arXiv subjects

Itay Shomroni

Publications and source records attributed to Itay Shomroni.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Route to hyperchaos in quadratic optomechanics

Hyperchaos is a qualitatively stronger form of chaos, in which several degrees of freedom contribute simultaneously to exponential divergence of small changes. A hyperchaotic dynamical system is therefore even more unpredictable than a chaotic one, and has a higher fractal dimension. While hyperchaos has been studied extensively over the last decades, only a few experimental systems are known to exhibit hyperchaotic dynamics. Here we introduce hyperchaos in the context of cavity optomechanics, in which light inside an optical resonator interacts with a suspended oscillating mass. We show that hyperchaos can arise in optomechanical systems with quadratic coupling and is well within reach of current experiments. We compute the two positive Lyapunov exponents, characteristic of hyperchaos, and independently verify the correlation dimension. We also identify a possible mechanism for the emergence of hyperchaos. As systems designed for high-precision measurements, optomechanical systems enable direct measurement of all four dynamical variables and therefore the full reconstruction of the hyperchaotic attractor. Our results may contribute to better understanding of nonlinear systems and the chaos-hyperchaos transition, and allow the study of hyperchaos in the quantum regime.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2022

Dissipative Quantum Feedback in Measurements Using a Parametrically Coupled Microcavity

Micro- and nanoscale optical or microwave cavities are used in a wide range of classical applications and quantum science experiments, ranging from precision measurements, laser technologies to quantum control of mechanical motion. The dissipative photon loss via absorption, present to some extent in any optical cavity, is known to introduce thermo-optical effects and thereby impose fundamental limits on precision measurements. Here, we theoretically and experimentally reveal that such dissipative photon absorption can result in quantum feedback via in-loop field detection of the absorbed optical field, leading to the intracavity field fluctuations to be squashed or antisquashed. Strikingly, this modifies the optical cavity susceptibility in coherent response measurements and causes excess noise and correlations in incoherent interferometric optomechanical measurements using a cavity. We experimentally observe such unanticipated dissipative dynamics in optomechanical spectroscopy of sideband-cooled optomechanical crystal cavitiess at both cryogenic temperature (approximately 8 K) and ambient conditions. The dissipative feedback introduces effective modifications to the optical cavity linewidth and the optomechanical scattering rate and gives rise to excess imprecision noise in the interferometric quantum measurement of mechanical motion. Such dissipative feedback differs fundamentally from a quantum nondemolition feedback, e.g., optical Kerr squeezing. The dissipative feedback itself always results in an antisqueezed out-of-loop optical field, while it can enhance the coexisting Kerr squeezing under certain conditions. Our result has wide-ranging implications for future dissipation engineering, such as dissipation enhanced sideband cooling and Kerr squeezing, quantum frequency conversion, and nonreciprocity in photonic systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Cryogenic electro-optic interconnect for superconducting devices

Encoding information onto optical fields is the backbone of modern telecommunication networks. Optical fibers offer low loss transport and vast bandwidth compared to electrical cables, and are currently also replacing coaxial cables for short-range communications. Optical fibers also exhibit significantly lower thermal conductivity, making optical interconnects attractive for interfacing with superconducting circuits and devices. Yet little is known about modulation at cryogenic temperatures. Here we demonstrate a proof-of-principle experiment, showing that currently employed Ti-doped LiNbO modulators maintain the Pockels coefficient at 3K---a base temperature for classical microwave amplifier circuitry. We realize electro-optical read-out of a superconducting electromechanical circuit to perform both coherent spectroscopy, measuring optomechanically-induced transparency, and incoherent thermometry, encoding the thermomechanical sidebands in an optical signal. Although the achieved noise figures are high, approaches that match the lower-bandwidth microwave signals, use integrated devices or materials with higher EO coefficient, should achieve added noise similar to current HEMT amplifiers, providing a route to parallel readout for emerging quantum or classical computing platforms.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Optomechanical generation of a mechanical catlike state by phonon subtraction

We propose a scheme to prepare a macroscopic mechanical oscillator in a catlike state, close to a coherent state superposition. The mechanical oscillator, coupled by radiation-pressure interaction to a field in an optical cavity, is first prepared close to a squeezed vacuum state using a reservoir engineering technique. The system is then probed using a short optical pulse tuned to the lower motional sideband of the cavity resonance, realizing a photon-phonon swap interaction. A photon number measurement of the photons emerging from the cavity then conditions a phonon-subtracted catlike state with a negative Wigner distribution exhibiting separated peaks and multiple interference fringes. We show that this scheme is feasible using state-of-the-art photonic crystal optomechanical system.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Laser cooling of a nanomechanical oscillator to the zero-point energy

Optomechanical cavities in the well-resolved-sideband regime are ideally suited for the study of a myriad of quantum phenomena with mechanical systems, including backaction-evading measurements, mechanical squeezing, and generation of non-classical states. For these experiments, the mechanical oscillator should be prepared in its ground state; residual motion beyond the zero-point motion must be negligible. The requisite cooling of the mechanical motion can be achieved using the radiation pressure of light in the cavity by selectively driving the anti-Stokes optomechanical transition. To date, however, laser-absorption heating of optical systems far into the resolved-sideband regime has prohibited strong driving. For deep ground-state cooling, previous studies have therefore resorted to passive cooling in dilution refrigerators. Here, we employ a highly sideband-resolved silicon optomechanical crystal in a $^3$He buffer gas environment at $\sim 2\text{K}$ to demonstrate laser sideband cooling to a mean thermal occupancy of $0.09_{-0.01}^{+0.02}$ quantum (self-calibrated using motional sideband asymmetry), which is $-7.4\text{dB}$ of the oscillator's zero-point energy and corresponds to 92% ground state probability. Achieving such low occupancy by laser cooling opens the door to a wide range of quantum-optomechanical experiments in the optical domain.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Two-Tone Optomechanical Instability and Its Fundamental Implications for Backaction-Evading Measurements

While quantum mechanics imposes a fundamental limit on the precision of interferometric measurements of mechanical motion due to measurement backaction, the nonlinear nature of the coupling also leads to parametric instabilities that place practical limits on the sensitivity by limiting the power in the interferometer. Such instabilities have been extensively studied in the context of gravitational wave detectors, and their presence has recently been reported in Advanced LIGO. Here, we observe experimentally and describe theoretically a new type of optomechanical instability that arises in two-tone backaction-evading (BAE) measurements, designed to overcome the standard quantum limit, and demonstrate the effect in the optical domain with a photonic crystal nanobeam, and in the microwave domain with a micromechanical oscillator coupled to a microwave resonator. In contrast to the well-known oscillatory parametric instability that occurs in single-tone, blue-detuned pumping, which is characterized by a vanishing effective mechanical damping, the parametric instability in balanced two-tone optomechanics is exponential, and is a result of small detuning errors in the two pump frequencies. Its origin can be understood in a rotating frame as the vanishing of the effective mechanical frequency due to an optical spring effect. Counterintuitively, the instability occurs even in the presence of perfectly balanced intracavity fields, and can occur for both signs of detuning. We find excellent quantitative agreement with our theoretical predictions. Since the constraints on tuning accuracy become stricter with increasing probe power, it imposes a fundamental limitation on BAE measurements, as well as other two-tone schemes. In addition to introducing a new limitation in two-tone BAE measurements, the results also introduce a new type of nonlinear dynamics in cavity optomechanics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Floquet dynamics in quantum measurement of mechanical motion

The radiation-pressure interaction between one or more laser fields and a mechanical oscillator gives rise to a wide range of phenomena: from sideband cooling and backaction-evading measurements to pondermotive and mechanical squeezing to entanglement and motional sideband asymmetry. In many protocols, such as dissipative mechanical squeezing, multiple lasers are utilized, giving rise to periodically driven optomechanical systems. Here we show that in this case, Floquet dynamics can arise due to presence of Kerr-type nonlinearities, which are ubiqitious in optomechanical systems. Specifically, employing multiple probe tones, we perform sideband asymmetry measurements, a macroscopic quantum effect, on a silicon optomechanical crystal sideband-cooled to 40% ground-state occupation. We show that the Floquet dynamics, resulting from the presence of multiple pump tones, gives rise to an artificially modified motional sideband asymmetry by redistributing thermal and quantum fluctuations among the initially independently scattered thermomechanical sidebands. For pump tones exhibiting large frequency separation, the dynamics is suppressed and accurate quantum noise thermometry demonstrated. We develop a theoretical model based on Floquet theory that accurately describes our observations. The resulting dynamics can be understood as resulting from a synthetic gauge field among the Fourier modes, which is created by the phase lag of the Kerr-type response. This novel phenomenon has wide-ranging implications for schemes utilizing several pumping tones, as commonly employed in backaction-evading measurements, dissipative optical squeezing, dissipative mechanical squeezing and quantum noise thermometry. Our observation may equally well be used for optomechanical Floquet engineering, e.g. generation of topological phases of sound by periodic time-modulation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Optical Backaction-Evading Measurement of a Mechanical Oscillator

Quantum mechanics imposes a limit on the precision of a continuous position measurement of a harmonic oscillator, as a result of quantum backaction arising from quantum fluctuations in the measurement field. A variety of techniques to surpass this standard quantum limit have been proposed, such as variational measurements, stroboscopic quantum non-demolition and two tone backaction-evading (BAE) measurements. The latter proceed by monitoring only one of the two non-commuting quadratures of the motion. This technique, originally proposed in the context of gravitational wave detection, has not been implemented using optical interferometers to date. Here we demonstrate continuous two-tone backaction-evading measurement in the optical domain of a localized GHz frequency mechanical mode of a photonic crystal nanobeam cryogenically and optomechanically cooled in a $^3$He buffer gas cryostat close to the ground state. Employing quantum-limited optical heterodyne detection, we explicitly show the transition from conventional to backaction-evading measurement. We observe up to 0.67 dB (14%) reduction of total measurement noise, thereby demonstrating the viability of BAE measurements for optical ultrasensitive measurements of motion and force in nanomechanical resonators.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Extraction of a single photon from an optical pulse

Removing a single photon from a pulse is one of the most elementary operations that can be performed on light, having both fundamental significance and practical applications in quantum communication and computation. So far, photon subtraction, in which the removed photon is detected and therefore irreversibly lost, has been implemented in a probabilistic manner with inherently low success rates using low-reflectivity beam splitters. Here we demonstrate a scheme for the deterministic extraction of a single photon from an incoming pulse. The removed photon is diverted to a different mode, enabling its use for other purposes, such as a photon number-splitting attack on quantum key distribution protocols. Our implementation makes use of single-photon Raman interaction (SPRINT) with a single atom near a nanofibre-coupled microresonator. The single-photon extraction probability in our current realization is limited mostly by linear loss, yet probabilities close to unity should be attainable with realistic experimental parameters.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

All-Optical Routing of Single Photons by a One-Atom Switch Controlled by a Single Photon

The prospect of quantum networks, in which quantum information is carried by single photons in photonic circuits, has long been the driving force behind the effort to achieve all-optical routing of single photons. Here we realize the most basic unit of such a photonic circuit: a single-photon activated switch, capable of routing a photon from any of its two inputs to any of its two outputs. Our device is based on a single 87Rb atom coupled to a fiber-coupled, chip-based microresonator, and is completely all-optical, requiring no other fields beside the in-fiber single-photon pulses. Nonclassical statistics of the control pulse confirm that a single reflected photon toggles the switch from high reflection (65%) to high transmission (90%), with average of ~1.5 control photons per switching event (~3 including linear losses). The fact that the control and target photons are both in-fiber and practically identical makes this scheme compatible with scalable architectures for quantum information processing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

Demonstration of fold and cusp catastrophes in an atomic cloud reflected from an optical barrier in the presence of gravity

We experimentally demonstrate first-order (fold) and second-order (cusp) catastrophes in the density of an atomic cloud reflected from an optical barrier in the presence of gravity, and show their corresponding universal asymptotic behavior. The cusp point enables robust, field-free refocusing of an expanding atomic cloud with a wide velocity distribution. Specifically, the density attained at the cusp point in our experiment reached 65% of the peak density of the atoms in the trap prior to their release. We thereby add caustics to the various phenomena with parallels in optics that can be harnessed for manipulation of cold atoms. The structural stability of catastrophes provides inherent robustness against variations in the system's dynamics and initial conditions, making them suitable for manipulation of atoms under imperfect conditions and limited controllability.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2013

Demonstration of Weak Measurement Based on Atomic Spontaneous Emission

We demonstrate a new type of weak measurement based on the dynamics of spontaneous emission. The pointer in our scheme is given by the Lorentzian distribution characterizing atomic exponential decay via emission of a single photon. We thus introduce weak measurement, so far demonstrated nearly exclusively with laser beams and Gaussian statistics, into the quantum regime of single emitters and single quanta, enabling the exploitation of a wide class of sources that are abundant in nature. We describe a complete analogy between our scheme and weak measurement with conventional Gaussian pointers. Instead of a shift in the mean of a Gaussian distribution, an imaginary weak value is exhibited in our scheme by a significantly slower-than-natural exponential distribution of emitted photons at the postselected polarization, leading to a large shift in their mean arrival time. The dynamics of spontaneous emission offer a broader view of the measurement process than is usually considered within the weak measurement formalism. Our scheme opens the path for the use of atoms and atomlike systems as sensitive probes in weak measurements, one example being optical magnetometry.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

Weak Values Technique for Velocity Measurements

In a recent letter, Brunner and Simon propose an interferometric scheme using imaginary weak values with a frequency-domain analysis to outperform standard interferometry in longitudinal phase shifts [N. Brunner and C. Simon, Phys. Rev. Lett {\bf105} (2010)]. Here we demonstrate an interferometric scheme combined with a time-domain analysis to measure longitudinal velocities. The technique employs the near-destructive interference of non-Fourier limited pulses, one Doppler shifted due to a moving mirror, in a Michelson interferometer. We achieve a velocity measurement of 400 fm/s and show our estimator to be efficient by reaching its Cramér-Rao bound.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2008

Density engineering of an oscillating soliton/vortex ring in a Bose-Einstein condensate

When two Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC's) collide with high collisional energy, the celebrated matter wave interference pattern results. For lower collisional energies the repulsive interaction energy becomes significant, and the interference pattern evolves into an array of grey solitons. The lowest collisional energy, producing a single pair of solitons, has not been probed. We use density engineering on the healing length scale to produce such a pair of solitons. These solitons then evolve periodically between vortex rings and solitons, which we image in-situ on the healing length scale. The stable, periodic evolution is in sharp contrast to the behavior of previous experiments, in which the solitons decay irreversibly into vortex rings via the snake instability. The evolution can be understood in terms of conservation of mass and energy in a narrow condensate. The periodic oscillation between two qualitatively different forms seems to be a rare phenomenon in nature.

cond-mat.other↗