We pursue two broad experimental directions in the lab: one with atoms, with an eventual goal to generate designer quantum states of photons. We plan to use these quantum states of photons as a probe in a confocal microscope to detect weak scatterers with high precision. Accordingly, we have a second experimental direction in confocal microscopy to probe and manipulate nano-scale materials.

We are currently working on three experiments and in the process of building a fourth one. Two of these experiments are with atoms. In one such setup, we probe and quantify coherence in an ensemble of room temperature atoms. We also have a cigar shaped cloud of a million cold Rb atoms at 100 micro-Kelvin temperature. We prepare the atoms in a collective state and use a standard four-wave mixing (DLCZ) technique to generate correlated photons. We have measured g2 upto 40.

We have a third experiment with a home-built confocal profilometer where we probe and study vibrational modes of coupled graphene and Silicon Nitride resonators. Recently, we have observed large gain and squeezing in these resonators.

Instrumentation

We work on building and experimenting on a range of instruments including external-cavity-diode lasers, feedback locking schemes, detectors, current amplifiers, switches, controllers and FPGA programming. We will upload brief write-ups of many of these soon. In the meanwhile, if you want to get in touch with us to suggest improvements or ask for details, please feel free to contact any of us.