ABSTRACT: Laboratory manipulation of single quantum emitters and single photons has matured to a routine procedure over the past two decades. These activities have motivated new emerging topics such as coherent cooperative interactions among several quantum emitters and the development of quantum networks. In this presentation, I summarize our efforts of the last decade in coupling single molecules to high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavities and nanoscopic waveguides on a chip, demonstrating dipole-induced transparency, strong coupling and single-photon nonlinearity. I will then present the latest results on the coupling of two individual molecules to a common mode of a micro-resonator and discuss routes for scaling up to many molecules. Moreover, I report on precision spectroscopy of vibronic transitions in single molecules as well as a theoretical conception for a hybrid optomechanical platform, which allows one to achieve long coherence and storage times.

.

Biography: Vahid Sandoghdar obtained his B.S. in physics from the University of California at Davis in 1987 and Ph.D. in atomic physics from Yale University in 1993. After a postdoctoral stay at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, he moved to the University of Konstanz in Germany, where he started a new line of research to combine single molecule spectroscopy, scanning probe microscopy and quantum optics. In 2001, he took on a professorship at the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2011, he became director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen and Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. Sandoghdar is one of the pioneers of the field of Nano-Optics, which merges various research areas to investigate the interaction between light and matter at the nanometer scale. His current research encompasses a wide range of areas such as molecular quantum photonics, plasmonics, cryogenic super-resolution microscopy and interferometric scattering (iSCAT) microscopy, with a special emphasis on controlled biophysical studies. He is the founder of the Optical Imaging Center Erlangen (OICE) and Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin, a joint research center that addresses questions in fundamental medical research with physical and mathematical methods.