Optics and Information

Gerd Leuchs Emeritus Group

Welcome to the website of the Optics and Information Emeritus Group

The research of this Emeritus Group focuses on the three-dimensional vector patterns of optical modes and on their quantized excitation. In the year 2000, when Gerd Leuchs suggested the establishment of a Research Group to the Max Planck Society he also proposed the possibility of focussing light tighter by polarization pattern engineering. The first experimental verification of this effect in 2003 was also the first paper published by the newly established Max Planck Research Group at Erlangen. The following years have seen an unprecedented worldwide increase of research into radially polarized and related light modes. The topic was of course also continued in this division, leading to projects on the transverse angular momentum of light, on localisation of particles and on non-factorable mode patterns resembling entanglement and including applications e.g. in plasmonics. The other line of research on quantized excitations goes back to Gerd Leuchs' observation of photon anti bunching in 1979 and of squeezed light in second harmonic generation in 1990 and has led to numerous on-going projects on quantum communication, including the generation of temporally tailored single photon wave packets using a whispering gallery mode resonator, the generation of bright squeezed vacuum states and the distribution of quantum keys via satellites. In one project both research lines are combined to study the efficiency of the coupling of quantum light to a single atom. The goal is two-fold: to experimentally demonstrate the reversibility of spontaneous emission and to provide photon-photon interaction at the highest bandwidth allowed by nature.

Eye in the Sky

Image of the Week of OPN

Image of the night sky in Ediger-Eller, Germany, displays a nice combination of imagination and optical diffraction at work.

Photographer MPL Founding Director Gerd Leuchs and Optica President (2024).

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Experimental physicist Gerd Leuchs elected president of renowned scientific society Optica

Gerd Leuchs, Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen and Senior Professor at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, has been elected President for 2024 by the members of Optica.

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The research of this Emeritus Group focuses on the three-dimensional vector patterns of optical modes and on their quantized excitation. There are six groups working on different research-topics within the field of optics and information.

 

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Aephraim M. Steinberg - Asking photons and atoms what they’ve been up to: post-selectively probing atom tunneling and photon propagation

Prof. Aephraim M. Steinberg, University of Toronto, Canada

Leuchs-Russell-Auditorium, A.1.500, Staudtstr. 2

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Abstract:

If there are two problems you would think quantum mechanicists & opticians had beaten to death, they might be quantum tunneling and the propagation of photons…

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The Commission of Experts on Nuclear Fusion presents its final report with the participation of Prof. Gerd Leuchs

Our society's energy needs continue to increase. Not least due to the introduction of new technical applications such as artificial intelligence, the question of new technologies for energy supply is becoming one of the most pressing of our time. There is great hope in nuclear fusion as a clean…

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Prof. Dr. Hamid Reza Khalesifard - Optical remote sensing of atmospheric mineral particles in Northwest Iran

Prof. Dr. Hamid Reza Khalesifard, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan, Iran

Library, A.2.500, Staudtstr. 2

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Abstract:

The Iran plateau is located over the Earth dust belt and Northwest of Iran is a mountainous semiarid region with average annual…

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Quantum technology simply explained: Gerd Leuchs gives the Leopoldina lecture

In front of over 200 science enthusiasts – including the Prime Minister of the State of Saxony-Anhalt and physicist Dr. Reiner Erich Haseloff – Prof. Gerd Leuchs spoke recently at the Leopoldina Academy. Held on the occasion of the presentation of certificates to the newly elected Class-I members of…

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Max Planck School of Photonics Autumn School in Erlangen

The Max Planck School of Photonics (MPSP) kicks off its annual Autumn School Retreat with a visit to the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light.

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