Master's defense Beñat Martinez de Aguirre

Title: Dispersion engineering of atom-nanophotonic crystal waveguide interfaces

Abstract: The combination of atoms and nanophotonic devices presents novel paradigm in the field of quantum optics. Nanophotonic structures can be used to engineer the interaction medium, allowing to mediate strong atom-light interactions, a key component in the quest for quantum computation with neutral atoms. In this thesis we study a nanophotonic platform, known as photonic crystal waveguide, to harness strong atom-atom interactions mediated by photons. This system presents a novel framework with direct applications to quantum simulation, which will be used to solve conventionally hard computational problems with applications in the life sciences. We focus on providing a simulation toolbox to calculate the main Figures of Merit in atom-photon and atom-atom interactions for arbitrary photonic crystal structures, such as the coupling coefficients of quantum many-body Hamiltonians. With our method we  demonstrate a general numerical approach to benchmark the performance of different device designs, taking into account fabrication imperfections and tolerances. Lastly, we use this toolbox to suggest possible improved design parameters relative to state-of the-art devices, which could lead to enhanced performance in our quantum simulation platform.