Defects in solids, unwanted imperfectness in the past, become one of the promising candidates for the physical platform of quantum information science. Since the first work in 1997, a vast number of  applications  and  developments  based  on  different  kinds  of  defects  has  been  made  in  quantum  physics,  such  as  quantum  memory  and  quantum  repeaters  for  quantum  communications,  quantum  computing nodes and various quantum sensors. During this talk, we will explain the advantages of using  defects  in  solids,  and  present  recent  developments  in  the  quantum  optics  and  the  sensing  of  both quantum phase transitions and classical phase transitions in extreme conditions.

Sen Yang is an Assistant Professor in the department of physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He got his B.S. from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. in University of California, San Diego. He had worked in University of Texas at Austin and University of Stuttgart before joining CUHK in 2016. His research focuses on quantum optics and quantum physics in solid state systems.