Coherence Time Research Articles

Generation of Ultrashort Pulses in XUV and X-ray FELs via an Excessive Reverse Undulator Taper

The pulse duration in short-pulse schemes for Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission Free Electron Lasers (SASE FELs) is limited by the FEL coherence time. A recently proposed concept allows to overcome the coherence time barrier and to obtain much shorter pulses. When the lasing part of an electron bunch is much shorter than the coherence time, one can suppress the radiation in the long main undulator while preserving microbunching within that short lasing slice. Then, a short radiation pulse is produced in a relatively short radiator. A possible suppression method, an excessive reverse undulator taper, is discussed and illustrated numerically in this paper. We also performed the first experimental tests of this method at the soft X-ray FEL user facility FLASH. The measured pulse duration approaches 1 fs (FWHM) at the wavelength of 5 nm.

Improved Characterization of Ultralow‐Velocity Zones Through Advances in Bayesian Inversion of ScP Waveforms

AbstractUltralow‐velocity zones (ULVZs) have been studied using a variety of seismic phases; however, their physical origin is still poorly understood. Short period ScP waveforms are extensively used to infer ULVZ properties because they may be sensitive to all ULVZ elastic moduli and thickness. However, ScP waveforms are additionally complicated by the effects of path attenuation, coherent noise, and source complexity. To address these complications, we developed a hierarchical Bayesian inversion method that allows us to invert ScP waveforms from multiple events simultaneously and accounts for path attenuation and correlated noise. The inversion method is tested with synthetic predictions which show that the inclusion of attenuation is imperative to recover ULVZ parameters accurately and that the ULVZ thickness and S‐wave velocity decrease are most reliably recovered. Utilizing multiple events simultaneously reduces the effects of coherent noise and source time function complexity, which in turn allows for the inclusion of more data to be used in the analyses. We next applied the method to ScP data recorded in Australia for 291 events that sample the core‐mantle boundary beneath the Coral Sea. Our results indicate, on average, ∼12‐km thick ULVZ with ∼14% reduction in S‐wave velocity across the region, but there is a greater variability in ULVZ properties in the south than that in the north of the sampled region. P‐wave velocity reductions and density perturbations are mostly below 10%. These ScP data show more than one ScP post‐cursor in some areas which may indicate complex 3‐D ULVZ structures.

Assessment of valley coherence in a high-quality monolayer molybdenum diselenide

We investigate the valley coherence in high and low-quality monolayer MoSe2 by polarization-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy. The observed valley coherence is on the order of 10% regardless of the sample quality, proving that the suppression of extrinsic effects does not improve the valley coherence. The valley decoherence time estimated based on the valley coherence time and exciton lifetime is sub-picosecond at the longest, which suggests that intrinsic scattering sources, such as phonons, strongly limit the valley coherence.

Effects of Atmospheric Coherent Time on Inverse Synthetic Aperture Ladar Imaging through Atmospheric Turbulence

Inverse synthetic aperture ladar (ISAL) can achieve high-resolution images for long-range moving targets, while its performance is affected by atmospheric turbulence. In this paper, the dynamic evolution of atmospheric turbulence is studied by using an infinitely long phase screen (ILPS), and the atmospheric coherent time is defined to describe the variation speed of the phase fluctuation induced by atmospheric turbulence. The simulation results show that the temporal decoherence of the echo induced by turbulence causes phase fluctuation and introduces an extra random phase, which deteriorates the phase stability and makes coherent synthesis impossible. Thus, we evaluated its effects on ISAL imaging and found a method to mitigate the impact of turbulence on ISAL images. The phase compensation algorithm could correct the phase variation in different pulses instead of that within the same pulse. Therefore, the relationship between the atmospheric coherent time and pulse duration time (rather than that between the atmospheric coherent time and ISAL imaging time) ultimately determines the ISAL imaging quality. Furthermore, these adverse effects could be mitigated by increasing the atmospheric coherent time or decreasing the pulse duration time, which results in an improvement in the ISAL imaging quality.

Downlink Training Sequence Design Based on Waterfilling Solution for Low-Latency FDD Massive MIMO Communications Systems

Future generations of wireless communications systems are expected to evolve toward allowing massive ubiquitous connectivity and achieving ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC) with extremely high data rates. Massive multiple-input multiple-output (m-MIMO) is a crucial transmission technique to fulfill the demands of high data rates in the upcoming wireless systems. However, obtaining a downlink (DL) training sequence (TS) that is feasible for fast channel estimation, i.e., meeting the low-latency communications required by future generations of wireless systems, in m-MIMO with frequency-division-duplex (FDD) when users have different channel correlations is very challenging. Therefore, a low-complexity solution for designing the DL training sequences to maximize the achievable sum rate of FDD systems with limited channel coherence time (CCT) is proposed using a waterfilling power allocation method. This achievable sum rate maximization is achieved using sequences produced from a summation of the user’s covariance matrices and then applying a waterfilling power allocation method to the obtained low-complexity training sequence. The results show that the proposed TS outperforms the existing methods in the medium and high SNR regimes while reducing computational complexity. The obtained results signify the proposed TS’s feasibility for practical consideration compared with the existing DL training sequence designs.

Investigation of the clock transition and its pressure-dependent behavior of the trigonal 171Yb3+ centers in lithium niobate crystal

The application of rare earth (RE) doped crystals in quantum information processing has attracted more and more attention in the past decade. How to change the clock transitions of RE ion in crystal and control their lifetime of maintaining coherent quantum state is a valuable question. In this work, the trigonal 171Yb3+ centers in lithium niobate (LN) crystal are investigated theoretically to obtain their accurate ground and excited hyperfine sublevels under external magnetic field B by a combined method of density functional theory-based geometric optimization and parametric effective Hamiltonian modeling. An optical clock transition at |B| = 45.73 mT along the c axis of the LN crystal is successfully found by calculation. To show the pressure-dependent behavior of optical clock transition, the variation of such transition under hydrostatic pressure up to 3 GPa is also obtained theoretically. The calculated results show that applying external pressure is an effective way to control these transitions of RE ion doped crystal. Moreover, the optical coherence time T2 at zero magnetic field for 171Yb3+ ion with C3 symmetry in the LN crystal is estimated by our calculations. The calculated results indicate that if the magnetic field noise is 33 μT in the LN crystal, it is possible to find an optical clock transition with long coherence time T2 (≈382 μs) at the zero magnetic field. The present methods of seeking optical clock transition and calculating its coherence time T2 caused by a fluctuating magnetic field noise in the host crystal can be applied to other Kramers RE ions doped materials.

The time course of chromatic adaptation in human early visual cortex revealed by SSVEPs.

Previous studies have identified at least two components of chromatic adaptation: a rapid component with a time scale between tens of milliseconds to a few seconds, and a slow component with a half-life of about 10 to 30 seconds. The basis of the rapid adaptation probably lies in receptor adaptation at the retina. The neural substrate for the slow adaptation remains unclear, although previous psychophysical results hint at the early visual cortex. A promising approach to investigate adaptation effects in the visual cortex is to analyze steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) elicited by chromatic stimuli, which typically use long durations of stimulation. Here, we re-analyzed the data from two previous pattern-reversal SSVEP studies. In these experiments (N = 49 observers in total), SSVEPs were elicited by counter-phase flickering color- or luminance-defined grating stimuli for 150 seconds in each trial. By analyzing SSVEPs with short time windows, we found that chromatic SSVEP responses decreased with increasing stimulation duration and reached a lower asymptote within a minute of stimulation. The luminance SSVEPs did not show any systematic adaptation. The time course of chromatic SSVEPs can be well described by an exponential decay function with a half-life of about 20 seconds, which is very close to previous psychophysical reports. Despite the difference in stimuli between the current and previous studies, the coherent time course may indicate a more general adaptation mechanism in the early visual cortex. In addition, the current result also provides a guide for future color SSVEP studies in terms of either avoiding or exploiting this adaptation effect.

Hyperfine states of erbium doped yttrium orthosilicate for long-coherence-time quantum memories

Due to their unique optical transition at 1.5 μm, erbium-doped crystals are one of the best candidates for the realization of quantum memories at telecommunication wavelengths. While the hyperfine states of erbium doped yttrium orthosilicate hold the possibility of achieving ultra-long coherence times for a quantum memory, the complexity of their hyperfine structures leads to inaccurate theoretical prediction, thus hindering the extending of the coherence times. Here, we report a set of spin-Hamiltonian parameters with sufficient predictive power on the coherence times of the erbium hyperfine states. Our calculation simultaneously takes into account both the data measured in Electron-Paramagnetic-Resonance and Raman-heterodyne experiments. Based on the new parameters, the coherence properties of the hyperfine ground states are discussed. At zero applied magnetic field, all hyperfine transitions between the ground states are transitions with zero-first-order-Zeeman (ZEFOZ) effect, manifesting both long coherence times and strong transition strengths. By turning up the magnetic field, it is possible to further extend the coherence times to the scale of hours. The long coherence times at ZEFOZ transitions can be an important step forward in creating long-lived telecommunication quantum memories.

Quantum sensing of radio-frequency signal with NV centers in SiC.

Silicon carbide is an emerging platform for quantum technologies that provides wafer scale and low-cost industrial fabrication. The material also hosts high-quality defects with long coherence times that can be used for quantum computation and sensing applications. Using an ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy centers and an XY8-2 correlation spectroscopy approach, we demonstrate a room-temperature quantum sensing of an artificial AC field centered at ~900 kHz with a spectral resolution of 10 kHz. Implementing the synchronized readout technique, we further extend the frequency resolution of our sensor to 0.01 kHz. These results pave the first steps for silicon carbide quantum sensors toward low-cost nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers with a wide range of practical applications in medical, chemical, and biological analysis.

Optimized emulation of quantum magnetometry via superconducting qubits

Quantum magnetometry based on adaptive phase estimation allows for Heisenberg precision while avoiding creation and maintenance of complex entangled states. However, the absolute sensitivity is limited by the nonoptimal use of quantum resources provided by multiple-qubit devices and algorithmic realizations of the protocol. Here, addressing both issues, we advance the time-ascending phase estimation protocol by numerical improvements of Bayesian learning, i.e., sequential updating of the field distribution, and optimal exploitation of resources provided by unentangled qubits with limited coherence. Such algorithmic improvements are used to evaluate the absolute sensitivity both on a simulator and by pulsed-transmon experiments conducted on the IBMQ platform, where we take advantage of high coherence time. In addition, we compare the proficiency of separable and entangled states for magnetometry and show that, in practice, separable states provide superior performance. Flux-sensing emulation experiments demonstrate that a sensitivity of $(0.17--1.74)\ensuremath{\mu}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}}_{0}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}{(\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}})}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ (where ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}}_{0}$ is the flux quantum) for a single-qubit magnetometer and $(0.06--0.65)\ensuremath{\mu}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}}_{0}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}{(\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}})}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ for a five-qubit magnetometer can be achieved for slowly oscillating $1--10\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\mathrm{kHz}$ magnetic fields, which is comparable to more established experimental platforms for magnetometry.

Chemical Profiles of the Oxides on Tantalum in State of the Art Superconducting Circuits.

Over the past decades, superconducting qubits have emerged as one of the leading hardware platforms for realizing a quantum processor. Consequently, researchers have made significant effort to understand the loss channels that limit the coherence times of superconducting qubits. A major source of loss has been attributed to two level systems that are present at the material interfaces. It is recently shown that replacing the metal in the capacitor of a transmon with tantalum yields record relaxation and coherence times for superconducting qubits, motivating a detailed study of the tantalum surface. In this work, the chemical profile of the surface of tantalum films grown on c-plane sapphire using variable energy X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (VEXPS) is studied. The different oxidation states of tantalum that are present in the native oxide resulting from exposure to air are identified, and their distribution through the depth of the film is measured. Furthermore, it is shown how the volume and depth distribution of these tantalum oxidation states can be altered by various chemical treatments. Correlating these measurements with detailed measurements of quantum devices may elucidate the underlying microscopic sources of loss.

Undoped Strained Ge Quantum Well with Ultrahigh Mobility of Two Million.

We develop a method to fabricate an undoped Ge quantum well (QW) under a 32 nm relaxed Si0.2Ge0.8 shallow barrier. The bottom barrier contains Si0.2Ge0.8 (650 °C) and Si0.1Ge0.9 (800 °C) such that variation of Ge content forms a sharp interface that can suppress the threading dislocation density (TDD) penetrating into the undoped Ge quantum well. The SiGe barrier introduces enough in-plane parallel strain (ε∥ strain -0.41%) in the Ge quantum well. The heterostructure field-effect transistors with a shallow buried channel obtain an ultrahigh two-dimensional hole gas (2DHG) mobility over 2 × 106 cm2/(V s) and a very low percolation density of (5.689 ± 0.062) × 1010 cm-2. The fractional indication is also observed at high density and high magnetic fields. This strained germanium as a noise mitigation material provides a platform for integration of quantum computation with a long coherence time and fast all-electrical manipulation.

Coherent OTDR with large dynamic range based on double-sideband linear frequency modulation pulse.

Rayleigh scattering-based distributed optical fiber sensors with long sensing distance and large dynamic range are highly desired for application scenarios such as vehicle tracking, structure health monitoring, and geological survey. To enlarge the dynamic range, we propose a coherent optical time domain reflectometry (COTDR) based on double-sideband linear frequency modulation (LFM) pulse. By utilizing I/Q demodulation, both the positive and negative frequency band of the Rayleigh backscattering (RBS) signal can be properly demodulated. Consequently, the dynamic range is doubled without increasing the bandwidth of signal generator, photodetector (PD), and oscilloscope. In the experiment, the chirped pulse with 10 μs pulse width and 498 MHz frequency sweeping range is launched into the sensing fiber. Single-shot strain measurement is achieved over 5 km single-mode fiber with a spatial resolution of 2.5 m and a strain sensitivity of 7.5 pε/H z. A vibration signal with 3.09 με peak-to-peak amplitude (corresponding to 461 MHz frequency shift) is successfully measured with the double-sideband spectrum, which cannot be properly recovered with the single-sideband spectrum.

Coherence-limited digital control of a superconducting qubit using a Josephson pulse generator at 3 K

Compared to traditional semiconductor control electronics (TSCE) located at room temperature, cryogenic single flux quantum (SFQ) electronics can provide qubit measurement and control alternatives that address critical issues related to scalability of cryogenic quantum processors. Single-qubit control and readout have been demonstrated recently using SFQ circuits coupled to superconducting qubits. Experiments where the SFQ electronics are co-located with the qubit have suffered from excess decoherence and loss due to quasiparticle poisoning of the qubit. A previous experiment by our group showed that moving the control electronics to the 3 K stage of the dilution refrigerator avoided this source of decoherence in a high-coherence three-dimensional transmon geometry. In this paper, we also generate the pulses at the 3 K stage but have optimized the qubit design and control lines for scalable two-dimensional transmon devices. We directly compare the qubit lifetime T1, coherence time T2*, and gate fidelity when the qubit is controlled by the Josephson pulse generator (JPG) circuit vs the TSCE setup. We find agreement within the daily fluctuations for T1 and T2*, and agreement within 10% for randomized benchmarking. We also performed interleaved randomized benchmarking on individual JPG gates demonstrating an average error per gate of 0.46% showing good agreement with what is expected based on the qubit coherence and higher-state leakage. These results are an order of magnitude improvement in gate fidelity over our previous work and demonstrate that a Josephson microwave source operated at 3 K is a promising component for scalable qubit control.

Antenna-coupled infrared nanospectroscopy of intramolecular vibrational interaction

Many photonic and electronic molecular properties, as well as chemical and biochemical reactivities are controlled by fast intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution (IVR). This fundamental ultrafast process limits coherence time in applications from photochemistry to single quantum level control. While time-resolved multidimensional IR-spectroscopy can resolve the underlying vibrational interaction dynamics, as a nonlinear optical technique it has been challenging to extend its sensitivity to probe small molecular ensembles, achieve nanoscale spatial resolution, and control intramolecular dynamics. Here, we demonstrate a concept how mode-selective coupling of vibrational resonances to IR nanoantennas can reveal intramolecular vibrational energy transfer. In time-resolved infrared vibrational nanospectroscopy, we measure the Purcell-enhanced decrease of vibrational lifetimes of molecular vibrations while tuning the IR nanoantenna across coupled vibrations. At the example of a Re-carbonyl complex monolayer, we derive an IVR rate of (25±8) cm-1 corresponding to (450±150) fs, as is typical for the fast initial equilibration between symmetric and antisymmetric carbonyl vibrations. We model the enhancement of the cross-vibrational relaxation based on intrinsic intramolecular coupling and extrinsic antenna-enhanced vibrational energy relaxation. The model further suggests an anti-Purcell effect based on antenna and laser-field-driven vibrational mode interference which can counteract IVR-induced relaxation. Nanooptical spectroscopy of antenna-coupled vibrational dynamics thus provides for an approach to probe intramolecular vibrational dynamics with a perspective for vibrational coherent control of small molecular ensembles.

Quantum Circuit-Width Reduction through Parameterisation and Specialisation

As quantum computing technology continues to develop, the need for research into novel quantum algorithms is growing. However, such algorithms cannot yet be reliably tested on actual quantum hardware, which is still limited in several ways, including qubit coherence times, connectivity, and available qubits. To facilitate the development of novel algorithms despite this, simulators on classical computing systems are used to verify the correctness of an algorithm, and study its behaviour under different error models. In general, this involves operating on a memory space that grows exponentially with the number of qubits. In this work, we introduce quantum circuit transformations that allow for the construction of parameterised circuits for quantum algorithms. The parameterised circuits are in an ideal form to be processed by quantum compilation tools, such that the circuit can be partially evaluated prior to simulation, and a smaller specialised circuit can be constructed by eliminating fixed input qubits. We show significant reduction in the number of qubits for various quantum arithmetic circuits. Divide-by-n-bits quantum integer dividers are used as an example demonstration. It is shown that the complexity reduces from 4n+2 to 3n+2 qubits in the specialised versions. For quantum algorithms involving divide-by-8 arithmetic operations, a reduction by 28=256 in required memory is achieved for classical simulation, reducing the memory required from 137 GB to 0.53 GB.

Simulating Decoherence of a Nitrogen – Vacancy Centre Spin Qubit via Ornstein – Uhlenbeck Process

Owing to its remarkable optical properties and its ability to be controlled by microwave fields at room temperature, nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre in diamond has been a promising platform for various nanotechnological applications, e.g. quantum sensing and magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The qubit associated with the NV centre ground state spin has been the key element for the realisation of such applications. Its coherence time determines the application performances, e.g. the sensitivity of the NV-qubit based quantum sensor. Due to unwanted and unavoidable interactions with noisy environment, the qubit undergoes decoherence that shortens its coherence time and hence reduces its application performance. Therefore, the investigation and mitigation of the decoherence of the NV qubit are of the utmost importance. Here, we simulate the qubit decoherence using Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process that is essential for designing a set of modulating control pulses to mitigate the effect.

Optimizing the computational effort of satellite signal acquisition based on mean recognition convolutional neural network

The ability to synchronize the satellite signals affects the navigation performance. Only after a procedure of acquisition, namely coarse synchronization, the data information needed to position can be extracted from the satellite signals. Conventional acquisition methods rely on extending the signal integration time to improve the correlation quality of the signal. However, extending the coherent integration time results in a large computational burden, which is unrealistic for civilian receivers. In this paper, we try to optimize the computational effort in the satellite navigation signal acquisition phase and propose an algorithm based on the mean value recognition convolutional neural network. The matrix with a high mean value is separated by the convolutional neural network, and then the Doppler shift and code phase from the matrix with a high mean value is introduced, which can effectively change the computation to 1/4338 of the original one. The trained model of the neural network can be embedded into the receiver directly, which has important engineering applications.

Highly Stable and Pure Single-Photon Emission with 250 ps Optical Coherence Times in InP Colloidal Quantum Dots

Highly Stable and Pure Single-Photon Emission with 250 ps Optical Coherence Times in InP Colloidal Quantum Dots

Variational quantum simulation of long-range interacting systems

Current quantum simulators suffer from multiple limitations such as short coherence time, noisy operations, faulty readout and restricted qubit connectivity in some platforms. Variational quantum algorithms are the most promising approach in near-term quantum simulation to achieve practical quantum advantage over classical computers. Here, we explore variational quantum algorithms, with different levels of qubit connectivity, for digital simulation of the ground state of long-range interacting systems as well as generation of spin squeezed states. We find that as the interaction becomes more long-ranged, the variational algorithms become less efficient, achieving lower fidelity and demanding more optimization iterations. In particular, when the system is near its criticality the efficiency is even lower. Increasing the connectivity between distant qubits improves the results, even with less quantum and classical resources. Our results show that by mixing circuit layers with different levels of connectivity one can sensibly improve the performance. Interestingly, the order of layers becomes very important and grouping the layers with long-distance connectivity at the beginning of the circuit outperforms other permutations. The same design of circuits can also be used to variationally produce spin squeezed states, as a resource for quantum metrology.