DOUBLE FEATURE M.Sc. Maximilian Ammenwerth and Dr. Alexander Weigel

M.Sc. Maximilian Ammenwerth talks about: "A fast all-optical qutrit in Strontium-88"

Long-lived optical clock states of alkaline earth and alkaline earth-like atoms have many applications in quantum computing, simulation, and metrology. Direct optical driving of the clock transition in bosonic isotopes requires large laser intensities and strong magnetic fields, which typically limits the achievable Rabi frequency on this transition. In this talk, I will present a fast all-optical qutrit based on the ground state 1S0 and clock states 3P0 and 3P2 with all-to-all connectivity implemented via two- and three-photon transitions. Using three phase-coherent light fields we demonstrate strong Rabi coupling from the ground state to both clock states. Furthermore, we identify a triple-magic trapping condition at our trapping wavelength of 813 nm. We benchmark the coherence of the corresponding qutrit and reach T2 times of up to several 100ms. Our work overcomes several limitations to using bosonic strontium for quantum simulation and quantum computing and opens new directions, including qutrit-based quantum metrology on optical transitions and highly coherent manipulation of the fine-structure qubit encoded in the two metastable clock states.

Dr. Alexander Weigel talks about: “Field-resolved Infrared Spectroscopy for Blood-based Health-monitoring”

Field-resolved infrared spectroscopy (FRS) uses electro-optic sampling to directly record the vibrational response of analytes to the excitation by an ultrashort infrared pulse. Compared to conventional intensity-based Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, field-resolved detection offers several advantages, including intrinsically high dynamic range and background-free detection of the molecular response signal. In this talk, I will report on our latest FRS developments, featuring super-octave-spanning infrared spectral coverage and dual-oscillator scanning at multi-kHz rates with attosecond delay precision. I will further present Cr:ZnS oscillators as an ideal laser platform for dual-oscillator EOS, providing single-cycle, ultra-broadband infrared pulses at multi-MHz repetition rates, while maintaining exceptionally high power and carrier-envelope-phase stability. For complex samples like human blood, the infrared response signals recorded with FRS provides a fingerprint of the molecular composition of the sample. We envision the application of FRS for blood-based disease detection and health monitoring, to be tested, among others, on human blood samples collected within several large-scale campaigns.