Gauging the performance of optical quantum technologies

With financial support from the Manchester – Stockholm University Joint research Funding, a one-day workshop ”Gauging the performance of optical quantum technologies” was held at Fysikum 22nd of November.

Gauging the performance of optical quantum technologies

With half of the speakers from UK and the second half from Stockholm, the seminars concerned gauge-invariance in effective light-matter models.

How gauge invariance is manifested in efficient models

Gauge invariance means the conservation of an electric charge. Gauge freedom is a property of Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, meaning that different mathematical expressions can result in the same physical predictions. In the presence of matter, and for a strong light-matter interaction, one often derives low energy effective models, but it turns out that such models typically lose their inherent gauge invariance.

How to handle such situations is an open problem that was discussed at the workshop.

For the spring a follow-up meeting at Manchester University is planned.