the annual CEWQO conference. A panel of experts was formed to judge the posters which included Apostol Vourdas, University of Bradford, UK (Chairman), Alberto Ibort, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, Andrei Klimov, University of Guadalajara, Mexico, Margarita A Man'ko, P N Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, Russia and Antonino Messina, University of Palermo, Italy. The poster ''How can we check the uncertainty relation?'' by Vladimir Chernega, PhD student of the P N Lebedev Physical Institute, won the prize. The 19th Central European Workshop on Quantum Optics will be held in Sinaia, Romania on 2–6 July 2012. It will be chaired by Professor Aurelian Isar from the Horia Hulubei National Institute for Research and Development in Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Bucharest.
We are glad to welcome you at the 21st Central European Workshop on Quantum Optics. Started in 1993 in Bratislava within a European project aimed at collaborating with Central-European countries, the Central European Workshops on Quantum Optics have evolved into a central annual gathering of European researchers working in this fast growing field as well as its applications to quantum information sciences and the foundations of quantum mechanics. For two decades, the workshops traveled all over the continent, reaching its geographical edges. This year, the 21st edition comes to the of Europe.We thank all the participants for the abstract submissions. The peer-review has shown a high level of contributions accepted for oral and poster presentations. As usual, we see a substantial participation of students and young postdocs from around the world and we are happy that our field attracts new generations of researchers. CEWQO 2014 in Brussels would have been impossible without the steering of Prof. Antonino Messina and Prof. Margarita Man'ko,who kindly proposed to locate the 21st edition here and provided a priceless help at all stages of its preparation. We would like to acknowledge also the previous organizers of CEWQO workshops for sharing their experience, in particular Prof. Gunnar Bjork and Prof. Aurelian Isar. A valuable help in the selection of invited speakers and in reviewing the contributions was given by the members of the International Advisory Board.We have received financial support from the Brussels Capital Region via its agency VISITBRUSSELS, the two National Research Funds, F.R.S.-FNRS and FWO, the Interuniversity Attraction Poles program of the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) via project Photonics@be,and the European program CHIST-ERA via projects HIPERCOM and QSCALE.Among our sponsors are the European Physical Society (via the journal EuroPhysics Letters) which supported student grants, the American Institute of Publishing (via Physica Scripta) which offered the Best Poster Award for young scientists, and Springer Publishing (via The European Physical Journal) which contributed to the organization of a plenary session, along with the company IDQ.We would like to thank all members of the local organizing committee and our colleagues, who invested their time for making this conference happen.
The idea to organize a central-european workshop on quantum optics goes back to the activity of prof. V. Buzžek (Bratislava) and prof. J. Janszky (Budapest). The first meetings were held in Budapest and Bratislava and started a tradition bringing together people working on problems related to quantum optics. Later workshops have been held at Budmerice (Slovakia), Balaton (Hungary), Olomouc and Prague (Czech republic). The already eighth central-european workshop found his way back to Prague and was organized in cooperation with the Doppler Institute and the Department of Physics of the Faculty for Nuclear Science and Physical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague. The contributions of the participants focus on problems in quantum communication, quantum information, quantum state reconstruction, atom optics and nonlinear quantum optics. The success of the workshop was enabled by the kind cooperation of all the participants during the conference. The present collection of contributions gives a good review of topics presented. We hope that the present issue will be able to transfer the constructive and stimulating atmosphere of the workshop to the readership. I would like to thank the editor prof. D. Lüst and co-editor prof. W. P. Schleich for opening up the possibility to publish the proceedings of the workshop in the Fortschritte der Physik. It surely helps to enlarge the readership of the proceedings and promotes the idea of the central-european workshop among colleagues around the world.
The development of quantum optics was part and parcel of the formation of modern physics following the fundamental work of Max Planck and Albert Einstein, which gave rise to quantum mechanics. The possibility of working with pure quantum objects, like single atoms and single photons, has turned quantum optics into the main tool for testing the fundamentals of quantum physics. Thus, despite a long history, quantum optics nowadays remains an extremely important branch of physics. It represents a natural base for the development of advanced technologies, like quantum information processing and quantum computing. Previous Central European Workshops on Quantum Optics (CEWQO) took place in Palermo (2007), Vienna (2006), Ankara (2005), Trieste (2004), Rostock (2003), Szeged (2002), Prague (2001), Balatonfüred (2000), Olomouc (1999), Prague (1997), Budmerice (1995, 1996), Budapest (1994) and Bratislava (1993). Those meetings offered excellent opportunities for the exchange of knowledge and ideas between leading scientists and young researchers in quantum optics, foundations of quantum mechanics, cavity quantum electrodynamics, photonics, atom optics, condensed matter optics, and quantum informatics, etc. The collaborative spirit and tradition of CEWQO were a great inspiration and help to the Institute of Physics, Belgrade, and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, as the organizers of CEWQO 2008. The 16th CEWQO will take place in 2009 in Turku, Finland, and the 17th CEWQO will be organized in 2010 in St Andrews, United Kingdom. The 15th CEWQO was organized under the auspices and support of the Ministry of Science of the Republic of Serbia, the Serbian Physical Society, the European Physical Society with sponsorship from the University of Belgrade, the Central European Initiative, the FP6 Program of the European Commission under INCO project QUPOM No 026322, the FP7 Program of the European Commission under project NANOCHARM, Europhysics Letters (EPL), The European Physical Journal (EPJ), and John Wiley and Sons.
Spectroscopy (PECS) is a regular quadrennial scientific meeting. Symposium originates in Kazan at the Physical-Technical Institute of the Kazan Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the E. K. Zavoisky Physical-Technical Institute), where in 1963 the phenomenon of the photon echo was theoretically predicted. The first PECS was held in 1973 as All-Union Conference shortly after the first in the USSR experiments on the photon echo in a ruby crystal. The second symposium was also held in Kazan in 1981.
PREFACE The papers selected for this volume were reported at the International Symposium 'Optics and its applications' (OPTICS-2011, Yerevan & Ashtarak, Armenia, September 5–9, 2011), http://www.ipr.sci.am/optics2011/ . The Symposium was organized by the SPIE Armenian Student Chapter and major Armenian R&D organizations, universities and industrial companies working in the field of basic and applied optics: Institute for Physical Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Yerevan State University, Russian–Armenian (Slavonic) University, and LT-PYRKAL Closed Joint Stock Company. OPTICS-2011 was primarily intended to support and promote the involvement of students and young scientists in various fields of modern optics, giving them the possibility to attend invited talks by prominent scientists and to present and discuss their own results. Furthermore, the Symposium allowed foreign participants from 14 countries to become acquainted with the achievements of optical science and technology in Armenia, which became a full member of the International Commission for Optics (ICO) in 2011. To follow this concept, the Symposium sessions were held in various host institutions. The creative and friendly ambience established at OPTICS-2011 promoted further international collaboration in the field and motivated many students to take up research in optics and photonics as a career. This volume of Journal of Physics: Conference Series covers thematic sections of the Symposium (both oral and poster), which represent the main fields of interest in optics for Armenian scientists: quantum optics & information, laser spectroscopy, optical properties of nanostructures, photonics & fiber optics, and optics of liquid crystals. Such wide coverage is consistent with the general scope of the Symposium, allowing all the students involved in optics to present, discuss and publish their recent results, and for those who are making their first steps in science to choose the direction of their further studies. We are confident that the publication of the Symposium proceedings in JPCS , a worldwide-known open access journal, will help to disseminate and promote current activities in optics, thus facilitating international cooperation and the integration of Armenian scientists into the worldwide optical community. We would like to thank the sponsors of the Symposium: National Foundation of Science and Advanced Technologies (NFSAT), The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), LT-PYRKAL, State Committee of Science of Armenia, Russian–Armenian (Slavonic) University, and Devout Generation Foundation. We also express our gratitude to the members of the Program Committee for their organization of the manuscript reviewing. Special thanks go to Narine Gevorgyan, Lilit Mantashyan and Paytsar Mantashyan for their invaluable assistance in the compilation of this issue. The Editors, Aranya B Bhattacherjee , University of Delhi, India Maria L Calvo , Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain Eduard M Kazaryan , Russian–Armenian (Slavonic) University, Armenia Aram V Papoyan , Institute for Physical Research of NAS, Armenia Hayk A Sarkisyan , Russian–Armenian (Slavonic) University, Armenia Participants of OPTICS-2011 in front of Yerevan State University Participants of OPTICS-2011 in Khor Virap The PDF also contains additional photographs from the Symposium.