ABSTRACT
We report the development of a superconducting acousto-optic phase modulator fabricated on a lithium niobate substrate. A titanium-diffused optical waveguide is placed in a surface acoustic wave resonator, where the electrodes for mirrors and an interdigitated transducer are made of a superconducting niobium titanium nitride thin film. The device performance is evaluated as a substitute for the current electro-optic modulators, with the same fiber coupling scheme and comparable device size. Operating the device at a cryogenic temperature (T = 8 K), we observe the length-half-wave-voltage (length-Vπ) product of 1.78 V·cm. Numerical simulation is conducted to reproduce and extrapolate the performance of the device. An optical cavity with mirror coating on the input/output facets of the optical waveguide is tested for further enhancement of the modulation efficiency. A simple extension of the current device is estimated to achieve an efficient modulation with Vπ = 0.27 V.
ABSTRACT
The recent development of hybrid systems based on superconducting circuits provides the possibility of engineering quantum sensors that exploit different degrees of freedom. Quantum magnonics, which aims to control and read out quanta of collective spin excitations in magnetically ordered systems, provides opportunities for advances in both the study of magnetism and the development of quantum technologies. Using a superconducting qubit as a quantum sensor, we report the detection of a single magnon in a millimeter-sized ferrimagnetic crystal with a quantum efficiency of up to 0.71. The detection is based on the entanglement between a magnetostatic mode and the qubit, followed by a single-shot measurement of the qubit state. This proof-of-principle experiment establishes the single-photon detector counterpart for magnonics.
ABSTRACT
Our recent report on Electro-Mechano-Optical (EMO) NMR proved the feasibility of up-conversion of NMR signals from radio-frequency to optical regimes using a metal-coated, high-Q membrane oscillator (Takeda et al., 2018). However, the signal-to-noise ratio, which can in principle exceed that of the conventional electrical detection scheme, was far below than ideal. Here, we developed an aluminum-coated membrane oscillator and used for a capacitor electrode as well as a mirror of an optical cavity. Compared to the gold-deposited membrane used in our previous study, the characteristic frequency of membrane oscillation was significantly higher due to mass reduction, leading to remarkable elimination of noise in the process of conversion of radio-frequency signals to the mechanical oscillation of the membrane. Taking advantage of the significantly improved EMO NMR, we explore physics behind it in terms of coherent transduction of electrical nuclear induction signals to mechanical and then to optical signals. In addition, we study the transient response of the membrane oscillator to electrical excitation due to nuclear induction.
ABSTRACT
Rigidity of an ordered phase in condensed matter results in collective excitation modes spatially extending to macroscopic dimensions. A magnon is a quantum of such collective excitation modes in ordered spin systems. Here, we demonstrate the coherent coupling between a single-magnon excitation in a millimeter-sized ferromagnetic sphere and a superconducting qubit, with the interaction mediated by the virtual photon excitation in a microwave cavity. We obtain the coupling strength far exceeding the damping rates, thus bringing the hybrid system into the strong coupling regime. Furthermore, we use a parametric drive to realize a tunable magnon-qubit coupling scheme. Our approach provides a versatile tool for quantum control and measurement of the magnon excitations and may lead to advances in quantum information processing.
ABSTRACT
We demonstrate large normal-mode splitting between a magnetostatic mode (the Kittel mode) in a ferromagnetic sphere of yttrium iron garnet and a microwave cavity mode. Strong coupling is achieved in the quantum regime where the average number of thermally or externally excited magnons and photons is less than one. We also confirm that the coupling strength is proportional to the square root of the number of spins. A nonmonotonic temperature dependence of the Kittel-mode linewidth is observed below 1 K and is attributed to the dissipation due to the coupling with a bath of two-level systems.
ABSTRACT
A Ramsey interrogation scheme was used to measure the phase shift of laser-cooled 87Rb clock-transition pseudospins arising as a result of a reversal of a bias-magnetic field, i.e., B--> -B, during the interrogation. While no phase shift occurred when the reversal was sudden, the Ramsey fringes were shifted by a factor of pi when the reversal was adiabatic. We thus verified the prediction that the spin states |F,m=0 acquire a purely topological and parity-dependent phase factor of (-1)F as a result of B--> -B.
ABSTRACT
We have measured antinormally ordered Hanbury Brown-Twiss correlations for coherent states of the electromagnetic field by using a stimulated parametric down-conversion process. Photons were detected by stimulated emission, rather than by absorption, so that the detection responded not only to actual photons but also to zero-point fluctuations via spontaneous emission. The observed correlations were distinct from normally ordered ones as they showed excess positive correlations, i.e., photon bunching effects, which arose from the thermal nature of zero-point fluctuations.
