Boston Chapter of the IEEE Photonics Society

Abstract:  Feedback control is the technique of controlling a system by monitoring it and using the information in real-time to direct and correct its behavior. Here I will elucidate the key differences that must be taken into account when applying feedback to quantum, as opposed to classical, systems. Quantum feedback control has a variety of applications in noise reduction, cooling, metrology, and communication, and I will give an overview of these. I will also discuss potential applications to specific atom-optical and nano-electro-mechanical systems that are currently at the forefront of experimental quantum physics.

Biography:  Kurt Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He completed a master’s degree in physics with Dan Walls at Auckland University in 1995, and a PhD with Peter Knight at Imperial College, London, in 1998. While at Auckland he was introduced to classical continuous measurement theory by Sze Tan, and the recently developed field of quantum continuous measurement by Howard Wiseman. He continued to work on this subject during his PhD, and then joined Los Alamos National Laboratory to work on quantum feedback control with Salman Habib in a collaboration with Hideo Mabuchi. His work currently focuses on Quantum Measurement, Feedback Control, and Quantum Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems.