Why are QED systems an important area of research?
Several approaches exist for implementing quantum information systems. One would like to use photons, which are great for carrying quantum information. But they do not interact, so it’s difficult to use them for logic gates. Atomic systems are much better at interacting, but are bad for communication. So one way that people hope to achieve quantum computers and long-distance quantum cryptography is to combine the best of both worlds through something called a quantum network. This network combines atomic nodes that are connected through photonic quantum bits (qubits). The interface between photons and emitters is governed by quantum electrodynamics. Our group pursues this approach. One of the major difficulties in the network approach is transferring the quantum information from the atom-like particle (a quantum dot in our case) to the photon. We place the quantum dot inside cavities, which recirculates the photon so that it has a much longer interaction time with the quantum dot. Our
