arXiv subjects

H. R. Kong

Publications and source records attributed to H. R. Kong.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2021

Melting a Rydberg ice to a topological spin liquid with cavity vacuum fluctuation

Quantum spin liquids are exotic phases of matter that are prevented from being frozen even at zero temperature, and appear disordered by local probes that monitor the subsystems. Driven by quantum fluctuations, topological spin liquids are manifested by their long-range entanglement, and are characterized by quasiparticles with fractional statistics. Here, we make contact of a 2D Rydberg ice to a QED vacuum of an ultra-high-finesse optical cavity, and dynamically promote the frustrated background field of the spin ice to a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ spin liquid. We characterize the deconfined nature of the dynamical gauge theory residing in the strongly-correlated Rydberg matter with Wilsonian loops. We observe the proliferation of vison and spinon pairs by site-resolved fluorescence imaging, and detect the exchange statistical angle $θ_{\text{top}}\simπ/2$ between the two anyons by monitoring the dynamical correlators of the fluctuating cavity photons. Our work provides the first microscopic detection of anyons in a topological quantum matter, and heralds the arrival of strongly-coupled many-body QED, where interacting matter and light are put on equal footing at the level of individual quanta.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Physical limits of ultra-high-finesse optical cavities: Taming two-level systems of glassy metal oxides

The framework of tunnelling states in amorphous media provides the dissipative mechanism that imposes fundamental limits on the performances of ultra-high-Q optical and microwave resonators. In the optical domain, however, the microscopic nature of the tunnelling states and their direct consequences to the optical losses have not been characterized. In this work, we examine the interplay between glassy physics and stoichiometric point defects of ultra-low-loss dielectric mirrors, with a focus on two-level systems of oxygen defects in metal oxide, Ta$_2$O$_5$. In the context of ultra-high-finesse optical cavities, we characterize the Urbach tail of Ta$_2$O$_5$ under thermal annealing and reactive oxygen plasma. For the first time, we microscopically resolve the individual oxygen point defects on the mirror surfaces and introduce laser-assisted annealing to selectively "cure" surface defects. By exploiting these techniques, we report the realization of ultra-high-finesse optical cavity with finesse $\mathcal{F}=450,000$ and the absorption-scatter loss $ 0.1 \pm 0.2$ ppm at $852$ nm.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Waveguide QED toolboxes for universal quantum matter

An exciting frontier in quantum information science is the realization and control of complex quantum many-body systems. Hybrid nanophotonic system with cold atoms has emerged as the paradigmatic platform for engineering long-range spin models from the bottom up, exploiting their modal geometry and group dispersion for tailored interactions. An important challenge is the physical limitation imposed by the photonic bath, constraining the types of local Hamiltonians that decompose the available physical models and restricting the spatial dimensions to that of the dielectric media. However, at the nanoscopic scale, atom-field interaction inherently accompanies significant driven-dissipative quantum forces that may be tamed as a new form of a mediator for controlling the atomic internal states. Here, we formulate a quantum optics toolbox for constructing a universal quantum matter with individual atoms in the vicinity of 1D photonic crystal waveguides. The enabling platform synthesizes analog quantum materials of universal $2$-local Hamiltonian graphs mediated by phononic superfluids of the trapped atoms. We generalize our microscopic theory of analog universal quantum simulator to the development of dynamical gauge fields. In the spirit of gauge theories, we investigate emergent lattice models for strongly coupled SU$(n)$-constrained excitations driven by an underlying multi-body interaction. As a minimal model in the infrared, we explore the realization of an archetypical strong coupling quantum field theory, SU($n$) Wess-Zumino-Witten model, and discuss a diagnostic tool to extract the entire conformal data of the field theory by the static and dynamical correlators of the fluctuating photons in the guided mode.

quant-ph↗