Coherent optical spectroscopy of a strongly driven quantum dot

Quantum dots are typically formed from large groupings of atoms and thus may be expected to have appreciable many-body behavior under intense optical excitation. Nonetheless, they are known to exhibit discrete energy levels due to quantum confinement effects. We show that, like single-atom or single-molecule two- and three-level quantum systems, single semiconductor quantum dots can also exhibit interference phenomena when driven simultaneously by two optical fields. Probe absorption spectra are obtained that exhibit Autler-Townes splitting when the optical fields drive coupled transitions and complex Mollow-related structure, including gain without population inversion, when they drive the same transition. Our results open the way for the demonstration of numerous quantum level-based applications, such as quantum dot lasers, optical modulators, and quantum logic devices.     

Quantum register based on individual electronic and nuclear spin qubits in diamond

The key challenge in experimental quantum information science is to identify isolated quantum mechanical systems with long coherence times that can be manipulated and coupled together in a scalable fashion. We describe the coherent manipulation of an individual electron spin and nearby individual nuclear spins to create a controllable quantum register. Using optical and microwave radiation to control an electron spin associated with the nitrogen vacancy (NV) color center in diamond, we demonstrated robust initialization of electron and nuclear spin quantum bits (qubits) and transfer of arbitrary quantum states between them at room temperature. Moreover, nuclear spin qubits could be well isolated from the electron spin, even during optical polarization and measurement of the electronic state. Finally, coherent interactions between individual nuclear spin qubits were observed and their excellent coherence properties were demonstrated. These registers can be used as a basis for scalable, optically coupled quantum information systems.     

Deterministic preparation of a tunable few-fermion system

Systems consisting of few interacting fermions are the building blocks of matter, with atoms and nuclei being the most prominent examples. We have created a few-body quantum system with complete control over its quantum state using ultracold fermionic atoms in an optical dipole trap. Ground-state systems consisting of 1 to 10 particles are prepared with fidelities of ～90%. We can tune the interparticle interactions to arbitrary values using a Feshbach resonance and have observed the interaction-induced energy shift for a pair of repulsively interacting atoms. This work is expected to enable quantum simulation of strongly correlated few-body systems.     

Microwave-induced cooling of a superconducting qubit

We demonstrated microwave-induced cooling in a superconducting flux qubit. The thermal population in the first-excited state of the qubit is driven to a higher-excited state by way of a sideband transition. Subsequent relaxation into the ground state results in cooling. Effective temperatures as low as approximately 3 millikelvin are achieved for bath temperatures of 30 to 400 millikelvin, a cooling factor between 10 and 100. This demonstration provides an analog to optical cooling of trapped ions and atoms and is generalizable to other solid-state quantum systems. Active cooling of qubits, applied to quantum information science, provides a means for qubit-state preparation with improved fidelity and for suppressing decoherence in multi-qubit systems.     

Lévy walks evolve through interaction between movement and environmental complexity

Ecological theory predicts that animal movement is shaped by its efficiency of resource acquisition. Focusing solely on efficiency, however, ignores the fact that animal activity can affect resource availability and distribution. Here, we show that feedback between individual behavior and environmental complexity can explain movement strategies in mussels. Specifically, experiments show that mussels use a Lévy walk during the formation of spatially patterned beds, and models reveal that this Lévy movement accelerates pattern formation. The emergent patterning in mussel beds, in turn, improves individual fitness. These results suggest that Lévy walks evolved as a result of the selective advantage conferred by autonomously generated, emergent spatial patterns in mussel beds. Our results emphasize that an interaction between individual selection and habitat complexity shapes animal movement in natural systems.     

Quantum optimally controlled transition landscapes

A large number of experimental studies and simulations show that it is surprisingly easy to find excellent quality control over broad classes of quantum systems. We now prove that for controllable quantum systems with no constraints placed on the controls, the only allowed extrema of the transition probability landscape correspond to perfect control or no control. Under these conditions, no suboptimal local extrema exist as traps that would impede the search for an optimal control. The identified landscape structure is universal for all controllable quantum systems of the same dimension when seeking to maximize the same transition probability, regardless of the detailed nature of the system Hamiltonian. The presence of weak control field noise or environmental decoherence is shown to preserve the general structure of the control landscape, but at lower resolution.     

Coherent optical control of the quantum state of a single quantum Dot

Picosecond optical excitation was used to coherently control the excitation in a single quantum dot on a time scale that is short compared with the time scale for loss of quantum coherence. The excitonic wave function was manipulated by controlling the optical phase of the two-pulse sequence through timing and polarization. Wave function engineering techniques, developed in atomic and molecular systems, were used to monitor and control a nonstationary quantum mechanical state composed of a superposition of eigenstates. The results extend the concept of coherent control in semiconductors to the limit of a single quantum system in a zero-dimensional quantum dot.     

Near-field coherent spectroscopy and microscopy of a quantum dot system

We combined coherent nonlinear optical spectroscopy with nano-electron volt energy resolution and low-temperature near-field microscopy with subwavelength resolution (相似文献   

Intersubband electroluminescence from silicon-based quantum cascade structures

The quantum cascade laser, which uses electronic transitions within a single band of a semiconductor, constitutes a possible way to integrate active optical components into silicon-based technology. This concept necessitates a transition with a narrow linewidth and an upper state with a sufficiently long lifetime. We report the observation of intersubband electroluminescence from a p-type silicon/silicon-germanium quantum cascade structure, centered at 130 millielectron volts with a width of 22 millielectron volts, with the expected polarization, and discernible up to 180 kelvin. The nonradiative lifetime is found to depend strongly on the design of the quantum well structure, and is shown to reach values comparable to that of an equivalent GaInAs/AlInAs laser structure.     

Optical gain and stimulated emission in nanocrystal quantum dots

The development of optical gain in chemically synthesized semiconductor nanoparticles (nanocrystal quantum dots) has been intensely studied as the first step toward nanocrystal quantum dot lasers. We examined the competing dynamical processes involved in optical amplification and lasing in nanocrystal quantum dots and found that, despite a highly efficient intrinsic nonradiative Auger recombination, large optical gain can be developed at the wavelength of the emitting transition for close-packed solids of these dots. Narrowband stimulated emission with a pronounced gain threshold at wavelengths tunable with the size of the nanocrystal was observed, as expected from quantum confinement effects. These results unambiguously demonstrate the feasibility of nanocrystal quantum dot lasers.     

Quantum criticality: competing ground states in low dimensions

Small changes in an external parameter can often lead to dramatic qualitative changes in the lowest energy quantum mechanical ground state of a correlated electron system. In anisotropic crystals, such as the high-temperature superconductors where electron motion occurs primarily on a two-dimensional square lattice, the quantum critical point between two such lowest energy states has nontrivial emergent excitations that control the physics over a significant portion of the phase diagram. Nonzero temperature dynamic properties near quantum critical points are described, using simple theoretical models. Possible quantum phases and transitions in the two-dimensional electron gas on a square lattice are discussed.     

Vacuum-induced transparency

Photons are excellent information carriers but normally pass through each other without consequence. Engineered interactions between photons would enable applications as varied as quantum information processing and simulation of condensed matter systems. Using an ensemble of cold atoms strongly coupled to an optical cavity, we found that the transmission of light through a medium may be controlled with few photons and even by the electromagnetic vacuum field. The vacuum induces a group delay of 25 nanoseconds on the input optical pulse, corresponding to a light velocity of 1600 meters per second, and a transparency of 40% that increases to 80% when the cavity is filled with 10 photons. This strongly nonlinear effect provides prospects for advanced quantum devices such as photon number-state filters.     

Probing the ultimate limits of plasmonic enhancement

Metals support surface plasmons at optical wavelengths and have the ability to localize light to subwavelength regions. The field enhancements that occur in these regions set the ultimate limitations on a wide range of nonlinear and quantum optical phenomena. We found that the dominant limiting factor is not the resistive loss of the metal, but rather the intrinsic nonlocality of its dielectric response. A semiclassical model of the electronic response of a metal places strict bounds on the ultimate field enhancement. To demonstrate the accuracy of this model, we studied optical scattering from gold nanoparticles spaced a few angstroms from a gold film. The bounds derived from the models and experiments impose limitations on all nanophotonic systems.     

Single-atom single-photon quantum interface

A major challenge for a scalable quantum computing architecture is the faithful transfer of information from one node to another. We report on the realization of an atom-photon quantum interface based on an optical cavity, using it to entangle a single atom with a single photon and then to map the quantum state of the atom onto a second single photon. The latter step disentangles the atom from the light and produces an entangled photon pair. Our scheme is intrinsically deterministic and establishes the basic element required to realize a distributed quantum network with individual atoms at rest as quantum memories and single flying photons as quantum messengers.     

Coherent sensing of a mechanical resonator with a single-spin qubit

Mechanical systems can be influenced by a wide variety of small forces, ranging from gravitational to optical, electrical, and magnetic. When mechanical resonators are scaled down to nanometer-scale dimensions, these forces can be harnessed to enable coupling to individual quantum systems. We demonstrate that the coherent evolution of a single electronic spin associated with a nitrogen vacancy center in diamond can be coupled to the motion of a magnetized mechanical resonator. Coherent manipulation of the spin is used to sense driven and Brownian motion of the resonator under ambient conditions with a precision below 6 picometers. With future improvements, this technique could be used to detect mechanical zero-point fluctuations, realize strong spin-phonon coupling at a single quantum level, and implement quantum spin transducers.     

Conditional dynamics of interacting quantum dots

Conditional quantum dynamics, where the quantum state of one system controls the outcome of measurements on another quantum system, is at the heart of quantum information processing. We demonstrate conditional dynamics for two coupled quantum dots, whereby the probability that one quantum dot makes a transition to an optically excited state is controlled by the presence or absence of an optical excitation in the neighboring dot. Interaction between the dots is mediated by the tunnel coupling between optically excited states and can be optically gated by applying a laser field of the right frequency. Our results represent substantial progress toward realization of an optically effected controlled-phase gate between two solid-state qubits.     

An all-optical quantum gate in a semiconductor quantum dot

We report coherent optical control of a biexciton (two electron-hole pairs), confined in a single quantum dot, that shows coherent oscillations similar to the excited-state Rabi flopping in an isolated atom. The pulse control of the biexciton dynamics, combined with previously demonstrated control of the single-exciton Rabi rotation, serves as the physical basis for a two-bit conditional quantum logic gate. The truth table of the gate shows the features of an all-optical quantum gate with interacting yet distinguishable excitons as qubits. Evaluation of the fidelity yields a value of 0.7 for the gate operation. Such experimental capability is essential to a scheme for scalable quantum computation by means of the optical control of spin qubits in dots.     

Quantum information storage for over 180 s using donor spins in a 28Si "semiconductor vacuum"

A quantum computer requires systems that are isolated from their environment, but can be integrated into devices, and whose states can be measured with high accuracy. Nuclear spins in solids promise long coherence lifetimes, but they are difficult to initialize into known states and to detect with high sensitivity. We show how the distinctive optical properties of enriched (28)Si enable the use of hyperfine-resolved optical transitions, as previously applied to great effect for isolated atoms and ions in vacuum. Together with efficient Auger photoionization, these resolved hyperfine transitions permit rapid nuclear hyperpolarization and electrical spin-readout. We combine these techniques to detect nuclear magnetic resonance from dilute (31)P in the purest available sample of (28)Si, at concentrations inaccessible to conventional measurements, measuring a solid-state coherence time of over 180 seconds.     

Strong dissipation inhibits losses and induces correlations in cold molecular gases

Atomic quantum gases in the strong-correlation regime offer unique possibilities to explore a variety of many-body quantum phenomena. Reaching this regime has usually required both strong elastic and weak inelastic interactions because the latter produce losses. We show that strong inelastic collisions can actually inhibit particle losses and drive a system into a strongly correlated regime. Studying the dynamics of ultracold molecules in an optical lattice confined to one dimension, we show that the particle loss rate is reduced by a factor of 10. Adding a lattice along the one dimension increases the reduction to a factor of 2000. Our results open the possibility to observe exotic quantum many-body phenomena with systems that suffer from strong inelastic collisions.     

Symmetrized characterization of noisy quantum processes

A major goal of developing high-precision control of many-body quantum systems is to realize their potential as quantum computers. A substantial obstacle to this is the extreme fragility of quantum systems to "decoherence" from environmental noise and other control limitations. Although quantum computation is possible if the noise affecting the quantum system satisfies certain conditions, existing methods for noise characterization are intractable for present multibody systems. We introduce a technique based on symmetrization that enables direct experimental measurement of some key properties of the decoherence affecting a quantum system. Our method reduces the number of experiments required from exponential to polynomial in the number of subsystems. The technique is demonstrated for the optimization of control over nuclear spins in the solid state.