This week our AMO/QI seminar is a celebration of Dr. Julian Wolf’s completed dissertation. Please join us at 11am in 375 Physics North for his talk titled: Coherent and Incoherent Quantum Feedback in an Atom--Cavity System.

Abstract:
Feedback control allows a wide range of systems to be stabilized to out-of-equilibrium states. An ultracold atomic gas coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity offers a convenient testbed for feedback in the quantum regime. In this talk, I will discuss two instances of this: a coherent quantum feedback system, in which the energy of a collective atomic spin is autonomously stabilized to a set point conditioned on the detuning of the pump light from cavity resonance; and an incoherent feedback system, in which light escaping from the cavity offers a real-time measurement of the number of atoms present in the cavity during evaporative cooling, which is then used to stabilize to a desired atom number. Along the way, I will discuss other interesting findings that have been made along the way, as well as some techniques that we've found particularly useful.