The realization of strong interactions between individual photons is a long-standing goal of both fundamental and technological significance. Scientists have known for over half a century that light ...fields can interact inside nonlinear optical media, but the nonlinearity of conventional materials is negligible at the light powers associated with individual photons. Nevertheless, remarkable advances in quantum optics have recently culminated in the demonstration of several methods for generating optical nonlinearities at the level of individual photons. Systems exhibiting strong photon-photon interactions enable a number of unique applications, including quantum-by-quantum control of light fields, single-photon switches and transistors, all-optical deterministic quantum logic, and the realization of strongly correlated states of light and matter.
Friction between ordered, atomically smooth surfaces at the nanoscale (nanofriction) is often governed by stick-slip processes. To test long-standing atomistic models of such processes, we ...implemented a synthetic nanofriction interface between a laser-cooled Coulomb crystal of individually addressable ions as the moving object and a periodic light-field potential as the substrate. We show that stick-slip friction can be tuned from maximal to nearly frictionless via arrangement of the ions relative to the substrate. By varying the ion number, we also show that this strong dependence of friction on the structural mismatch, as predicted by many-particle models, already emerges at the level of two or three atoms. This model system enables a microscopic and systematic investigation of friction, potentially even into the quantum many-body regime.
The highly nonlinear many-body physics of a chain of mutually interacting atoms in contact with a periodic substrate gives rise to complex static and dynamical phenomena, such as structural phase ...transitions and friction. In the limit of an infinite chain incommensurate with the substrate, Aubry predicted a transition with increasing substrate potential, from the chain's intrinsic arrangement free to slide on the substrate, to a pinned arrangement favouring the substrate pattern. So far, the Aubry transition has not been observed. Here, using spatially resolved position and friction measurements of cold trapped ions in an optical lattice, we observed a finite version of the Aubry transition and the onset of its hallmark fractal atomic arrangement. Notably, the observed critical lattice depth for few-ion chains agrees well with the infinite-chain prediction. Our results elucidate the connection between competing ordering patterns and superlubricity in nanocontacts-the elementary building blocks of friction.
Quantum-mechanically correlated (entangled) states of many particles are of interest in quantum information, quantum computing and quantum metrology. Metrologically useful entangled states of large ...atomic ensembles have been experimentally realized, but these states display Gaussian spin distribution functions with a non-negative Wigner quasiprobability distribution function. Non-Gaussian entangled states have been produced in small ensembles of ions, and very recently in large atomic ensembles. Here we generate entanglement in a large atomic ensemble via an interaction with a very weak laser pulse; remarkably, the detection of a single photon prepares several thousand atoms in an entangled state. We reconstruct a negative-valued Wigner function--an important hallmark of non-classicality--and verify an entanglement depth (the minimum number of mutually entangled atoms) of 2,910 ± 190 out of 3,100 atoms. Attaining such a negative Wigner function and the mutual entanglement of virtually all atoms is unprecedented for an ensemble containing more than a few particles. Although the achieved purity of the state is slightly below the threshold for entanglement-induced metrological gain, further technical improvement should allow the generation of states that surpass this threshold, and of more complex Schrödinger cat states for quantum metrology and information processing. More generally, our results demonstrate the power of heralded methods for entanglement generation, and illustrate how the information contained in a single photon can drastically alter the quantum state of a large system.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
We present a method for producing three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates using only laser cooling. The phase transition to condensation is crossed with 2.5×10^{4} ^{87}Rb atoms at a temperature ...of T_{c}=0.6 μK after 1.4 s of cooling. Atoms are trapped in a crossed optical dipole trap and cooled using Raman cooling with far-off-resonant optical pumping light to reduce atom loss and heating. The achieved temperatures are well below the effective recoil temperature. We find that during the final cooling stage at atomic densities above 10^{14} cm^{-3}, careful tuning of trap depth and optical-pumping rate is necessary to evade heating and loss mechanisms. The method may enable the fast production of quantum degenerate gases in a variety of systems including fermions.
We present, and derive analytic expressions for, a fundamental limit to the sympathetic cooling of ions in radio-frequency traps using cold atoms. The limit arises from the work done by the trap ...electric field during a long-range ion-atom collision and applies even to cooling by a zero-temperature atomic gas in a perfectly compensated trap. We conclude that in current experimental implementations, this collisional heating prevents access to the regimes of single-partial-wave atom-ion interaction or quantized ion motion. We determine conditions on the atom-ion mass ratio and on the trap parameters for reaching the s-wave collision regime and the trap ground state.
Spin squeezing is a form of entanglement that can improve the stability of quantum sensors operating with multiple particles, by inducing inter-particle correlations that redistribute the quantum ...projection noise. Previous analyses of potential metrological gain when using spin squeezing were performed on theoretically ideal states, without incorporating experimental imperfections or inherent limitations which result in non-unitary quantum state evolution. Here, we show that potential gains in clock stability are substantially reduced when the spin squeezing is non-unitary, and derive analytic formulas for the clock performance as a function of squeezing, excess spin noise, and interferometer contrast. Our results highlight the importance of creating and employing nearly pure entangled states for improving atomic clocks.
We squeeze unconditionally the collective spin of a dilute ensemble of laser-cooled 87Rb atoms using their interaction with a driven optical resonator. The shape and size of the resulting spin ...uncertainty region are well described by a simple analytical model M. H. Schleier-Smith, I. D. Leroux, and V. Vuletić, arXiv:0911.3936 Phys. Rev. A (to be published) through 2 orders of magnitude in the effective interaction strength, without free parameters. We deterministically generate states with up to 5.6(6) dB of metrologically relevant spin squeezing on the canonical 87Rb hyperfine clock transition.
The realization of large-scale fully controllable quantum systems is an exciting frontier in modern physical science. We use atom-by-atom assembly to implement a platform for the deterministic ...preparation of regular one-dimensional arrays of individually controlled cold atoms. In our approach, a measurement and feedback procedure eliminates the entropy associated with probabilistic trap occupation and results in defect-free arrays of more than 50 atoms in less than 400 milliseconds. The technique is based on fast, real-time control of 100 optical tweezers, which we use to arrange atoms in desired geometric patterns and to maintain these configurations by replacing lost atoms with surplus atoms from a reservoir. This bottom-up approach may enable controlled engineering of scalable many-body systems for quantum information processing, quantum simulations, and precision measurements.
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