PhD Dissertation Prospectus Defense: Andrew Fraine

Engineering Entangled States for Quantum Metrology and Communications Applications -- Date: Thursday, November 15, 2010, 5:00m -- 8 Saint Marys Street, Room 339 -- Chair-Advisor: A. Sergienko (ECE) Committee: A. Swan (ECE), R. Paiella (ECE), E. Bellotti (ECE) -- Quantum optics has offered a rich environment for fundamental tests of physics and the demonstration of nonclassical effects such as entanglement. In addition, there are several promising applications of nonclassical effects such as quantum communication and quantum metrology. The transition between laboratory demonstrations and real-world applications has been limited by the fact that quantum states of light do not naturally exist in classical environments. Three stages must be addressed to bring quantum optical technologies into a realm of applicability including generation, propagation and manipulation, and finally detection. This prospectus will consider the generation of entangled states with two particular applications in mind: broadband quantum interferometry with polarization entangled states, and the experimental implementation of newly introduced quantum key distribution protocols. In the first application, the generation of high-intensity broadband entangled states with well-defined second order interference functions is a necessary step for the application of quantum interferometry as a metrological device. The flexibility of non-uniformly chirped periodically poled nonlinear crystals offers a large set of tools for the precise engineering of entangled states. The development of a high-intensity source using dielectric waveguides, advanced designs of nonlinear crystals, and the exploitation of even-order dispersion cancellation provides a promising path towards the highest resolution of polarization mode dispersion evaluation to date. Secondly, the development and experimental demonstration of quantum key distribution protocols based on 1) coherent states and 2) a parameter space defined by the Fibonacci sequence, will offer new ideologies to the quantum communications community. The ambiguity of measurements made by an eavesdropper is gained by fundamentally different phenomena in comparison with traditional protocols. The new protocols require the engineering and manipulation of high-dimensional entangled states in various degrees of freedom, leading to high-dimensional quantum key distribution and increased data rates resulting in a drastic improvement over current quantum communication implementations.