Gerhard Rempe

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Gerhard Rempe (2016)

Gerhard Rempe (born 22 April 1956 in Bottrop/Westphalia) is a German physicist, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Munich. He has performed pioneering experiments in atomic and molecular physics, quantum optics and quantum information processing.

Career[edit]

Gerhard Rempe studied mathematics and physics at the Universities of Essen and Munich between 1976 and 1982. In 1986 he received his PhD degree at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The thesis was entitled "investigation of the interaction of Rydberg atoms with radiation" and reports on experiments performed in the group of Herbert Walther. In the same year he was awarded a first job offer to a permanent position as a lecturer at the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Rempe remained in Munich and completed his habilitation in 1990 with the thesis "Quantum effects in the one-atom maser". From 1990 to 1991 he was Lecturer and from 1990 to 1992 Robert Andrews Millikan Fellow at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, US, working with H. Jeff Kimble. In 1992 he accepted an appointment as professor of experimental physics at the University of Konstanz. In 1999 he was appointed scientific member of the Max Planck Society, director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and honorary professor at the Technical University of Munich. He declined simultaneous offers to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, and the University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Achievements[edit]

Rempe is considered a pioneer of the field of cavity quantum electrodynamics. He was first to observe how a single atom repeatedly emits and absorbs a single photon.[1] First experiments he performed with microwave photons in superconducting cavities. Later he expanded his interest to optical photons between mirrors of highest possible reflectivity.[2] His experiments laid the foundation for the development of quantum nonlinear optics, in which a single particle, be it an atom or a photon, causes an effect that many particles cannot induce.[3]

Rempe has used his findings from basic research to develop novel interfaces between light and matter.[4] These interfaces connect the everyday world with the quantum world and have potential applications as senders, receivers and memories of information in a future global quantum network.[5] A remarkable feature of the interface is its ability to detect single photons nondestructively,<[6] which opens new perspectives for a scalable quantum computer.[7] The interface is also suitable to observe and control the motion of a single atom in real time,[8][9] as well as to generate quantum light with noise below the shot noise level.[10]

Rempe has also done pioneering work in the field of atom optics and quantum gases. By means of an atom interferometer he was able to demonstrate experimentally that for an observed object passing through a double-slit arrangement quantum mechanical wave-particle duality is based on entanglement, instead of Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation for position and momentum, as often stated in textbooks.[11] He has produced the first Bose-Einstein condensate outside the U.S. and has used it to generate, among others, a strongly correlated gas of molecules by means of the quantum Zeno effect.[12]

In a third research focus Rempe follows the goal to produce an ultracold gas of polyatomic molecules. The focus lies on the development of novel methods for slowing down complex molecules using a centrifuge[13] and for cooling such molecules using the Sisyphus effect.[14] The aim is to understand chemical reactions at low temperatures, to open new reaction channels, to prepare molecules for precision experiments, as well as producing neutral quantum many-body systems with a long-range electrical interaction.

In addition to his research and teaching activities, Rempe was and is engaged in academic self-administration, such as speaker of the Quantum Optics and Photonics section of the German Physical Society, the curator of several magazines such as "Physics in our Time", "Journal of Optics" and "Optics Communications ", as chairperson of a selection panel of the European Research Council, as managing director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and chairperson of the prize committee of the Stern-Gerlach medal of the German Physical Society.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Rempe, Gerhard; Walther, Herbert; Klein, Norbert (26 January 1987). "Observation of quantum collapse and revival in a one-atom maser". Physical Review Letters. 58 (4). American Physical Society (APS): 353–356. Bibcode:1987PhRvL..58..353R. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.58.353. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 10034912.
  2. ^ Thompson, R. J.; Rempe, G.; Kimble, H. J. (24 February 1992). "Observation of normal-mode splitting for an atom in an optical cavity". Physical Review Letters. 68 (8). American Physical Society (APS): 1132–1135. Bibcode:1992PhRvL..68.1132T. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.68.1132. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 10046088.
  3. ^ Rempe, G.; Thompson, R. J.; Brecha, R. J.; Lee, W. D.; Kimble, H. J. (23 September 1991). "Optical bistability and photon statistics in cavity quantum electrodynamics". Physical Review Letters. 67 (13). American Physical Society (APS): 1727–1730. Bibcode:1991PhRvL..67.1727R. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.67.1727. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 10044232.
  4. ^ Wilk, Tatjana; Webster, Simon C.; Kuhn, Axel; Rempe, Gerhard (27 July 2007). "Single-Atom Single-Photon Quantum Interface". Science. 317 (5837). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): 488–490. Bibcode:2007Sci...317..488W. doi:10.1126/science.1143835. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17588899. S2CID 31968050.
  5. ^ Ritter, Stephan; Nölleke, Christian; Hahn, Carolin; Reiserer, Andreas; Neuzner, Andreas; Uphoff, Manuel; Mücke, Martin; Figueroa, Eden; Bochmann, Joerg; Rempe, Gerhard (2012). "An elementary quantum network of single atoms in optical cavities". Nature. 484 (7393): 195–200. arXiv:1202.5955. Bibcode:2012Natur.484..195R. doi:10.1038/nature11023. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 22498625. S2CID 205228562.
  6. ^ Reiserer, A.; Ritter, S.; Rempe, G. (14 November 2013). "Nondestructive Detection of an Optical Photon". Science. 342 (6164): 1349–1351. arXiv:1311.3625. Bibcode:2013Sci...342.1349R. doi:10.1126/science.1246164. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 24231809. S2CID 5280237.
  7. ^ Reiserer, Andreas; Kalb, Norbert; Rempe, Gerhard; Ritter, Stephan (9 April 2014). "A quantum gate between a flying optical photon and a single trapped atom". Nature. 508 (7495): 237–240. arXiv:1404.2453. Bibcode:2014Natur.508..237R. doi:10.1038/nature13177. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 24717512. S2CID 205238109.
  8. ^ Pinkse, P. W. H.; Fischer, T.; Maunz, P.; Rempe, G. (2000). "Trapping an atom with single photons". Nature. 404 (6776). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 365–368. Bibcode:2000Natur.404..365P. doi:10.1038/35006006. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 10746717. S2CID 4401987.
  9. ^ Kubanek, A.; Koch, M.; Sames, C.; Ourjoumtsev, A.; Pinkse, P. W. H.; Murr, K.; Rempe, G. (2009). "Photon-by-photon feedback control of a single-atom trajectory". Nature. 462 (7275). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 898–901. Bibcode:2009Natur.462..898K. doi:10.1038/nature08563. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 20016597. S2CID 4432136.
  10. ^ Ourjoumtsev, A.; Kubanek, A.; Koch, M.; Sames, C.; Pinkse, P. W. H.; Rempe, G.; Murr, K. (2011). "Observation of squeezed light from one atom excited with two photons". Nature. 474 (7353): 623–626. arXiv:1105.2007. Bibcode:2011Natur.474..623O. doi:10.1038/nature10170. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 21720367. S2CID 4301174.
  11. ^ Dürr, S.; Nonn, T.; Rempe, G. (1998). "Origin of quantum-mechanical complementarity probed by a 'which-way' experiment in an atom interferometer". Nature. 395 (6697). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 33–37. Bibcode:1998Natur.395...33D. doi:10.1038/25653. ISSN 0028-0836. S2CID 39920777.
  12. ^ Syassen, N.; Bauer, D. M.; Lettner, M.; Volz, T.; Dietze, D.; García-Ripoll, J. J.; Cirac, J. I.; Rempe, G.; Dürr, S. (6 June 2008). "Strong Dissipation Inhibits Losses and Induces Correlations in Cold Molecular Gases". Science. 320 (5881): 1329–1331. arXiv:0806.4310. Bibcode:2008Sci...320.1329S. doi:10.1126/science.1155309. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 18535241. S2CID 13004535.
  13. ^ Chervenkov, S.; Wu, X.; Bayerl, J.; Rohlfes, A.; Gantner, T.; Zeppenfeld, M.; Rempe, G. (6 January 2014). "Continuous Centrifuge Decelerator for Polar Molecules". Physical Review Letters. 112 (1): 013001. arXiv:1311.7119. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.112.013001. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 24483892. S2CID 31657286.
  14. ^ Zeppenfeld, Martin; Englert, Barbara G. U.; Glöckner, Rosa; Prehn, Alexander; Mielenz, Manuel; Sommer, Christian; van Buuren, Laurens D.; Motsch, Michael; Rempe, Gerhard (2012). "Sisyphus cooling of electrically trapped polyatomic molecules". Nature. 491 (7425): 570–573. arXiv:1208.0046. Bibcode:2012Natur.491..570Z. doi:10.1038/nature11595. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 23151480. S2CID 4367940.

External links[edit]

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