Classical light vs. nonclassical light: Characterizations and interesting applications

We briefly review the ideas that have shaped modern optics and have led to various applications of light ranging from spectroscopy to astrophysics, and street lights to quantum communication. The review is primarily focused on the modern applications of classical light and nonclassical light. Specific attention has been given to the applications of squeezed, antibunched, and entangled states of radiation field. Applications of Fock states (especially single photon states) in the field of quantum communication are also discussed.Comment: 32 pages, 3 figures, a review on applications of ligh

Video browsing interfaces and applications: a review

We present a comprehensive review of the state of the art in video browsing and retrieval systems, with special emphasis on interfaces and applications. There has been a significant increase in activity (e.g., storage, retrieval, and sharing) employing video data in the past decade, both for personal and professional use. The ever-growing amount of video content available for human consumption and the inherent characteristics of video data—which, if presented in its raw format, is rather unwieldy and costly—have become driving forces for the development of more effective solutions to present video contents and allow rich user interaction. As a result, there are many contemporary research efforts toward developing better video browsing solutions, which we summarize. We review more than 40 different video browsing and retrieval interfaces and classify them into three groups: applications that use video-player-like interaction, video retrieval applications, and browsing solutions based on video surrogates. For each category, we present a summary of existing work, highlight the technical aspects of each solution, and compare them against each other

Application of lasers to ultracold atoms and molecules

In this review, we discuss the impact of the development of lasers on ultracold atoms and molecules and their applications. After a brief historical review of laser cooling and Bose-Einstein condensation, we present important applications of ultra cold atoms, including time and frequency metrology, atom interferometry and inertial sensors, atom lasers, simulation of condensed matter systems, production and study of strongly correlated systems, and production of ultracold molecules.Comment: Review paper written in the name of IFRAF to celebrate 50 years of lasers and their applications to cold atom physics; 15 pages, 2 figures; to appear in Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences, Pari

Triazolinediones as highly enabling synthetic tools

Triazolinediones (TADs) are unique reagents in organic synthesis that have also found wide applications in different research disciplines, in spite of their somewhat "exotic" reputation. In this review, we offer two case studies that demonstrate the possibilities of these versatile and reliable synthetic tools, namely, in the field of polymer science as well as in more recently emerging applications in the field of click chemistry. As the general use of triazolinediones has always been hampered by the limited commercial and synthetic availability of such reagents, we also offer a review of the available TAD reagents, together with a detailed discussion of their synthesis and reactivity. This review thus aims to serve as a practical guide for researchers that are interested in exploiting and further developing the exceptional click -like reactivity of triazolinediones in various applications

Electronic Transport and Thermopower in 2D and 3D Heterostructures--A Theory Perspective

In this review, we discuss the impact of interfaces and heterojuctions on the electronic and thermoelectric transport properties of materials. We review recent progress in understanding electronic transport in two-dimensional (2D) materials ranging from graphene to transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), their homojunctions (grain boundaries), lateral heterojunctions (such as graphene/MoS$_2$ lateral interfaces), and vertical van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures. We also review work in thermoelectric properties of 2D heterojunctions, as well as their applications in creating devices such as resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs). Lastly, we turn our focus to work in three-dimensional (3D) heterostructures. While transport in 3D heterostructures has been researched for several decades, here we review recent progress in theory and simulation of quantum effects on transport via the Wigner and non-equilibrium Green's functions (NEGF) approaches. These simulation techniques have been successfully applied toward understanding the impact of heterojunctions on the thermoelectric properties, with applications in energy harvesting, and electron resonant tunneling, with applications in RTDs. We conclude that tremendous progress has been made in both simulation and experiments toward the goal of understanding transport in heterostructures and this progress will soon be parlayed into improved energy converters and quantum nanoelectronic devices.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, review article, v2 expanded the figure