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Chuanwei Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Chuanwei Zhang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Analytic Theory of Phase Transitions in Optical Metamaterials

Optical metamaterials provide a versatile platform for engineering homogeneous electromagnetic media whose distinct phases are characterized by phase diagrams in constitutive-parameter space. However, existing studies of hyperbolicity, topological properties, and exceptional-point formation often rely on highly symmetric models or case-by-case numerical parameter scans, leaving a unified analytic framework that identifies phases and phase transitions directly from the constitutive tensors lacking. Here, we develop a general theory that yields exact analytic criteria for topological transitions, exceptional-point transitions, pinch-off Lifshitz transitions, and optical Lifshitz transitions in homogeneous media. Applying this framework to a tractable example of a gyroelectric medium with anisotropic chirality, we uncover exceptional rings and negative refraction induced by gyroelectric-chiral coupling. By enabling the exact determination of phase boundaries, our theory provides a predictive framework for discovering previously unexplored electromagnetic phases and offers new principles for the systematic design of optical metamaterials.

physics.optics

Single-Ensemble Multiparameter Squeezing with Qudits

Quantum-enhanced multiparameter sensing is often associated with distributed architectures or 2-anticoherent states, whereas squeezing in a single collective ensemble is typically limited to single-parameter metrology. Here, we show that a single ensemble can support simultaneous multiparameter squeezing when each sensor is promoted from a qubit to a qudit (i.e., spin with $d$ energy levels). We develop a general framework in which the optimal product probe state, the corresponding global readout observables, and the associated squeezing parameters are all determined from the single-site quantum Fisher information matrix. We then present a minimal qudit construction for two-parameter vector magnetic field sensing with local dimension $d=3$. We further identify a collective twisting-like interacting Hamiltonian that generates such multiparameter-squeezed states and numerically demonstrate scalable metrological gain. In particular, for a trapped-ion qutrit chain with power-law interactions, we obtain up to 12 dB enhancement in two-parameter sensing for $N=256$ sensors. Our results establish qudit-enabled multiparameter squeezing in a single ensemble as a distinct route to multiparameter quantum metrology with global readout, and highlight its potential advantage over distributed multi-ensemble strategies in the fixed-sensor-budget regime.

quant-ph

A Deep-Learning-Boosted Framework for Quantum Sensing with Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are a versatile quantum sensing platform for high sensitivity measurements of magnetic fields, temperature and strain with nanoscale spatial resolution. A common bottleneck is the analysis of optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) spectra, where target quantities are encoded in resonance features. Conventional nonlinear fitting is often computationally expensive, sensitive to initialization, and prone to failure at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Here we introduce a robust, efficient machine learning (ML) framework for real-time ODMR analysis based on a one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN). The model performs direct parameter inference without initial guesses or iterative optimization, and is naturally parallelizable on graphics processing units (GPU) for high-throughput processing. We validate the approach on both synthetic and experimental datasets, showing improved throughput, accuracy and robustness than standard nonlinear fitting, with the largest gains in the low-SNR regime. We further validate our methods in two representative sensing applications: diagnosing intracellular temperature changes using nanodiamond probes and widefield magnetic imaging of superconducting vortices in a high-temperature superconductor. This deep-learning inference framework enables fast and reliable extraction of physical parameters from complex ODMR data and provides a scalable route to real-time quantum sensing and imaging.

quant-ph

Scalable Spin Squeezing in Power-Law Interacting XXZ Models with Disorder

While spin squeezing has been traditionally considered in all-to-all interacting models, recent works have shown that it can also occur in systems with power-law interactions, enabling direct tests in Rydberg atoms, trapped ions, ultracold atoms, and nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond. For the latter, Wu et al. Nature 646 (2025) demonstrated that spin squeezing is heavily affected by positional disorder, reducing any capacity for a practical squeezing advantage, which requires scalability with the system size. In this Letter we explore the robustness of spin squeezing in two-dimensional lattices with a fraction of unoccupied lattice sites. Using semiclassical modeling, we demonstrate the existence of scalable squeezing in power-law interacting XXZ models up to a disorder threshold, above which squeezing is not scalable. We produce a phase diagram for scalable squeezing, and explain its absence in the aforementioned NV experiment. Our work illustrates the maximum disorder allowed for realizing scalable spin squeezing in a host of quantum simulators, highlights a regime with substantial tolerance to disorder, and identifies controlled defect creation as a promising route for scalable squeezing in solid-state systems.

quant-ph

Virus Spreading in Quantum Networks

Recent advances in quantum communication have enabled long-distance secure information transfer through quantum channels, giving rise to quantum networks with unique physical and statistical properties. However, as in classical networks, the propagation of viruses in these systems could have severe consequences. Here, we investigate the critical problem of virus spreading in quantum networks. We develop quantitative tools, particularly a modified nonlinear dynamical system model, for performing epidemiological analyses on quantum networks. Our results show that quantum networks tend to be more resilient to viral infections, exhibiting higher epidemic thresholds than classical networks with identical graph topologies. This apparent robustness, however, arises primarily from the sparser connectivity inherent to the quantum networks. When the comparison is made at a fixed average connectivity, classical and quantum networks display comparable epidemic thresholds. These findings provide key insights into the security and reliability of future large-scale quantum communication systems. Our work bridges the fields of quantum information science, network theory, and epidemiology, paving the way for future studies of quantum epidemiological dynamics.

quant-ph

Electron Lateral Trapping Induced by Non-Uniform Thickness in Solid Neon Layers

Recent experimental advances highlight electron charge qubits floating above solid neon as an emerging promising platform for quantum computing, but the physical origin of single-electron lateral trapping is still not fully understood. While prior theoretical work has mainly examined electrons above bulk solid neon, experimental systems usually feature neon layers of only $\lesssim 10$ nm thickness and non-uniformity, highlighting unresolved questions about how thickness influences electron trapping. Here we theoretically investigate the effect of finite thickness and non-uniformity of solid neon layers on electron trapping. For a 10 nm layer, the electron binding energy is enhanced threefold compared to bulk. Exploiting this thickness dependence, we propose a nanopatterned-substrate mechanism in which engineered thickness variations generate lateral trapping potentials for electrons. The lateral trapping potential can be finely tuned by a perpendicular electric field. Such non-uniform-thickness induced electron charge qubits open a viable pathway toward building multi-qubit systems for quantum computation.

quant-ph

Coherent matter wave emission from an atomtronic transistor

The atomtronic matter-wave triple-well transistor is theoretically predicted to exhibit current gain and act as a coherent matter-wave emitter. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of an atomtronic transistor composed of a triple-well potential -- source, gate, and drain -- modeled by the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We systematically explore the dependence of the drain population and the current on the source bias potential and the strength of the interatomic interaction. Our simulations reveal signatures of resonant tunneling when the source chemical potential aligns with discrete energy levels in the gate well, leading to coherent matter-wave emission in the drain. Contrary to previous many-body studies that predicted interaction-induced current gain via coupling to gate well modes, our results suggest that coherence in the drain is primarily governed by single-particle resonances, with no evident broadening from nonlinear coupling.

cond-mat.quant-gas

Bichromatic Moir\'{e} Superlattices for Tunable Quadrupolar Trions and Correlated States

Moir\'{e} superlattices in transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures provide a platform to engineer many-body interactions. Here, we realize a bichromatic moir\'{e} superlattice in an asymmetric WSe$_2$/WS$_2$/WSe$_2$ heterotrilayer by combining R- and H-stacked bilayers with mismatched moir\'{e} wavelengths. This structure hosts fermionic quadrupolar moir\'{e} trions -- interlayer excitons bound to an opposite-layer hole -- with vanishing dipole moments. These trions arise from hybridized moir\'{e} potentials enabling multiple excitonic orbitals with tunable interlayer coupling, allowing control of excitonic and electronic ground states. We show that an out-of-plane electric field could effectively reshape moir\'{e} excitons and interlayer-intralayer electron correlations, driving a transition from interlayer to intralayer Mott states with enhanced Coulomb repulsion. The asymmetric stacking further enriches excitonic selection rules, broadening opportunities for spin-photon engineering. Our results demonstrate bichromatic moir\'{e} superlattices as a reconfigurable platform for emergent quantum states, where quadrupolar moir\'{e} trion emission may enable coherent and entangled quantum light manipulation.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Cold atomic ensembles as quantum antennas for distributed networks of single-atom arrays

Single neutral atoms in optical tweezer arrays offer a promising platform for high-fidelity quantum computing at local nodes. Nonetheless, creating entanglement between remote nodes in a distributed quantum network remains challenging due to inherently weak atom-light coupling. Here, we design a distributed quantum network architecture in which cold atomic ensembles with strong atom-light interactions act as quantum antennas, interfacing single-atom qubits with flying photons to enable high-efficiency atom-photon entanglement generation -- analogous to the role of antennas in classical communication. Using realistic experimental parameters, we estimate an efficiency of $\eta \simeq 0.548$ for generating atom-photon entanglement, a probability of $P_{E} \simeq 6 \%$ for generating atom-atom entanglement, and a remote entanglement generation rate of $16.6 $ kHz. This performance not only surpasses that of state-of-the-art cavity-based or high-numerical-aperture-lens-based architectures but also offers notable advantages in simplicity, tunability, and experimental accessibility. Our scheme also integrates a long-lived quantum memory, providing a storage advantage for quantum repeater design. By leveraging the complementary strengths of single-atom qubits for local operations and cold atomic ensembles for networking, this approach paves the way for scalable distributed quantum computing and sensing.

quant-ph

Simultaneous Determination of Local Magnetic Fields and Sensor Orientation with Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Nanodiamond

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in nanodiamonds have emerged as a promising quantum sensing platform for biomedical imaging applications, yet random orientations of individual particles present significant challenges in large-scale sensor calibration. In this study, we demonstrate a novel approach to simultaneously determine each particle's crystallographic axes and the surrounding local vector magnetic field. Specifically, a minimum of four distinct bias fields is required to unambiguously extract both the orientation and the local field. We validate our method experimentally using NV centers in two scenarios: (1) in a bulk diamond with known crystal orientation as a proof of concept, and (2) on various single nanodiamonds to mimic real-world applications. Our work represents a crucial step towards unlocking the full potential of nanodiamonds for advanced applications such as in-situ biomedical imaging and nanoscale sensing in complex environments.

quant-ph

Universal Reconstruction of Complex Magnetic Profiles with Minimum Prior Assumptions

Understanding intricate magnetic structures in materials is essential for advancing materials science, spintronics, and geology. Recent developments of quantum-enabled magnetometers, such as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, have enabled direct imaging of magnetic field distributions across a wide range of magnetic profiles. However, reconstructing the magnetization from an experimentally measured magnetic field map is a complex inverse problem, further complicated by measurement noise, finite spatial resolution, and variations in sample-to-sensor distance. In this work, we present a novel and efficient GPU-accelerated method for reconstructing spatially varying magnetization density from measured magnetic fields with minimal prior assumptions. We validate our method by simulating diverse magnetic structures under realistic experimental conditions, including multi-domain ferromagnetism and magnetic spin textures such as skyrmion, anti-skyrmion, and meron. Experimentally, we reconstruct the magnetization of a micrometer-scale Apollo lunar mare basalt (sample 10003,184) and a nanometer-scale twisted double-trilayer CrI3. The basalt exhibits soft ferromagnetic domains consistent with previous paleomagnetic studies, whereas the CrI3 system reveals a well-defined hexagonal magnetic Moire superlattice. Our approach provides a versatile and universal tool for investigating complex magnetization profiles, paving the way for future quantum sensing experiments.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Dynamical Transition of Quantum Vortex-Pair Annihilation in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Understanding the elementary mechanism for the dissipation of vortex energy in quantum liquids is one central issue in quantum hydrodynamics, such as quantum turbulence in systems ranging from neutron stars to atomic condensates. In a two-dimensional (2D) Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) at zero temperature, besides the vortex drift-out process from the boundary, vortex-antivortex pair can annihilate in the bulk, but controversy remains on the number of vortices involved in the annihilation process. We find there exists a dynamical transition from four-body to three-body vortex annihilation processes with the time evolution in a boundary-less uniform quasi-2D BEC. Such dynamical transition depends on the initial vortex pair density, and occurs when the sound waves generated in the vortex annihilation process surpass a critical energy. With the confinement along the third direction is relaxed in a quasi-2D BEC, the critical sound wave energy decreases due to the 3D vortex line curve and reconnection, shifting the dynamical transition to the early time. Our work reveals an elementary mechanism for the dissipation of vortex energy that may help understand exotic matter and dynamics in quantum liquids.

cond-mat.quant-gas

Phases and phase transition in Grover's algorithm with systematic noise

While limitations on quantum computation by Markovian environmental noise are well-understood in generality, their behavior for different quantum circuits and noise realizations can be less universal. Here we consider a canonical quantum algorithm - Grover's algorithm for unordered search on $L$ qubits - in the presence of systematic noise. This allows us to write the behavior as a random Floquet unitary, which we show is well-characterized by random matrix theory (RMT). The RMT analysis enables analytical predictions for phases and phase transitions of the many-body dynamics. We find two separate transitions. At moderate disorder $\delta_{c,\mathrm{gap}}\sim L^{-1}$, there is a ergodicity breaking transition such that a finite-dimensional manifold remains non-ergodic for $\delta < \delta_{c,\mathrm{gap}}$. Computational power is lost at a much smaller disorder, $\delta_{c,\mathrm{comp}} \sim L^{-1/2}2^{-L/2}$. We comment on relevance to non-systematic noise in realistic quantum computers, including cold atom, trapped ion, and superconducting platforms.

quant-ph

Observation of Momentum Space Josephson Effects

The momentum space Josephson effect describes the supercurrent flow between weakly coupled Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) at two discrete momentum states. Here, we experimentally observe this exotic phenomenon using a BEC with Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling, where the tunneling between two local band minima is implemented by the momentum kick of an additional optical lattice. A sudden quench of the Raman detuning induces coherent spin-momentum oscillations of the BEC, which is analogous to the a.c. Josephson effect. We observe both plasma and regular Josephson oscillations in different parameter regimes. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical model and numerical simulation, and showcase the important role of nonlinear interactions. We also show that the measurement of the Josephson plasma frequency gives the Bogoliubov zero quasimomentum gap, which determines the mass of the corresponding pseudo-Goldstone mode, a long-sought phenomenon in particle physics. The observation of momentum space Josephson physics offers an exciting platform for quantum simulation and sensing utilizing momentum states as a synthetic degree.

cond-mat.quant-gas

Scaling of quantum Fisher information for quantum exceptional point sensors

In recent years, significant progress has been made in utilizing the divergence of spectrum response rate at the exceptional point (EP) for sensing in classical systems, while the use and characterization of quantum EPs for sensing have been largely unexplored. For a quantum EP sensor, an important issue is the relation between the order of the quantum EP and the scaling of quantum Fisher information (QFI), an essential quantity for characterizing quantum sensors. Here we investigate multi-mode quadratic bosonic systems, which exhibit higher-order EP dynamics, but possess Hermitian Hamiltonians without Langevin noise, thus can be utilized for quantum sensing. We derive an exact analytic formula for the QFI, from which we establish a scaling relation between the QFI and the order of the EP. We apply the formula to study a three-mode EP sensor and a multi-mode bosonic Kitaev chain and show that the EP physics can significantly enhance the sensing sensitivity. Our work establishes the connection between two important fields: non-Hermitian EP dynamics and quantum sensing, and may find important applications in quantum information and quantum non-Hermitian physics.

quant-ph

Stark Effects of Rydberg Excitons in a Monolayer WSe2 P-N Junction

The enhanced Coulomb interaction in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors leads to the tightly bound electron-hole pairs known as excitons. The large binding energy of excitons enables the formation of Rydberg excitons with high principal quantum numbers (n), analogous to Rydberg atoms. Rydberg excitons possess strong interactions among themselves, as well as sensitive responses to external stimuli. Here, we probe Rydberg exciton resonances through photocurrent spectroscopy in a monolayer WSe2 p-n junction formed by a split-gate geometry. We show that an external in-plane electric field not only induces a large Stark shift of Rydberg excitons up to quantum principal number n=3 but also mixes different orbitals and brightens otherwise dark states such as 3p and 3d. Our study provides an exciting platform for engineering Rydberg excitons for new quantum states and quantum sensing.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Four-wave mixing with anti-parity-time symmetry in hot $^{85}$Rb vapor

We report an experimental demonstration of anti-parity-time (anti-PT) symmetric optical four-wave mixing in thermal Rubidium vapor, where the propagation of two conjugate optical fields in a double-$Λ$ scheme is governed by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We are particularly interested in studying quantum intensity correlations between the two conjugate fields near the exceptional point, taking into account loss and accompanied Langevin noise. Our experimental measurements of classical four-wave mixing gain and the associated two-mode relative-intensity squeezing are in reasonable agreement with the theoretical predictions.

quant-ph

Exciton Superposition across Moiré States in a Semiconducting Moiré Superlattice

Moiré superlattices of semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) enable unprecedented spatial control of electron wavefunctions in an artificial lattice with periodicities more than ten times larger than that of atomic crystals, leading to emerging quantum states with fascinating electronic and optical properties. The breaking of translational symmetry further introduces a new degree of freedom inside each moiré unit cell: high symmetry points of energy minima called moiré sites, behaving as spatially separated quantum dots. The superposition of a quasiparticle wavefunction between different moiré sites will enable a new platform for quantum information processing but is hindered by the suppressed electron tunneling between moiré sites. Here we demonstrate the superposition between two moiré sites by constructing an angle-aligned trilayer WSe2/monolayer WS2 moiré heterojunction. The two moiré sites with energy minimum allow the formation of two different interlayer excitons, with the hole residing in either moiré site of the first WSe2 layer interfacing the WS2 layer and the electron in the third WSe2 layer. An external electric field can drive the hybridization of either of the interlayer excitons with the intralayer excitons in the third WSe2 layer, realizing the continuous tuning of interlayer exciton hopping between two moiré sites. Therefore, a superposition of the two interlayer excitons localized at different moiré sites can be realized, which can be resolved in the electric-field-dependent optical reflectance spectra, distinctly different from that of the natural trilayer WSe2 in which the moiré modulation is absent. Our study illustrates a strategy of harnessing the new moiré site degree of freedom for quantum information science, a new direction of twistronics.

cond-mat.mes-hall