Cavity QED System Research Articles

Cavity quantum electrodynamics in the nonperturbative regime

We study a generic cavity-QED system where a set of (artificial) two-level dipoles is coupled to the electric field of a single-mode LC resonator. This setup is used to derive a minimal quantum mechanical model for cavity QED, which accounts for both dipole-field and direct dipole-dipole interactions. The model is applicable for arbitrary coupling strengths and allows us to extend the usual Dicke model into the non-perturbative regime of QED, where the dipole-field interaction can be associated with an effective finestructure constant of order unity. In this regime, we identify three distinct classes of normal, superradiant and subradiant vacuum states and discuss their characteristic properties and the transitions between them. Our findings reconcile many of the previous, often contradictory predictions in this field and establish a common theoretical framework to describe ultrastrong coupling phenomena in a diverse range of cavity-QED platforms.

Zero eigenvalues of a photon blockade induced by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian with a gain cavity

Under the weak driving limitation, we find that the strong photon blockade can be triggered when all the eigenvalues of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian are equal to zero, so we name this the zero eigenvalues of a photon blockade induced by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. The possibility of realizing single- and two-photon blockades is investigated in the cavity QED system. A negative effective decay rate of the cavity is required, so the gain medium is needed to compensate the intrinsic loss rate of the cavity. The photon antibunching can be realized in both strong and weak nonlinear regimes, which is different from the conventional photon blockade and unconventional photon blockade. Our scheme has paved an avenue towards the study of photon blockades.

Explanation of the quantum phenomenon of off-resonant cavity-mode emission

We theoretically investigate the unexpected occurrence of an extra emission peak that has been experimentally observed in off-resonant studies of cavity QED systems. Our results within the Markovian master equation approach successfully explain why the central peak arises, and how it reveals that the system is suffering a dynamical phase transition induced by the phonon-mediated coupling. Our findings are in perfect agreement with previous reported experimental results and for the first time the fundamental physics behind this quantum phenomenon is understood.

Magneto-optical rotation in cavity QED with Zeeman coherence

We investigate theoretically the magneto-optical rotation in cavity QED system with atomic Zeeman coherence, which is established via coherent population trapping. Owing to Zeeman coherence, the ultranarrow transmission spectrum less than 1 MHz with gain can be achieved with a flat-top Faraday rotation angle. By controlling the parameters appropriately, the input probe components within the flat-top regime rotate with almost the same angle, and transmit through the cavity perpendicularly to the other components outside the flat-top regime. The concepts discussed here provide an important tool for perfect ultranarrow Faraday optical filter and quantum information processing.

Hardware-efficient fermionic simulation with a cavity\u2013QED system

In digital quantum simulation of fermionic models with qubits, non-local maps for encoding are often encountered. Such maps require linear or logarithmic overhead in circuit depth which could render the simulation useless, for a given decoherence time. Here we show how one can use a cavity–QED system to perform digital quantum simulation of fermionic models. In particular, we show that highly nonlocal Jordan–Wigner or Bravyi–Kitaev transformations can be efficiently implemented through a hardware approach. The key idea is using ancilla cavity modes, which are dispersively coupled to a qubit string, to collectively manipulate and measure qubit states. Our scheme reduces the circuit depth in each Trotter step of the Jordan–Wigner encoding by a factor of N2, comparing to the scheme for a device with only local connectivity, where N is the number of orbitals for a generic two-body Hamiltonian. Additional analysis for the Fermi–Hubbard model on an N × N square lattice results in a similar reduction. We also discuss a detailed implementation of our scheme with superconducting qubits and cavities.

Discrete Time-Crystalline Order in Cavity and Circuit QED Systems.

Discrete time crystals are a recently proposed and experimentally observed out-of-equilibrium dynamical phase of Floquet systems, where the stroboscopic dynamics of a local observable repeats itself at an integer multiple of the driving period. We address this issue in a driven-dissipative setup, focusing on the modulated open Dicke model, which can be implemented by cavity or circuit QED systems. In the thermodynamic limit, we employ semiclassical approaches and find rich dynamical phases on top of the discrete time-crystalline order. In a deep quantum regime with few qubits, we find clear signatures of a transient discrete time-crystalline behavior, which is absent in the isolated counterpart. We establish a phenomenology of dissipative discrete time crystals by generalizing the Landau theory of phase transitions to Floquet open systems.

Quantum-enhanced interferometry with cavity QED-generated non-classical light

We propose an enhanced optical interferometer based on tailored non-classical light generated by nonlinear dynamics and projective measurements in a three-level atom cavity QED system. A coherent state in the cavity becomes dynamically entangled with two ground states of the atom and is transformed to a macroscopic superposition state via a projective measurement on the atom. We show that the resulting highly non-classical state can improve interferometric precision measurements well beyond the shot-noise limit once combined with a classical laser pulse at the input of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer. For a practical implementation, we identify an efficient phase shift estimation scheme based on the counting of photons at the interferometer output. Photon losses and photon-counting errors deteriorate the interferometer sensitivity, but we demonstrate that it still can be significantly better than the shot-noise limit under realistic conditions.Graphical abstract

Theory of superfluorescence-laser crossover in a cavity QED system

Coherent emissions of photons, originating from coherently-coupled polarizations, are created by laser and superfluorescence, but the mechanisms remain obscure to be fully explored in nanophotonics from the application viewpoint to coherent-light sources. In this paper, we present a comprehensive full quantum theory to clarify the crossover between laser and superfluorescence caused by the competition between stimulated and spontaneous emissions in a cavity QED system. As a result, in case of steady-state emission, we show the feasibility of coherent-light emission by superfluorescence different from laser, depending on the quality factor of a cavity QED system. In particular, the coherence generation due to superfluorescence occurs in a shorter timescale in a cavity QED systems with a lower Q factor than laser due to stimulated emission. This result suggests that superfluorescence can be applied to a novel coherent-light source by a mechanism greatly different from laser.

Perturbative dissipation dynamics of a weakly driven cavity QED system: generalized microscopic master equation

We generalize a microscopic master equation method to study the dissipation dynamics of Jaynes–Cummings two-level system with a weak external driving. Using perturbative analysis to extend the damping bases theory, we derive the corrected Rabi oscillation and vacuum Rabi splitting analytically. The evolution of the decoherence factor of the weakly driven system reveals that the off-diagonal density matrix elements are oscillating at a frequency dependent on the driving strength and the initial population inversion. For highly inverted systems at the weak-driving limit, this frequency reduces to twice the value for the non-driven system, showing the dissipation dynamics unable to be discovered using more conventional approaches.

High-fidelity spin measurement on the nitrogen-vacancy center

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are versatile candidates for many quantum information processing tasks, ranging from quantum imaging and sensing through to quantum communication and fault-tolerant quantum computers. Critical to almost every potential application is an efficient mechanism for the high fidelity readout of the state of the electronic and nuclear spins. Typically such readout has been achieved through an optically resonant fluorescence measurement, but the presence of decay through a meta-stable state will limit its efficiency to the order of 99%. While this is good enough for many applications, it is insufficient for large scale quantum networks and fault-tolerant computational tasks. Here we explore an alternative approach based on dipole induced transparency (state-dependent reflection) in an NV center cavity QED system, using the most recent knowledge of the NV center’s parameters to determine its feasibility, including the decay channels through the meta-stable subspace and photon ionization. We find that single-shot measurements above fault-tolerant thresholds should be available in the strong coupling regime for a wide range of cavity-center cooperativities, using a majority voting approach utilizing single photon detection. Furthermore, extremely high fidelity measurements are possible using weak optical pulses.

Mølmer–Sørensen entangling gate for cavity QED systems

The Mølmer–Sørensen gate is a state-of-the-art entangling gate in ion trap quantum computing where the gate fidelity can exceed 99%. Here we propose an analogous implementation in the setting of cavity QED. The cavity photon mode acts as the bosonic degree of freedom in the gate in contrast to that played by the phonon mode in ion traps. This is made possible by utilising cavity assisted Raman transitions interconnecting the logical qubit states embedded in a four-level energy structure, making the ‘anti-Jaynes–Cummings’ term available under the rotating-wave approximation. We identify practical sources of infidelity and discuss their effects on the gate performance. Our proposal not only demonstrates an alternative entangling gate scheme but also sheds new light on the relationship between ion traps and cavity QED, in the sense that many techniques developed in the former are transferable to the latter through our framework.

Quantum cascade driving: Dissipatively mediated coherences

Quantum cascaded systems offer the possibility to manipulate a target system with the quantum state of a source system. Here, we study in detail the differences between a direct quantum cascade and coherent/incoherent driving for the case of two coupled cavity-QED systems. We discuss qualitative differences between these excitations scenarios, which are particular strong for higher-order photon-photon correlations: $g^{(n)}(0)$ with $ n>2 $. Quantum cascaded systems show a behavior differing from the idealized cases of individual coherent/incoherent driving and allow to produce qualitatively different quantum statistics. Furthermore, the quantum cascaded driving exhibits an interesting mixture of quantum coherent and incoherent excitation dynamics. We develop a measure, where the two regimes intermix and quantify these differences via experimentally accessible higher-order photon correlations.

Strong light-matter coupling in the presence of lasing

The regime of strong light-matter coupling is typically associated with weak excitation. With current realizations of cavity-QED systems, strong coupling may persevere even at elevated excitation levels sufficient to cross the threshold to lasing. In the presence of stimulated emission, the vacuum-Rabi doublet in the emission spectrum is modified and the established criterion for strong coupling no longer applies. We provide a generalized criterion for strong coupling and the corresponding emission spectrum, which includes the influence of higher Jaynes-Cummings states. The applicability is demonstrated in a theory-experiment comparison of a few-emitter quantum-dot--micropillar laser as a particular realization of the driven dissipative Jaynes-Cummings model. Furthermore, we address the question if and for which parameters true single-emitter lasing can be achieved, and provide evidence for the coexistence of strong coupling and lasing in our system in the presence of background emitter contributions.

Superadiabatic holonomic quantum computation in cavity QED

Adiabatic quantum control is a powerful tool for quantum engineering and a key component in some quantum computation models, where accurate control over the timing of the involved pulses is not needed. However, the adiabatic condition requires that the process should be very slow and thus limits its application in quantum computation, where quantum gates are preferred to be fast due to the limited coherent times of the quantum systems. Here, we propose a feasible scheme to implement universal holonomic quantum computation based on non-Abelian geometric phases with superadiabatic quantum control, where the adiabatic manipulation is sped up while retaining its robustness against errors in the timing control. Consolidating the advantages of both strategies, our proposal is thus both robust and fast. The quantum cavity QED system is adopted as a typical example to illustrate the merits, where the proposed scheme can be realized in a tripod configuration by appropriately controlling the pulse shapes and their relative strength. To demonstrate the distinct performance of our proposal, we also compare our scheme with the conventional adiabatic strategy.

Feynman-diagrams approach to the quantum Rabi model for ultrastrong cavity QED: stimulated emission and reabsorption of virtual particles dressing a physical excitation

In quantum field theory, bare particles are dressed by a cloud of virtual particles to form physical particles. The virtual particles affect properties such as the mass and charge of the physical particles, and it is only these modified properties that can be measured in experiments, not the properties of the bare particles. The influence of virtual particles is prominent in the ultrastrong-coupling regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), which has recently been realised in several condensed-matter systems. In some of these systems, the effective interaction between atom-like transitions and the cavity photons can be switched on or off by external control pulses. This offers unprecedented possibilities for exploring quantum vacuum fluctuations and the relation between physical and bare particles. We consider a single three-level quantum system coupled to an optical resonator. Here we show that, by applying external electromagnetic pulses of suitable amplitude and frequency, each virtual photon dressing a physical excitation in cavity-QED systems can be converted into a physical observable photon, and back again. In this way, the hidden relationship between the bare and the physical excitations can be unravelled and becomes experimentally testable. The conversion between virtual and physical photons can be clearly pictured using Feynman diagrams with cut loops.

Nanobubble induced formation of quantum emitters in monolayer semiconductors

The recent discovery of exciton quantum emitters in transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) has triggered renewed interest of localized excitons in low-dimensional systems. Open questions remain about the microscopic origin previously attributed to dopants and/or defects as well as strain potentials. Here we show that the quantum emitters can be deliberately induced by nanobubble formation in WSe2 and BN/WSe2 heterostructures. Correlations of atomic-force microscope and hyperspectral photoluminescence images reveal that the origin of quantum emitters and trion disorder is extrinsic and related to 10 nm tall nanobubbles and 70 nm tall wrinkles, respectively. We further demonstrate that ‘hot stamping’ results in the absence of 0D quantum emitters and trion disorder. The demonstrated technique is useful for advances in nanolasers and deterministic formation of cavity-QED systems in monolayer materials.

Cavity-enhanced room-temperature high sensitivity optical Faraday magnetometry

We propose a cavity QED system with two-photon Doppler-free configuration for weak magnetic field detection with high sensitivity at room temperature based on cavity electromagnetically induced transparency. Owing to the destructive interference induced by the control and driving fields, two transparency channels are opened. The Faraday rotation within two transparency channels can be used to detect weak magnetic field with high sensitivity at room temperature. The sensitivity with single photon and multiphoton probe inputs is analyzed. With single photon measurement, our numerical calculations demonstrate that the sensitivity with 3.8nT/Hz and 6.4nT/Hz could be achieved. When we measure the magnetic field with multiphoton input, the sensitivity can be improved to 7.7fT/Hz and 25.6fT/Hz under the realistic experimental conditions.

Preparing entangled states by Lyapunov control

By Lyapunov control, we present a protocol to prepare entangled states such as Bell states in the context of cavity QED system. The advantage of our method is of threefold. Firstly, we can only control the phase of classical fields to complete the preparation process. Secondly, the evolution time is sharply shortened when compared to adiabatic control. Thirdly, the final state is steady after removing control fields. The influence of decoherence caused by the atomic spontaneous emission and the cavity decay is discussed. The numerical results show that the control scheme is immune to decoherence, especially for the atomic spontaneous emission from $$|2\rangle $$|2ź to $$|1\rangle $$|1ź. This can be understood as the state staying in an invariant subspace. Finally, we generalize this method in preparation of W state.

Optimal Photon Blockade on the Maximal Atomic Coherence

There is generally no obvious evidence in any direct relation between photon blockade and atomic coherence. Here instead of only illustrating the photon statistics, we show an interesting relation between the steady-state photon blockade and the atomic coherence by designing a weakly driven cavity QED system with a two-level atom trapped. It is shown for the first time that the maximal atomic coherence has a perfect correspondence with the optimal photon blockade. The negative effects of the strong dissipations on photon statistics, atomic coherence and their correspondence are also addressed. The numerical simulation is also given to support all of our results.

Photonic Four-qubit Entangled Decoherence-free States Assisted by Cavity-QED System

We propose an efficient preparation of photonic four-qubit entangled decoherence-free states assisted by the cavity-QED system. By using the optical selection rule derived by a single electron charged self-assembled GaAs/InAs quantum dot in a micropillar resonator, two photons are used to generate four-qubit entangled decoherence-free states. Compared with previous entanglement based photonic protocols, the present one requires single-photon resources and is deterministic. These states may be applied to long-distance communications because only two photons are transmitted.