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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Bright and dark states, i.e., collective mode states that either couple or do not couple to matter, offer new insights into fundamental aspects of interference with coherent light, providing an alternative explanation for the apparent absence of photons in the dark regions of double- (or multiple-) slit experiments. This reinterpretation opens avenues for further exploration of interference effects and helps to clarify the role of the observer in the double-slit experiment. A natural question then arises: could incoherent light also exhibit a decomposition into bright and dark states?
Bio:Celso J. Villas-Boas is a Full Professor at the Federal University of Sao Carlos (UFSCar), Brazil. He served as Head of the Physics Department, Coordinator of the Undergraduate Physics Program, and Coordinator of the Graduate Physics Program at UFSCar. His research experience spans Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Science, with a primary focus on the fundamentals of light–matter interaction, quantum computing, and quantum technologies. He is the co-author of pioneering works, including: the first demonstration that quantum discord, an important resource for quantum computing, is more robust against dissipative effects than other types of quantum correlations, such as entanglement; the first demonstration of electromagnetically induced transparency with individual atoms; the first theoretical demonstration that the generation of correlations among atoms interacting with a common field serves as a witness of the quantumness of intense optical fields, even in the macroscopic limit; and the first to introduce the bright and dark states of light and their connection to quantum and classical interference of electromagnetic waves.
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