Mollow cohort

Physics class 2019-2020-2021

This page contains all the useful information relating to the 2019-2020 edition of our 3rd wave of Physicists.

Benjamin Mollow

The 2019-2021 cohort is named after Benjamin Mollow, a Physics theorist who first derived the exact photoluminescence lineshape of resonance fluorescence, which is, a triplet, henceforth known as the Mollow triplet. Fluorescence is the process whereby an excited atom releases energy at its natural frequency of emission. The exciting energy is typically higher than that of the atom. Resonance fluorescence is one of the most basic questions of light-matter interactions. It asks: what happens if you drive an atom at the exact energy at which it naturally emits? The question attracted much attention and generated many flawed theories. Benjamin Mollow was the first to find the correct answer:

This is an important finding because resonance—meaning exciting with the same energy as emission—requires a laser, so that the energy be well defined, and the interaction of a laser with an atom is clearly a fundamental problem. But even more than that, the physics of such a simple problem turns out to be extremely rich. There are very interesting quantum mechanical effects of superposition (Schrödinger cat states) and a complex dynamics of relaxation between these states, known as leapfrog transitions and discovered by the team now in Wolverhampton, which is still actively investigating this 1969 theory in view of shaping the quantum devices of tomorrow.

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