arXiv subjects

J. Twamley

Publications and source records attributed to J. Twamley.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Levitation of a YIG sphere using a magnetic Paul trap - towards strongly coupled quantum magno-mechanics

Magnetic levitation offer passive levitation of massive objects for use in advanced inertia sensors, for the generation of non-classical macroscopic motional states, and towards the table-top testing of low energy gravity with quantum mechanics. Magnons, a quanta of spin wave, couple to many physical quantities and strongly to electromagnetic fields, even at room temperature. In this work we demonstrate the stable trapping of a small YIG sphere using a magnetic Paul trap. We present a classical stability analysis of a magnetic Paul trap and show the stability diagram for all mechanical degrees of freedom. We show that coupling between librational and translational modes changes the stability region. We experimentally levitate the soft magnet yttrium iron garnet at room temperature obtaining Q-factors of $\sim25$ and secular frequencies $15.8$ Hz and $17.2$ Hz. We provide numerical estimates of the achievable enhanced coupling between the center-of-mass motion and excited magnon modes, with a cooperativity above unity despite strong mechanical damping, indicating potential applications in quantum information processing, quantum interconnects and quantum memories.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Feedback Cooling of an Insulating High-Q Diamagnetically Levitated Plate

Levitated systems in vacuum have many potential applications ranging from new types of inertial and magnetic sensors through to fundamental issues in quantum science, the generation of massive Schrodinger cats, and the connections between gravity and quantum physics. In this work, we demonstrate the passive, diamagnetic levitation of a centimeter-sized massive oscillator which is fabricated using a novel method that ensures that the material, though highly diamagnetic, is an electrical insulator. By chemically coating a powder of microscopic graphite beads with silica and embedding the coated powder in high-vacuum compatible wax, we form a centimeter-sized thin square plate which magnetically levitates over a checkerboard magnet array. The insulating coating reduces eddy damping by almost an order of magnitude compared to uncoated graphite with the same particle size. These plates exhibit a different equilibrium orientation to pyrolytic graphite due to their isotropic magnetic susceptibility. We measure the motional quality factor to be Q~1.58*10^5 for an approximately centimeter-sized composite resonator with a mean particle size of 12 microns. Further, we apply delayed feedback to cool the vertical motion of frequency ~19 Hz from room temperature to 320 millikelvin.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Shape deformation of magnetically levitated fluid droplets

Diamagnetic levitation can provide a completely passive method to support materials against the pull of gravity, and researchers have levitated both solids and fluids. Such levitation can be assisted by increasing the magnetic susceptibility contrast by using a surrounding paramagnetic medium and through buoyancy forces, known as magneto-Archimedean levitation. The magneto-Archimedean levitation of solids has proved useful in chemistry and biology. However, the levitation of fluid droplets has an additional interest because the fluid droplet's shape can deform. We perform experiments and simulations to gauge the squashing or eccentricity of the static magnetically levitated fluid droplet. By carefully characterizing all the parameters affecting the droplet's levitation, using image analysis to estimate the droplet's eccentricity, and using finite element adaptive simulations to find the lowest energy droplet shape, we find good agreement between the simulations and experimental results. As a potential application, we show that the droplet's eccentricity can be used to perform magnetic gradiometry with a potential resolution of $S\sim 8\,{\rm nT/cm}$, over a volume of 10 mm$^3$, which is competitive with other room-temperature magnetic gradiometer techniques.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2017

Optomechanics with a position-modulated Kerr-type nonlinear coupling

Cavity optomechanics has proven to be a field of research rich with possibilities for studying motional cooling, squeezing, quantum entanglement and metrology in solid state systems. While to date most studies have focused on the modulation of the cavity frequency by the moving element, the emergence of new materials will soon allow to explore the influences of nonlinear optical effects. We therefore study in this work the effects due to a nonlinear position-modulated self-Kerr interaction and find that this leads to an effective coupling that scales with the square of the photon number, meaning that significant effects appear even for very small nonlinearities. This strong effective coupling can lead to lower powers required for motional cooling and the appearance of multi-stability in certain regimes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Optical Cryocooling of Diamond

The cooling of solids by optical means only using anti-Stokes emission has a long history of research and achievements. Such cooling methods have many advantages ranging from no-moving parts or fluids through to operation in vacuum and may have applications to cryosurgery. However achieving large optical cryocooling powers has been difficult to achieve except in certain rare-earth crystals. Through study of the emission and absorption cross sections we find that diamond, containing either NV or SiV (Nitrogen or Silicon vacancy), defects shows potential for optical cryocooling and in particular, NV doping shows promise for optical refrigeration. We study the optical cooling of doped diamond microcrystals ranging 10-250 microns in diameter trapped either in vacuum or in water. For the vacuum case we find NV-doped microdiamond optical cooling below room temperature could exceed 10 Kelvin, for irradiation powers of P< 100 mW. We predict that such temperature changes should be easily observed via large alterations in the diffusion constant for optically cryocooled microdiamonds trapped in water in an optical tweezer or via spectroscopic signatures such as the ZPL width or Raman line.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Exploring the quantum critical behaviour in a driven Tavis-Cummings circuit

Quantum phase transitions play an important role in many-body systems and have been a research focus in conventional condensed matter physics over the past few decades. Artificial atoms, such as superconducting qubits that can be individually manipulated, provide a new paradigm of realising and exploring quantum phase transitions by engineering an on-chip quantum simulator. Here we demonstrate experimentally the quantum critical behaviour in a highly-controllable superconducting circuit, consisting of four qubits coupled to a common resonator mode. By off-resonantly driving the system to renormalise the critical spin-field coupling strength, we have observed a four-qubit non-equilibrium quantum phase transition in a dynamical manner, i.e., we sweep the critical coupling strength over time and monitor the four-qubit scaled moments for a signature of a structural change of the system's eigenstates. Our observation of the non-equilibrium quantum phase transition, which is in good agreement with the driven Tavis-Cummings theory under decoherence, offers new experimental approaches towards exploring quantum phase transition related science, such as scaling behaviours, parity breaking and long-range quantum correlations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2012

Novel Collective Effects in Integrated Photonics

Superradiance, the enhanced collective emission of energy from a coherent ensemble of quantum systems, has been typically studied in atomic ensembles. In this work we study theoretically the enhanced emission of energy from coherent ensembles of harmonic oscillators. We show that it should be possible to observe harmonic oscillator superradiance for the first time in waveguide arrays in integrated photonics. Furthermore, we describe how pairwise correlations within the ensemble can be measured with this architecture. These pairwise correlations are an integral part of the phenomenon of superradiance and have never been observed in experiments to date.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Magneto-quantum-nanomechanics: ultra-high Q levitated mechanical oscillators

Engineering nano-mechanical quantum systems possessing ultra-long motional coherence times allow for applications in ultra-sensitive quantum sensing, motional quantum memories and motional interfaces between other carriers of quantum information such as photons, quantum dots and superconducting systems. To achieve ultra-high motional Q one must work hard to remove all forms of motional noise and heating. We examine a magneto-nanomechanical quantum system that consists of a 3D arrangement of miniature superconducting loops which is stably levitated in a static inhomogenous magnetic field. The resulting motional Q is limited by the tiny decay of the supercurrent in the loops and may reach up to Q~10^(10). We examine the classical and quantum dynamics of the levitating superconducting system and prove that it is stably trapped and can achieve motional oscillation frequencies of several tens of MHz. By inductively coupling this levitating object to a nearby flux qubit we further show that by driving the qubit one can cool the motion of the levitated object and in the case of resonance, this can cool the vertical motion of the object close to it's ground state.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Memory-Enhanced Noiseless Cross Phase Modulation

Using a gradient echo memory, we experimentally demonstrate cross phase modulation (XPM) between two optical pulses; one stored and one freely propagating through the memory medium. We explain how this idea can be extended to enable substantial nonlinear interaction between two single photons that are both stored in the memory. We present semi-classical and quantum simulations along with a proposed experimental scheme to demonstrate the feasibility of achieving large XPM at single photon level.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Nanoscale magnetometry using a single spin system in diamond

We propose a protocol to estimate magnetic fields using a single nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) center in diamond, where the estimate precision scales inversely with time, ~1/T$, rather than the square-root of time. The method is based on converting the task of magnetometry into phase estimation, performing quantum phase estimation on a single N-V nuclear spin using either adaptive or nonadaptive feedback control, and the recently demonstrated capability to perform single-shot readout within the N-V [P. Neumann et. al., Science 329, 542 (2010)]. We present numerical simulations to show that our method provides an estimate whose precision scales close to ~1/T (T is the total estimation time), and moreover will give an unambiguous estimate of the static magnetic field experienced by the N-V. By combining this protocol with recent proposals for scanning magnetometry using an N-V, our protocol will provide a significant decrease in signal acquisition time while providing an unambiguous spatial map of the magnetic field.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Two-photon quantum walks in an elliptical direct-write waveguide array

Integrated optics provides an ideal test bed for the emulation of quantum systems via continuous-time quantum walks. Here we study the evolution of two-photon states in an elliptic array of waveguides. We characterise the photonic chip via coherent-light tomography and use the results to predict distinct differences between temporally indistinguishable and distinguishable two-photon inputs which we then compare with experimental observations. Our work highlights the feasibility for emulation of coherent quantum phenomena in three-dimensional waveguide structures.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

Fault tolerant Quantum Information Processing with Holographic control

We present a fault-tolerant semi-global control strategy for universal quantum computers. We show that N-dimensional array of qubits where only (N-1)-dimensional addressing resolution is available is compatible with fault-tolerant universal quantum computation. What is more, we show that measurements and individual control of qubits are required only at the boundaries of the fault-tolerant computer, i.e. holographic fault-tolerant quantum computation. Our model alleviates the heavy physical conditions on current qubit candidates imposed by addressability requirements and represents an option to improve their scalability.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

Scalable quantum register based on coupled electron spins in a room temperature solid

Realization of devices based on quantum laws might lead to building processors that outperform their classical analogues and establishing unconditionally secure communication protocols. Solids do usually present a serious challenge to quantum coherence. However, owing to their spin-free lattice and low spin orbit coupling, carbon materials and particularly diamond are suitable for hosting robust solid state quantum registers. We show that scalable quantum logic elements can be realized by exploring long range magnetic dipolar coupling between individually addressable single electron spins associated with separate color centers in diamond. Strong distance dependence of coupling was used to characterize the separation of single qubits 98 A with unprecedented accuracy (3 A) close to a crystal lattice spacing. Our demonstration of coherent control over both electron spins, conditional dynamics, selective readout as well as switchable interaction, opens the way towards a room temperature solid state scalable quantum register. Since both electron spins are optically addressable, this solid state quantum device operating at ambient conditions provides a degree of control that is currently available only for atomic systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2009

A superconducting cavity bus for single Nitrogen Vacancy defect centres in diamond

Circuit-QED has demonstrated very strong coupling between individual microwave photons trapped in a superconducting coplanar resonator and nearby superconducting qubits. In this work we show how, by designing a novel interconnect, one can strongly connect the superconducting resonator, via a magnetic interaction, to a small number (perhaps single), of electronic spins. By choosing the electronic spin to be within a Nitrogen Vacancy centre in diamond one can perform optical readout, polarization and control of this electron spin using microwave and radio frequency irradiation. More importantly, by utilising Nitrogen Vacancy centres with nearby 13C nuclei, using this interconnect, one has the potential build a quantum device where the nuclear spin qubits are connected over centimeter distances via the Nitrogen Vacancy electronic spins interacting through the superconducting bus.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2009

Robust control of entanglement in a Nitrogen-vacancy centre coupled to a Carbon-13 nuclear spin in diamond

We address a problem of generating a robust entangling gate between electronic and nuclear spins in the system of a single nitrogen-vacany centre coupled to a nearest Carbon-13 atom in diamond against certain types of systematic errors such as pulse-length and off-resonance errors. We analyse the robustness of various control schemes: sequential pulses, composite pulses and numerically-optimised pulses. We find that numerically-optimised pulses, produced by the gradient ascent pulse engineering algorithm (GRAPE), are more robust than the composite pulses and the sequential pulses. The optimised pulses can also be implemented in a faster time than the composite pulses.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2008

Globally controlled universal quantum computation with arbitrary subsystem dimension

We introduce a scheme to perform universal quantum computation in quantum cellular automata (QCA) fashion in arbitrary subsystem dimension (not necessarily finite). The scheme is developed over a one spatial dimension $N$-element array, requiring only mirror symmetric logical encoding and global pulses. A mechanism using ancillary degrees of freedom for subsystem specific measurement is also presented.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Adiabatic information transport in the presence of decoherence

We study adiabatic population transfer between discrete positions. Being closely related to STIRAP in optical systems, this transport is coherent and robust against variations of experimental parameters. Thanks to these properties the scheme is a promising candidate for transport of quantum information in quantum computing. We study the effects of spatially registered noise sources on the quantum transport and in particular model Markovian decoherence via non-local coupling to nearby quantum point contacts which serve as information readouts. We find that the rate of decoherence experienced by a spatial superposition initially grows with spatial separation but surprisingly then plateaus. In addition we include non-Markovian effects due to couplings to nearby two level systems and we find that although the population transport exhibits robustness in the presence of both types of noise sources, the transport of a spatial superposition exhibits severe fragility.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Globally controlled fault tolerant quantum computation

We describe a method to execute globally controlled quantum information processing which admits a fault tolerant quantum error correction scheme. Our scheme nominally uses three species of addressable two-level systems which are arranged in a one dimensional array in a specific periodic arrangement. We show that the scheme possesses a fault tolerant error threshold.

quant-ph↗