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Quantum Imaging and Three Surprising Stern–Gerlach Experiments
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主讲人: Lihong V. Wang, Bren Professor of Medical and Electrical Engineering California Institute of Technology
地点: 物理学院西301(思源多功能报告厅)
时间: 2026年09月21日(周一)10:00-11:30
主持 联系人: 肖云峰 教授
主讲人简介: Lihong Wang is Bren Professor of Medical and Electrical Engineering at California Institute of Technology. His book entitled “Biomedical Optics” won the Goodman Book Writing Award. He has published 630 peer-reviewed journal articles and delivered 650 keynote/plenary/invited talks. His Google Scholar h-index and citations have reached 171 and 126K, and he is #1 most cited scientist in optics and #4 in nuclear medicine and medical imaging according to Stanford/Elsevier. His laboratory was the first to report functional photoacoustic tomography, 3D photoacoustic microscopy, and CUP (world’s fastest camera). He received the NIH Director’s Pioneer, NIH Director’s Transformative Research, and NIH/NCI Outstanding Investigator awards. He also received the Optica Mees Medal, Optica Feld Award, IEEE Technical Achievement Award, IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award, SPIE Chance Award, and IPPA Senior Prize. He is a Fellow of AAAS, AIMBE, Electromagnetics Academy, IAMBE, IEEE, NAI, Optica, and SPIE. An honorary doctorate was conferred on him by Lund University, Sweden. He was inducted into both National Academies of Engineering and Medicine.

Entangledphotons possess nonclassical correlations that can be harnessed for imaging. Incontrast to conventional optical imaging, quantum imaging based on coincidencedetection of entangled photons demonstrated super-resolution beyond theclassical diffraction limit. We will present both experimental imaging resultsand the underlying theoretical framework that explains these advantages.Because photons originate from atoms and molecules, our work also examinesatomic physics at the interface between classical and quantum formalisms. Weshow that the Bloch equation, traditionally regarded as a classical equation ofmotion, can be reformulated to yield the quantum von Neumann and Schrödingerequations. This correspondence reveals a classical origin for the standardquantum spin equations and clarifies the relationship between the twodescriptions. Three unexpected experimental observations are presented. First,we model the multistage Stern–Gerlach experiment envisioned by Heisenberg andEinstein and conducted by Frische and Segre, with improved accuracy compared toexisting treatments. More recently, we performed quantum measurements of atomicbeam splitting under extremely low magnetic field gradients. ConventionalStern–Gerlach experiments rely on strong gradients to spatially resolve thesplit beams. In contrast, we use optical spectroscopy to resolve spatiallyoverlapping atomic distributions that would otherwise appear inseparable,thereby enabling low-field quantum measurements. While conventional theoreticalmodels agree with experiments at high magnetic fields, they exhibit noticeablediscrepancies as the magnetic field gradient approaches zero. Our theoryremains consistent with experimental observations across the entire fieldrange. A key outcome of this work is an estimate of the electron spin collapsetime, expressed in dimensionless units of Larmor precession cycles. Finally,inserting a null (zero magnetic field gradient) Stern–Gerlach stage before astandard stage yielded surprising effects as well.