From 11:45 am to 12:05 pm
Quantum control of molecular rotation and chirality detection - Eugenio Pozzoli
An object is said to be chiral if it is not superimposable with its mirrored image. The word 'chiral' is derived from the greek 'kheir', that means 'hand': indeed, human hands are the typical examples of chiral objects. It is hence a classical geometric property which can be found in molecules. In a couple of chiral molecules, which are identical and mirrored, the left-handed and right-handed tops have often drastically different chemical behaviours: for this reason, the capability of distinguishing right- and left- handed tops is fundamental in experiment of quantum chemistry. This can be done by exploiting their different rotational dynamics, which are of course quantum. In this talk, I will address the problem of detecting chirality as a two-body simultaneous controllability problem: using Lie algebraic techniques, we are able to find sequences of pulses that rotate the right-handed and left-handed tops independently.
We confirm this theoretical fact with numerical experiments. Interestingly, quantum control of rotational dynamics find new applications also in quantum information: the angular momentum isotropy makes the encoding of a qubit in a molecule a robust computational strategy against orientational drifts.

From 12:10 pm to 12.30 pm 
Carbon nanotubes as emerging single photon sources in the telecom band - Antoine Borel
The implementation of a quantum telecommunication network requires the ability to produce on-demand single photons for sources but also for quantum repeaters. Semi-conducting single walled carbon nanotubes (s-SWCNT) doped with a colour center are promising candidates for such application as they are room-temperature single photon sources, emission wavelength-tunable through their synthesis, integrable and cheap to produce. However they exhibit a low quantum yield (1-5%) which can be enhanced with a cavity via Purcell effect. For fundamental studies of individual SWCNT, we designed a high finesse fibered Fabry-Pérot cavity, spectrally and spatially tunable, which allows us to study the photoluminescence of one single object in free-space and in cavity at cryogenic temperature.