Optimizing a phase gate using quantum interference

A controlled interference is proposed to reduce, by two orders of magnitude, the decoherence of a quantum gate for which the gate fidelity is limited by coupling to states other than the /0> and /1> qubit states. This phenomenon is demonstrated in an ultracold neutral atom implementation of a phase gate using qubits based on motional states in individual wells of an optical lattice.     

中性汞原子磁光阱装载率的优化

量子投影噪声是影响光晶格钟的一个重要参数,提高磁光阱中装载率有利于降低量子投影噪声,可提升光晶格钟的性能.针对实验所用的汞原子单腔磁光阱,本文分析并计算了磁光阱中汞原子受力情况和一维运动规律,在此基础上用随机数方法对磁光阱中汞原子三维装载进行了数值计算,获得了磁光阱中的稳态原子数,研究了磁光阱的冷却激光的光强、失谐量以及磁场梯度等参数对稳态原子数的影响,得出了获得最优装载率的实验参数.涉及的计算方法和结论对汞原子光晶格钟的实验设计具有参考价值.     

Attosecond temporal gating with elliptically polarized light

Temporal gating allows high accuracy time-resolved measurements of a broad range of ultrafast processes. By manipulating the interaction between an atom and an intense laser field, we extend gating into the nonlinear medium in which attosecond optical and electron pulses are generated. Our gate is an amplitude gate induced by ellipticity of the fundamental pulse. The gate modulates the spectrum of the high harmonic emission and we use the measured modulation to characterize the sub-laser-cycle dynamics of the recollision electron wave packet.     

Laser-Induced Climbing of Cold Atoms Against the Gravity

We demonstrate climbing of cold atoms against the gravity in a one-dimensional vertical laser standing wave. At an appropriately chosen laser–atom detuning, we show that freely falling atoms change the direction of motion and move upward. The effect is due to a tiny interplay between internal and external atomic degrees of freedom in a rigid optical lattice.     

A simple laser system for atom interferometry

We present here a simple laser system for a laser-cooled atom interferometer, where all functions (laser cooling, interferometry and detection) are realized using only two extended cavity laser diodes, amplified by a common tapered amplifier. One laser is locked by frequency modulation transfer spectroscopy, the other being phase locked with an offset frequency determined by an field-programmable gate array-controlled direct digital synthesizer, which allows for efficient and versatile tuning of the laser frequency. Raman lasers are obtained with a double pass acoustooptic modulator. We demonstrate a gravimeter using this laser system, with performances close to the state of the art.     

A Scheme of Conditional Quantum Phase Gate for Dissipative Cavity QED System

We propose a scheme to implement a two-qubit conditional quantum phase gate via a single mode cavity and a cascade four-level atom assisted by a classical laser. The quantum information is encoded.on the Flock states of the cavity mode and the two metastable ground states of the atom. Even under the condition of systematic dissipations, this scheme can also be realized with fidelity of 98.6% and success probability of 0.767.     

Photo-induced athermal phase transitions of HgX(X= S,Se,Te) by ab initio study

Ab initio calculations of lattice constants, lattice stabilities of HgX(X = S, Se, Te) at different electronic temperatures(T_e) have been performed within the density functional theory(DFT). We find that the lattice constants of HgX increase and the phonon frequencies reduce as T_e increases. Especially the transverse-acoustic(TA) phonon frequencies of HgX gradually become negative with the elevation of the electron temperature. That is to say ultrafast intense laser induces lattice instabilities of HgX and athermal melting appears for the increase of laser intensity. What is more, with the X atom number increasing, the critical electronic temperatures of HgX are decreased in sequence. This result would be helpful for understanding the athermal melting processes for femtosecond laser micromachining.     

A Scheme of Conditional Quantum Phase Gate for Dissipative Cavity QED System

We propose a scheme to implement a two-qubit conditional quantum phase gate via a single mode cavity and a cascade four-level atom assisted by a classical laser. The quantum information is encoded on the Fock states of the cavity mode and the two metastable ground states of the atom. Even under the condition of systematic dissipations,this scheme can also be realized with fidelity of 98.6% and success probability of 0.767.     

Enhanced cold mercury atom production with two-dimensional magneto-optical trap

A cold atom source is important for quantum metrology and precision measurement. To reduce the quantum projection noise limit in optical lattice clock, one can increase the number of cold atoms and reduce the dead time by enhancing the loading rate. In this work, we realize an enhanced cold mercury atom source based on a two-dimensional (2D) magneto-optical trap (MOT). The vacuum system is composed of two titanium chambers connected with a differential pumping tube. Two stable cooling laser systems are adopted for the 2D-MOT and the three-dimensional (3D)-MOT, respectively. Using an optimized 2D-MOT and push beam, about 1.3×10⁶ atoms, which are almost an order of magnitude higher than using a pure 3D-MOT, are loaded into the 3D-MOT for ²⁰²Hg atoms. This enhanced cold mercury atom source is helpful in increasing the frequency stability of a neutral mercury lattice clock.     

Quantum state swap for two trapped Rydberg atoms

The quantum swap gate is one of the most useful gates for quantum computation. Two-qubit entanglement and a controlled-NOT quantum gate in a neutral Rydberg atom system have been achieved in recent experiments. It is therefore very interesting to propose a scheme here for swapping a quantum state between two trapped neutral atoms via the Rydberg blockade mechanism. The atoms interact with a sequence of laser pulses without individual addressing. The errors of the swap gate due to imprecision of pulse length, finite Rydberg interaction, and atomic spontaneous emission are discussed.     

A simple quantum gate with atom chips

We present a simple scheme for implementing an atomic phase gate using two degrees of freedom for each atom and discuss its realization with cold rubidium atoms on atom chips. We investigate the performance of this collisional phase gate and show that gate operations with high fidelity can be realized in magnetic traps that are currently available on atom chips.     

冷原子气体的时频测量——光晶格原子钟

基于冷原子气体的时频测量在近20年里快速发展,引起了人们的广泛关注,其典型代表是基于大量中性原子的光晶格原子钟。利用超稳钟激光同时探测囚禁在光晶格里成千上万个冷原子的钟跃迁信号,光晶格原子钟已实现10^-18量级的频率准确度和10^-17量级的秒级稳定度,大幅度提高了时频测量的精度。文章概述了光晶格原子钟的发展历史、工作原理、性能评估及应用前景。     

冷原子气体的时频测量——光晶格原子钟

基于冷原子气体的时频测量在近20年里快速发展,引起了人们的广泛关注,其典型代表是基于大量中性原子的光晶格原子钟。利用超稳钟激光同时探测囚禁在光晶格里成千上万个冷原子的钟跃迁信号,光晶格原子钟已实现10^-18量级的频率准确度和10^-17量级的秒级稳定度,大幅度提高了时频测量的精度。文章概述了光晶格原子钟的发展历史、工作原理、性能评估及应用前景。     

Response-function theory of laser-stimulated desorption of atoms from solid surfaces

Laser-stimulated desorption fiom solid surfaces is studied as a special case of the theory of linear response functions. For many problems, for example calculation of the minimum intensity of the laser radiation field necessary for desorption, it is shown that the only dynamical property of the host system (lattice) which is required is the Laplace transform of the “response function” of the atom of the host lattice to which the adsorbed atom is attached. The results for one-dimensional host lattices with N atoms are compared with similar results obtained recently, using a quite different approach, by Murphy and George, Surface Sci. 102 (1981) L46. Effects of dimensionality of the host lattice are discussed, and an explicit comparison is presented of the results for simplified one- and three-dimensional host lattice models. Applications of the work to calculation of frequencies of normal modes of the adsorbed systems which are localized at the adsorbates (“localized modes”) are discussed and compared with previous analyses.     

Remote Implementation of a Fredkin Gate via Virtual Excitation of an Atom-Cavity-Fiber System

Simple operations and robust results are always of interest for any quantum tasks. Herein, a novel scheme is proposed for implementing a Fredkin gate via the virtual excitation of an atom-cavity-fiber system. The scheme is to control the nonlocal state-swap of two spatially separated target atoms according to the state of the control atom at hand. In the scheme, only the control atom at hand needs the laser to drive and the virtual excitation of the atom-cavity-fiber system effectively suppresses the decoherence. By numerical simulations, appreciated parameters are chosen and it is shown that the Fredkin gate can be implemented with high fidelity. Although the operation time error has slightly stronger influence on the fidelity than atom-cavity coupling strength error, the robustness of the scheme can be effectively improved against the operation time error by adopting Gaussian pulse to replace the constant pulse. In addition, the scheme can be generalized to implement alternative Fredkin gates by controlling the non-local state-swap of two remote atoms or of two remote and spatially separated atoms, which will be undoubtedly of benefit to the distributed quantum computation and remote quantum information processing.     

Simulations of Sisyphus cooling including multiple excited states

We extend the theory for laser cooling in a near-resonant optical lattice to include multiple excited hyperfine states. Simulations are performed treating the external degrees of freedom of the atom, i.e., position and momentum, classically, while the internal atomic states are treated quantum mechanically, allowing for arbitrary superpositions. Whereas theoretical treatments including only a single excited hyperfine state predict that the temperature should be a function of lattice depth only, except close to resonance, experiments have shown that the minimum temperature achieved depends also on the detuning from resonance of the lattice light. Our results resolve this discrepancy.     

Gain-switched semiconductor laser amplifier as an ultrafast dynamical optical gate

A gain-switched semiconductor laser is shown to act as an optical gate with picosecond resolution and amplification for light pulses from another laser source. The amplification mechanism and the gate width change qualitatively when the gate laser undergoes a transition from a pumping rate slightly below the dynamic laser threshold to slightly above the dynamic threshold. If the gate laser is pumped below but close to its dynamical threshold, unsaturated amplification of an external signal pulse occurs over a delay time range between the external optical pulse and the electrical driving pulse of about 100–200 ps which is equivalent to the optical gate width. The signal amplification is observed to increase by two orders of magnitude and the gate width decreases by one order of magnitude if the gate laser is pumped slightly above the dynamical threshold. Amplification then occurs for input signals injected much earlier. A detailed theory of coherent, time-dependent amplification including the nonlinear dynamics of the semiconductor laser is shown to account for the observations. Both amplification regimes, below and above threshold, are reproduced in the numerical simulations. The extremely short and highly sensitive gate range above threshold is identified as being due to the gain maximum related with the first relaxation oscillation of the laser.     

Nonlinear coherent dynamics of an atom in an optical lattice

We consider a simple model of the lossless interaction between a two-level single atom and a standing-wave single-mode laser field which creates a one-dimensional optical lattice. The internal dynamics of the atom is governed by the laser field, which is treated as classical with a large number of photons. The center-of-mass classical atomic motion is governed by the optical potential and the internal atomic degrees of freedom. The resulting Hamilton-Schrö dinger equations of motion are a five-dimensional nonlinear dynamical system with two integrals of motion, and the total atomic energy and the Bloch vector length are conserved during the interaction. In our previous papers, the motion of the atom has been shown to be regular or chaotic (in the sense of exponential sensitivity to small variations of the initial conditions and/or the system’s control parameters) depending on the values of the control parameters, atom-field detuning, and recoil frequency. At the exact atom-field resonance, the exact solutions for both the external and internal atomic degrees of freedom can be derived. The center-of-mass motion does not depend in this case on the internal variables, whereas the Rabi oscillations of the atomic inversion is a frequency-modulated signal with the frequency defined by the atomic position in the optical lattice. We study analytically the correlations between the Rabi oscillations and the center-of-mass motion in two limiting cases of a regular motion out of the resonance: (1) far-detuned atoms and (2) rapidly moving atoms. This paper is concentrated on chaotic atomic motion that may be quantified strictly by positive values of the maximal Lyapunov exponent. It is shown that an atom, depending on the value of its total energy, can either oscillate chaotically in a well of the optical potential, or fly ballistically with weak chaotic oscillations of its momentum, or wander in the optical lattice, changing the direction of motion in a chaotic way. In the regime of chaotic wandering, the atomic motion is shown to have fractal properties. We find a useful tool to visualize complicated atomic motion-Poincaré mapping of atomic trajectories in an effective three-dimensional phase space onto planes of atomic internal variables and momentum. The Poincaré mappings are constructed using the translational invariance of the standing laser wave. We find common features with typical nonhyperbolic Hamiltonian systems-chains of resonant islands of different sizes imbedded in a stochastic sea, stochastic layers, bifurcations, and so on. The phenomenon of the atomic trajectories sticking to boundaries of regular islands, which should have a great influence on atomic transport in optical lattices, is found and demonstrated numerically.     

Phase control of nonadiabaticity-induced quantum chaos in an optical lattice

The qualitative nature (i.e., integrable vs chaotic) of the translational dynamics of a three-level atom in an optical lattice is shown to be controllable by varying the relative laser phase of two standing-wave lasers. Control is explained in terms of the nonadiabatic transition between optical potentials and the corresponding regular-to-chaotic transition in mixed classical-quantum dynamics. The results are of interest to both areas of coherent control and quantum chaos.     

Quantum Computation and Entangled-State Generation Through Photon Emission and Absorption Processes in Separated Cavities

We propose a scheme to implement a two-bit conditional quantum phase gate and generate a multi-atom cluster state and a two-atom three-dimensional entangled state based on photon emission and absorption processes. In the scheme, a Λ-type atom and a V-type atom are individually trapped in two spatially separated cavities connected by an optical fiber. By choosing the interaction time and the ratio of coupling parameters appropriately, the gate operation and entanglement generation can be determinately achieved. We also discuss the influence of photon Leakage on the fidelities of the gate and entanglement and show that the scheme is scalable and feasible in the experimental realization and further utilization.