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--></style><title>MIT Quantum Information Processing Seminar
Announcement</title></head><body>
<div>The MIT QIP seminar immediately following Spring break will take
place on Monday, Mar. 28 at 16:00 in 4-237, and features:</div>
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<div align="center"><font size="+2"><b>Controlling Quantum Dynamics
Phenomena with Shaped Laser Pulses Acting as Photonic
Reagents</b></font></div>
<div align="center"><br></div>
<div align="center"><font size="+1"><i>by</i> Herschel Rabitz
(<i>Department of Chemistry</i>,<i> Princeton
University</i>)</font></div>
<div align="center"><br></div>
<div align="center"><u>ABSTRACT</u></div>
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<blockquote>Since the development of the laser some 40 years ago, a
long-standing dream has been to utilize this special source of
radiation to manipulate dynamical events at the atomic and molecular
scales. Hints that this goal may become a reality began to
emerge in the 1990's, due to a confluence of concepts and technologies
involving (a) control theory, (b) ultrafast laser sources, (c) laser
pulse shaping techniques, and (d) fast pattern recognition
algorithms. These concepts and tools have resulted in a high
speed instrument configuration capable of adaptively changing the
driving laser pulse shapes, approaching the performance of thousands
of independent experiments in a matter of minutes. Each
particular shaped laser pulse acts as a "Photonic Reagent" much as
an ordinary reagent would at the molecular scale. Although a
Photonic Reagent has a fleeting existence, it can leave a permanent
impact. Current demonstrations have ranged from manipulating
simple systems (atoms) out to the highly complex (biomolecules), and
applications to quantum information sciences are being pursued.
In all cases, the fundamental concept is one of adaptively
manipulating quantum systems. The principles involved will be
discussed, along with the presentation of the state of the
field.</blockquote>
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