Título: Structured Quantum Waves: From Light to Matter Waves

Dia: 05/11/2025

Horário:16h

Local: Auditório do IFGW

Resumo: Structuring optical waves, i.e., shaping the amplitude of light in time, space, and polarization, has become a versatile approach to explore fundamental optics effects in the classical and quantum optics domain. In the latter, the particle nature of light, i.e., structured photons have been utilized to study high-dimensional quantum information protocols, super-resolved sensing schemes, or complex photonic entanglement, to name a few. Over the last decade, these ideas have also been brought to quantum systems of matter when exploring their wave nature. Here, freely propagating neutrons, electrons, and atoms have also been realized with wave features showing structures such as a twisted phase front.

In this talk, I will show some of our recent research focusing on structured quantum waves. I will start by introducing the field of structured light, which studies electromagnetic waves whose spatio-temporal amplitude along with its vectorial nature can be rendered arbitrarily complex. Through surprisingly simple optical setups, it is possible to generate pulses of light displaying strong correlations in space, spectrum, and polarization, with complex topological features. Moving towards the quantum domain, I will give a concise overview of our activities of structuring single photons highlighting in more detail some of our recent work on studying fundamental conservation laws and complex quantum frequency conversions in nonlinear optical processes. Lastly, I will outline our current efforts towards structuring charged matter waves, namely electrons and ions. Our experiment aims to develop new mechanisms for structuring charged matter waves through complex electrostatic fields as well as to explore the effects that the structuring can have on the particles forming the coherent matter wave.