Landau-Zener transitions in a semiconductor quantum dot

We study the transitions between neighboring energy levels in a quasi-one-dimensional semiconductor quantum dot with two interacting electrons in it, when it is subject to a linearly time-dependent electric field. We analyze the applicability of simple two-level Landau-Zener model to describe the evolution of the probability amplitudes in this realistic system. We show that the Landau-Zener model works very well when it is viewed in the adibatic basis, but it is not as robust in the diabatic basis.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to Special Issue "Quantum Control of Matter and Light" of Journal of Modern Physic

Exactly solvable Wadati potentials in the PT-symmetric Gross-Pitaevskii equation

This note examines Gross-Pitaevskii equations with PT-symmetric potentials of the Wadati type: $V=-W^2+iW_x$. We formulate a recipe for the construction of Wadati potentials supporting exact localised solutions. The general procedure is exemplified by equations with attractive and repulsive cubic nonlinearity bearing a variety of bright and dark solitons.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the 15 Conference on Pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians in Quantum Physics, May 18-23 2015, Palermo, Italy (Springer Proceedings in Physics, 2016

Slow, Stored and Stationary Light

Slow light has received growing interest since 1999 when the propagation velocity of light was reduced in an experiment to 17 m/s, i.e. almost 20 million times slower than in vacuum. Two years later light pulses were stopped, or more specifically stored in an atomic medium and subsequently released after some time. This provided the basis for important applications in photon-based quantum information technology. The present chapter explains what slow light is and what it is good for, how to understand the physics of it and how one can practically make light go so slow. To answer these questions, the chapter uses simple pictures, on the one hand, and supplements them with a little bit of details, on the other hand, for those who want to go slightly deeper into the field. The chapter also discusses more recent generalizations of slow light, such as stationary and spinor slow light which are interesting model system and can be used to understand more complex quantum systems