The Department of Physics is delighted to welcome Prof Mete Atature (University of Cambridge) to give the sixth Physics Department Colloquium of Semester 2 2023/24. Please join us to listen to Prof Mete Atature's seminar titled 'Shedding Light on Nuclear Spins: Through the looking-glass'.

A reception will be held directly after the seminar, where tea and coffee will be provided.

The seminar is open to anyone from the university, students are encouraged to attend.

Title

Shedding Light on Nuclear Spins: Through the looking-glass

Abstract

Optically active spins in solids are strong candidates for scalable devices towards quantum networks. Semiconductor quantum dots set the state-of-the-art as single-photon sources with high level tuneability, brightness, and indistinguishability. In parallel, their inherently mesoscopic nature leads to a unique realisation of a tripartite interface between light as information carrier, an electron spin as a proxy qubit, and an isolated nuclear spin ensemble. The ability to control these constituents and their mutual interactions create opportunities to realize an optically controllable ensemble of ~50,000 spins. In this talk, I will present a journey from treating the quantum dot nuclei as an uncontrolled noise source limiting spin coherence to the observation of their collective magnon modes and eventually to their capacity as quantum registers, all witnessed via a single electron spin driven by light.