Abstract:
Photons convey quantum information all around us and are a natural resource for linking quantum computers into a quantum internet. In this talk I will show how we create photons for quantum information applications, interface them with matter for storage, come up with ways to use them for better sensing, and send them out into the "wild" for everyone to play with.
Biography:
Professor Virginia (Gina) Lorenz received her B.A. in physics magna cum laude and mathematics in 2001 and completed her Ph.D. in physics in 2007 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her thesis work focused on measuring and modelling the transition from reversible to irreversible dephasing of electronic coherence in dense atomic vapors. From 2007-2009 she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the University of Oxford, where she worked on implementations of quantum memories in atomic and solid-state systems. From 2009-2014, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware. She joined the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015, where her research group performs experiments in quantum optics, atomic and molecular spectroscopy, and optical magnetometry. In 2023 her research group, in collaboration with the group of Paul Kwiat and university and community partners, launched the first publicly accessible quantum network.
