arXiv subjects

Luigi Amico

Publications and source records attributed to Luigi Amico.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Quasiparticles in superconducting qubits with asymmetric junctions

Designing the spatial profile of the superconducting gap -- gap engineering -- has long been recognized as an effective way of controlling quasiparticles in superconducting devices. In aluminum films, their thickness modulates the gap; therefore, standard fabrication of Al/AlOx/Al Josephson junctions, which relies on overlapping a thicker film on top of a thinner one, always results in gap-engineered devices. Here we reconsider quasiparticle effects in superconducting qubits to explicitly account for the unavoidable asymmetry in the gap on the two sides of a Josephson junction. We find that different regimes can be encountered in which the quasiparticles have either similar densities in the two junction leads, or are largely confined to the lower-gap lead. Qualitatively, for similar densities the qubit's excited state population is lower but its relaxation rate higher than when the quasiparticles are confined; therefore, there is a potential trade-off between two desirable properties in a qubit.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Massive particle interferometry with lattice solitons

We discuss an interferometric scheme employing interference of bright solitons formed as specific bound states of attracting bosons on a lattice. We revisit the proposal of Castin and Weiss [Phys. Rev. Lett. vol. 102, 010403 (2009)] for using the scattering of a quantum matter-wave soliton on a barrier in order to create a coherent superposition state of the soliton being entirely to the left of the barrier and being entirely to the right of the barrier. In that proposal, it was assumed that the scattering is perfectly elastic, i.e.\ that the center-of-mass kinetic energy of the soliton is lower than the chemical potential of the soliton. Here we relax this assumption: By employing a combination of Bethe ansatz and DMRG based analysis of the dynamics of the appropriate many-body system, we find that the interferometric fringes persist even when the center-of-mass kinetic energy of the soliton is above the energy needed for its complete dissociation into constituent atoms.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Local Convertibility in quantum spin systems

Local Convertibility refers to the possibility of transforming a given state into a target one, just by means of LOCC with respect to a given bipartition of the system and it is possible if and only if all the Renyi-entropies of the initial state are smaller than those of the target state. We apply this concept to adiabatic evolutions and ask whether they can be rendered through LOCC in the sense above. We argue that a lack of differential local convertibility (dLC) signals a higher computational power of the system's quantum phase, which is also usually connected with the existence of long-range entanglement, topological order, or edge-states. Remarkably, dLC can detect these global properties already by considering small subsystems. Moreover, we connect dLC to spontaneous symmetry breaking by arguing that states with finite order parameters must be the most classical ones and thus be locally convertible.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Atomtronic circuits: from many-body physics to quantum technologies

Atomtronics is an emerging field that aims to manipulate ultracold atom moving in matter wave circuits for both fundamental studies in quantum science and technological applications. In this colloquium, we review recent progress in matter-wave circuitry and atomtronics-based quantum technology. After a short introduction to the basic physical principles and the key experimental techniques needed to realize atomtronic systems, we describe the physics of matter-waves in simple circuits such as ring traps and two-terminal systems. The main experimental observations and outstanding questions are discussed. We also present possible applications to a broad range of quantum technologies, from quantum sensing with atom interferometry to future quantum simulation and quantum computation architectures.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Variational Quantum Eigensolver for SU($N$) Fermions

Variational quantum algorithms aim at harnessing the power of noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers, by using a classical optimizer to train a parameterized quantum circuit to solve tractable quantum problems. The variational quantum eigensolver is one of the aforementioned algorithms designed to determine the ground-state of many-body Hamiltonians. Here, we apply the variational quantum eigensolver to study the ground-state properties of $N$-component fermions. With such knowledge, we study the persistent current of interacting SU($N$) fermions, which is employed to reliably map out the different quantum phases of the system. Our approach lays out the basis for a current-based quantum simulator of many-body systems that can be implemented on noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Persistent Current of SU(N) Fermions

We study the persistent current in a system of SU($N$) fermions with repulsive interaction confined in a ring-shaped potential and pierced by an effective magnetic flux. By applying a combination of Bethe ansatz and numerical analysis, we demonstrate that, as a combined effect of spin correlations, interactions and applied flux a specific phenomenon can occur in the system: spinon creation in the ground state. As a consequence, peculiar features in the persistent current arise. The elementary flux quantum, which fixes the persistent current periodicity, is observed to evolve from a single particle one to an extreme case of fractional flux quantum, in which one quantum is shared by all the particles. We show that the persistent current depends on the number of spin components $N$, number of particles and interaction in a specific way that in certain physical regimes has universality traits. At integer filling fractions, the persistent current is suppressed above a threshold of the repulsive interaction by the Mott spectral gap. Despite its mesoscopic nature, the current displays a clear finite size scaling behavior. Specific parity effects in the persistent current landscape hold.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2021

Negative differential thermal conductance by photonic transport in electronic circuits

The negative differential thermal conductance (NDTC) provides the key mechanism for realizing thermal transistors. This exotic effect has been the object of an extensive theoretical investigation, but the implementation is still limited to a few specific physical systems. Here, we consider a simple circuit of two electrodes exchanging heat through electromagnetic radiation. We demonstrate that the existence of an optimal condition for power transmission, well-known as impedance matching in electronics, provides a natural framework for engineering NDTC: the heat flux is reduced when the temperature increase is associated to an abrupt change of the electrode's impedance. As a case study, we analyze a hybrid structure based on thin-film technology, in which the increased resistance is due to a superconductor-resistive phase transition. For typical metallic superconductors operating below $1$K, NDTC reflects in a temperature drop of the order of a few mK by increasing the power supplied to the system. Our work draws new routes for implementing a thermal transistor in nanoscale circuits.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Coherent phase slips in coupled matter-wave circuits

Quantum Phase slips are dual process of particle tunneling in coherent networks. Besides to be of central interest for condensed matter physics, quantum phase slips are resources that are sought to be manipulated in quantum circuits. Here, we devise a specific matter-wave circuit enlightening quantum phase slips. Specifically, we investigate the quantum many body dynamics of two side-by-side ring-shaped neutral bosonic systems coupled through a weak link. By imparting a suitable magnetic flux, persistent currents flow in each ring with given winding numbers. We demonstrate that coherent phase slips occur as winding number transfer among the two rings, with the populations in each ring remaining nearly constant. Such a phenomenon occurs as a result of a specific entanglement of circulating states, that, as such cannot be captured by a mean field treatment of the system. Our work can be relevant for the observation of quantum phase slips in cold atoms experiments and their manipulation in matter-wave circuits. To make contact with the field, we show that the phenomenon has clear signatures in the momentum distribution of the system providing the time of flight image of the condensate.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2021

The quantum solitons atomtronic interference device

We study a quantum many-body system of attracting bosons confined in a ring-shaped potential and interrupted by a weak link. With such architecture, the system defines atomtronic quantum interference devices harnessing quantum solitonic currents. We demonstrate that the system is characterized by the specific interplay between the interaction and the strength of the weak link. In particular, we find that, depending on the operating conditions, the current can be a universal function of the relative size between the strength of the impurity and interaction. The low lying many-body states are studied through a quench dynamical protocol that is the atomtronic counterpart of Rabi interferometry. With this approach, we demonstrate how our system defines a two level system of coupled solitonic currents. The current states are addressed through the analysis of the momentum distribution.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2021

GHZ-like states in the Qubit-Qudit Rabi Model

We study a Rabi type Hamiltonian system in which a qubit and a d-level quantum system (qudit) are coupled through a common resonator. In the weak and strong coupling limits the spectrum is analysed through suitable perturbative schemes. The analysis show that the presence of the multilevels of the qudit effectively enhance the qubit-qudit interaction. The ground state of the strongly coupled system is a found of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) type. Therefore, despite the qubit-qudit strong coupling, the nature of the specific tripartite entanglement of the GHZ state suppress the bipartite entanglement. We analyze the system dynamics under quenching and adiabatic switching of the qubit-resonator and qudit-resonator couplings. In the quench case, we found that the non-adiabatic generations of photons in the resonator is enhanced by the number of levels in the qudit. The adiabatic control represents a possible route for preparation of GHZ states. Our analysis provides relevant information for future studies on coherent state transfer in qubit-qudit systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Machine learning engineering of quantum currents

The design, accurate preparation and manipulation of quantum states in quantum circuits are essential operational tasks at the heart of quantum technologies. Nowadays, circuits can be designed with physical parameters that can be controlled with unprecedented accuracy and flexibility. However, the generation of well-controlled current states is still a nagging bottleneck, especially when different circuit elements are integrated together. In this work, we show how machine learning can effectively address this challenge and outperform the current existing methods. To this end, we exploit deep reinforcement learning to prepare prescribed quantum current states in circuits composed of lumped elements. To highlight our method, we show how to engineer bosonic persistent currents as they are relevant in different quantum technologies as cold atoms and superconducting circuits. We demonstrate the use of deep reinforcement learning to re-discover established protocols, as well as solve configurations that are difficult to treat with other methods. With our approach, quantum current states characterised by a single winding number or entangled currents of multiple winding numbers can be prepared in a robust manner, superseding the existing protocols.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Enhancing sensitivity to rotations with quantum solitonic currents

Quantum mechanics is characterized by quantum coherence and entanglement. After having discovered how these fundamental concepts govern physical reality, scientists have been devoting intense efforts to harness them to shape future science and technology. This is a highly nontrivial task because most often quantum coherence and entanglement are difficult to access. Here, we demonstrate the enhancement of the sensitivity of a quantum many-body system with specific coherence and entanglement properties. Our physical system is made of strongly correlated attracting neutral bosons flowing in a ring-shaped potential of mesoscopic size. Because of attractive interactions, quantum analogs of bright solitons are formed. As a genuine quantum-many-body feature, we demonstrate that angular momentum fractionalization occurs. As a consequence, the matter-wave current in our system can react to very small changes of rotation or other artificial gauge fields. We work out a protocol to entangle such quantum solitonic currents, allowing them to operate rotation sensors and gyroscopes to Heisenberg-limited sensitivity.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Multimode N00N states in driven atomtronic circuits

We propose a method to generate multi-mode N00N states with arrays of ultracold atoms. Our protocol requires a strong relative offset among the wells and a drive of the interparticle interaction at a frequency resonant with the offsets. The proposal is demonstrated by a numerical and a Floquet analysis of the quantum dynamics of a ring-shaped atomtronics circuit made of M weakly coupled optical traps. We generate a hierarchy of energy scales down to very few low-energy states where N00N dynamics takes place, making multi-mode N00N states appear at nearly regular time intervals. The production of multi-mode N00N states can be probed by time-of-flight imaging. Such states may be used to build a multiple beam splitter.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Probing the BCS-BEC crossover with persistent currents

We study the persistent currents of an attractive Fermi gas confined in a tightly-confining ring trap and subjected to an artificial gauge field all through the BCS-BEC crossover. At weak attractions, on the BCS side, fermions display a parity effect in the persistent currents, ie their response to the gauge field is paramagnetic or diamagnetic depending on the number of pairs on the ring. At resonance and on the BEC side of the crossover we find a doubling of the periodicity of the ground-state energy as a function of the artificial gauge field and disappearance of the parity effect, indicating that persistent currents can be used to infer the formation of tightly-bound bosonic pairs. Our predictions can be accessed in ultracold atoms experiments through noise interferograms.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Exact results for persistent currents of two bosons in a ring lattice

We study the ground state of two interacting bosonic particles confined in a ring-shaped lattice potential and subjected to a synthetic magnetic flux. The system is described by the Bose-Hubbard model and solved exactly through a plane-wave Ansatz of the wave function. We obtain energies and correlation functions of the system both for repulsive and attractive interactions. In contrast with the one-dimensional continuous theory described by the Lieb-Liniger model, in the lattice case we prove that the center of mass of the two particles is coupled with its relative coordinate. Distinctive features clearly emerge in the persistent current of the system. While for repulsive bosons the persistent current displays a periodicity given by the standard flux quantum for any interaction strength, in the attractive case the flux quantum becomes fractionalized in a manner that depends on the interaction. We also study the density after the long time expansion of the system which provides an experimentally accessible route to detect persistent currents in cold atom settings. Our results can be used to benchmark approximate schemes for the many-body problem.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Topological pumping in Aharonov-Bohm rings

Topological Thouless pumping and Aharonov-Bohm effect are both fundamental effects enabled by the topological properties of the system. Here, we study both effects together: topological pumping of interacting particles through Aharonov-Bohm rings. This system can prepare highly entangled many-particle states, transport them via topological pumping and interfere them, revealing a fractional flux quantum. The type of the generated state is revealed by non-trivial Aharonov-Bohm interference patterns that could be used for quantum sensing. The reflections induced by the interference result from transitions between topological bands. Specific bands allow transport with a band gap scaling as the square-root of the particle number. Our system paves a new way for a combined system of state preparation and topological protected transport.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Andreev-reflection and Aharonov-Bohm dynamics in atomtronic circuits

We study the quantum transport through two specific atomtronic circuits: a Y-junction and a ring-shaped condensate pierced by an effective magnetic flux. We demonstrate that for bosons, the two circuits display Andreev-like reflections. For the Y-junction, the transport depends on the coupling strength of the Y-junction. For the ring-shaped condensate, the transport crucially depends on the particle statistics. For interacting bosons we find that the Aharonov-Bohm interference effect is absent. By breaking the translational invariance of the ring, the flux dependence can be restored. A complementary view of the problem is obtained through a specific non-equilibrium quench protocol. We find that the steady-state is independent of the flux, however the actual time-dynamics depends on the flux. The dynamics of the full closed system can be fitted with an approximated open system approach. For all the protocols we studied, we find striking differences in the dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard model and the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

The Aharonov-Bohm effect in mesoscopic Bose-Einstein condensates

Ultra-cold atoms in light-shaped potentials open up new ways to explore mesoscopic physics: Arbitrary trapping potentials can be engineered with only a change of the laser field. Here, we propose using ultracold atoms in light-shaped potentials to feasibly realize a cold atom device to study one of the fundamental problems of mesoscopic physics, the Aharonov-Bohm effect: The interaction of particles with a magnetic field when traveling in a closed loop. Surprisingly, we find that the Aharonov-Bohm effect is washed out for interacting bosons, while it is present for fermions. We show that our atomic device has possible applications as quantum simulator, Mach-Zehnder interferometer and for tests of quantum foundation.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗