Subject：OF BOSE CONDENSATES, SQUEEZED LIGHT and BLACK HOLES
Speaker：Prof. Marlan Scully
Emcee：Prof. Konstantin Dorfman
Time：10:00am, 23th Mar, 2019
Place：Science Building A510
Abstract：
The interface between statistical and optical physics is rich and full of surprises. The present perspective is based on the analogy between lasers and second order phase transitions, on the one hand, and radiation emitted by accelerating atoms in the vicinity of a black hole, on the other.
The formalism developed by Bogoliubov in the context of superfluid behavior is a powerful tool in these studies. The dynamics of interacting superfluid Bose condensates is naturally developed in the Bogoliubov formalism in which atom pairs, k and -k, are studied. New roads into Unruh-Hawking radiation problem come from similar pairing correlations within the Bogoliubov analysis.
The quantum optical approach to the problem of Unruh-Hawking radiation gives us new insight into Einstein’s equivalence principle and into rather subtle aspects of causality associated with acceleration radiation.
About the Speaker:
Marlan O. Scully received undergraduate training in Engineering Physics and Nuclear Engineering from the University of Wyoming and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University in 1966. He has held faculty positions at Yale, MIT, University of Arizona, University of New Mexico and the Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik. He presently holds a joint appointment between Texas A&M and Princeton Universities.
He has been instrumental in many seminal contributions to laser science and quantum optics. These include: The Scully-Lamb quantum theory of the laser, the classical theory of the free electron laser, the theory of the laser gyroscope and especially the theory of correlated spontaneous emission noise quenching in such devices, the first demonstration of lasing without inversion and the first utilization of coherence effects to generate ultraslow light in hot gases. Furthermore Scully’s work on quantum coherence and correlation effects has shed new light on the foundations of quantum mechanics and yielded new insights into quantum thermodynamics.
He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Academia Europaea, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Max Planck Society and has received numerous awards including the Charles H.Townes Award of the OSA, the Quantum Electronics Award of IEEE, the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute,the Adolph E. Lomb Medal of the OSA, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Alexander von Humboldt Distinguished Faculty Prize.More recently, he was awarded the OSA Frederic Ives Medal / Quinn Prize which recognizes overall distinction in optics and is the highest award of the society, was named Einstein Professor by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and received the Commemorative Medal of the Senate of the Czech Republic.
