The Wonder of Light: Measurement and Interference in Quantum Optics | Prof. Vicenzo Tamma

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Professor Vicenzo Tamma delves into the fascinating world of quantum optics, explaining key concepts such as wave-particle duality, quantum superposition, and interference through experiments like the double-slit and beam splitter. He discusses how these quantum phenomena challenge classical physics and lead to intriguing effects like photon bunching and quantum beats. The lecture also touches on the practical applications of quantum optics in emerging technologies, including quantum sensing, computation, and communication.

This lecture was given on July 19th, 2024, at The Dominican House of Studies. This publication was made possible through the support of Grant 63391 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events

About the Speaker:

Prof. Vicenzo Tamma is founding Director of the Quantum Science and Technology Hub (QSTH). He Received his Masters degree in physics from University of Bari in 2006. He received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Bari and in Applied Physics from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2010 under the International Cooperation Program Award awarded by the Italian Ministry of Research. His research was recognized with the “Giampietro Puppi Award” for the best Ph.D. thesis in Physics and Astrophysics in Italy in the academic years 2007-2009. After a one-year postdoctoral fellowship issued by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, he moved as a group leader and lecturer to the Institute of Quantum Physics at Ulm University, Germany directed by Prof. Wolfgang Schleich, before joining the University of Portsmouth in 2016.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.8	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.1	To learn more and to attend these events,
0:21.7	visit us at to mysticinstitute.org.
0:25.7	All right, so let's start on here.
0:29.2	So I will, I think I'm lucky because you heard a lot
0:35.2	about waves, photons, so I need to thank you know all the previous
0:41.0	speakers Steve, Chris and Father Thomas. So I'm that will save me a lot of details. So
0:47.0	let so I'll just start with a very simple experiment where the first time was
0:53.9	understood the wave natures of light.
0:57.0	The main idea is that this is the Thomas Young experiment where we have a source,
1:03.0	a given source, a thermal source, like the sun that is point-like,
1:09.0	and interacts with the double slit. So you have the source of light that is point-like and interacts with the doubleslet.
1:11.6	So you have the source of light that is point-like and there is spherical waves that comes through it.
1:18.6	And then you have the double slit, right?
1:20.6	And so we know that now these waves is divided in two sub-waves, and we detect light on the stream.
1:26.6	And so this is the famous Thomas Young experiment.
1:30.3	When you detect the intensity of light on the screen, you see fringes.
1:35.3	So you have dark and light spot.
1:38.3	And this is understood as standard interference of classical waves.
1:42.3	You can observe that we learned before also on wave in the sea.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.