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P. M. Alsing

Publications and source records attributed to P. M. Alsing.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Engineering superpositions of N00N states using an asymmetric non-linear Mach-Zehnder interferometer

We revisit a method for mapping arbitrary single-mode pure states into superpositions of N00N states using an asymmetric non-linear Mach-Zehnder interferometer (ANLMZI). This method would allow for one to tailor-make superpositions of N00N states where each axis of the two-mode joint-photon number distribution is weighted by the statistics of any single-mode pure state. The non-linearity of the ANLMZI comes in the form of a $χ^{\left(3\right)}$ self-Kerr interaction occurring on one of the intermediary modes of the interferometer. Motivated by the non-classical interference effects that occur at a beam splitter, we introduce inverse-engineering techniques aimed towards extrapolating optimal transformations for generating N00N state superpositions. These techniques are general enough so as to be employed to probe the means of generating states of any desired quantum properties.

quant-ph

The enduring relevance of the Jaynes-Cummings model: a personal perspective

In this short perspective article we present our personal highlights on how the Jaynes-Cummings model has become a central model to describe spin-boson couplings underpinning much of modern quantum optics. To the current authors, the key contribution is a demonstration of a measurable effect that showed the discreteness of the quantized radiation field.

quant-ph

Truly unentangled photon pairs without spectral filtering

We demonstrate that an integrated silicon microring resonator is capable of efficiently producing photon pairs that are completely unentangled; such pairs are a key component of heralded single photon sources. A dual-channel interferometric coupling scheme can be used to independently tune the quality factors associated with the pump and signal and idler modes, yielding a biphoton wavefunction with Schmidt number arbitrarily close to unity. This will permit the generation of heralded single photon states with unit purity.

physics.optics

The Path to Increasing the Coincidence Efficiency of Integrated Photon Sources

Silicon ring resonators are used as photon pair sources by taking advantage of silicon's large third order nonlinearity with a process known as spontaneous four wave mixing. These sources are capable of producing pairs of indistinguishable photons but typically suffer from an effective $50\%$ loss. By slightly decoupling the input waveguide from the ring, the drop port coincidence ratio can be significantly increased with the trade-off being that the pump is less efficiently coupled into the ring. Ring resonators with this design have been demonstrated having coincidence ratios of $\sim 96\%$ but requiring a factor of $\sim 10$ increase in the pump power. Through the modification of the coupling design that relies on additional spectral dependence, it is possible to achieve similar coincidence ratios without the increased pumping requirement. This can be achieved by coupling the input waveguide to the ring multiple times, thus creating a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. This coupler design can be used on both sides of the ring resonator so that resonances supported by one of the couplers are suppressed by the other. This is the ideal configuration for a photon-pair source as it can only support the pump photons at the input side while only allowing the generated photons to leave through the output side. Recently, this device has been realized with preliminary results exhibiting the desired spectral dependence and with a coincidence ratio as high as $\sim 97\%$ while allowing the pump to be nearly critically coupled to the ring. The demonstrated near unity coincidence ratio infers a near maximal heralding efficiency from the fabricated device. This device has the potential to greatly improve the scalability and performance of quantum computing and communication systems.

quant-ph

Optimal Fusion Transformations for Linear Optical Cluster State Generation

We analyze the generation of linear optical cluster states (LOCS) via addition of one and two qubits. Existing approaches employ the stochastic linear optical two-qubit CZ gate with success rate of 1/9 per fusion operation. The question of optimality of the CZ gate with respect to LOCS generation remains open. We report that there are alternative schemes to the CZ gate that are exponentially more efficient and show that sequential LOCS growth is globally optimal. We find that the optimal cluster growth operation is a state transformation on a subspace of the full Hilbert space. We show that the maximal success rate of fusing n photonic qubits or m Bell pairs is 1/2^n-1 and 1/4^m-1 respectively and give an explicit optical design.

quant-ph

Success rates for linear optical generation of cluster states in coincidence basis

We report on theoretical research in photonic cluster-state computing. Finding optimal schemes of generating non-classical photonic states is of critical importance for this field as physically implementable photon-photon entangling operations are currently limited to measurement-assisted stochastic transformations. A critical parameter for assessing the efficiency of such transformations is the success probability of a desired measurement outcome. At present there are several experimental groups which are capable of generating multi-photon cluster states carrying more than eight qubits. Separate photonic qubits or small clusters can be fused into a single cluster state by a probabilistic optical CZ gate conditioned on simultaneous detection of all photons with 1/9 success probability of each gate. This design mechanically follows the original theoretical scheme of cluster state generation proposed more than a decade ago by Raussendorf, Browne and Briegel. The optimality of the destructive CZ gate in application to linear optical cluster state generation has not been analyzed previously. Our results reveal that this method is far from the optimal one. Employing numerical optimization we have identified that maximal success probability of fusing n unentangled dual-rail optical qubits into a linear cluster state is equal to 1/2^(n-1); m-tuple of photonic Bell pair states, commonly generated via spontaneous parametric down-conversion, can be fused into a single cluster with the maximal success probability of 1/4^(m-1).

quant-ph

Is the Measurement Based Quantum Computing Search Algorithm Really Grover's Algorithm?

We question whether the measurement based quantum computing algorithm is in fact Grover's algorithm or simply a similar oracular search method. The two algorithms share several qualitative features especially in the case of the trivial 4 element search, which is the largest size photonic search algorithm that has been experimentally implemented to date. This has led some to refer to both substantiations as Grover's algorithm. We compare multiple features of the two algorithms including the behavior of the oracle tags and the entanglement dynamics, both qualitatively and quantitatively. We find significant and fundamental differences in the operation of the two algorithms, particularly in cases involving searches on more than four elements.

quant-ph

Tunneling through a parabolic barrier viewed from Wigner phase space

We analyze the tunneling of a particle through a repulsive potential resulting from an inverted harmonic oscillator in the quantum mechanical phase space described by the Wigner function. In particular, we solve the partial differential equations in phase space determining the Wigner function of an energy eigenstate of the inverted oscillator. The reflection or transmission coefficients $R$ or $T$ are then given by the total weight of all classical phase space trajectories corresponding to energies below, or above the top of the barrier given by the Wigner function.

quant-ph

Epoch Dependent Dark Energy

We present a model in which the equation of state parameter w approaches -1 near a particular value of z, and has significant negative values in a restricted range of z. For example, one can have w ~ -1 near z = 1, and w > -0.2 from z = 0 to z = 0.3, and for z > 9. The ingredients of the model are neutral fermions (which may be neutrinos, neutralinos, etc) which are very weakly coupled to a light scalar field. This model emphasises the importance of the proposed studies of the properties of dark energy into the region z > 1.

hep-ph

A Possible Connection Between Massive Fermions and Dark Energy

In a dense cloud of massive fermions interacting by exchange of a light scalar field, the effective mass of the fermion can become negligibly small. As the cloud expands, the effective mass and the total energy density eventually increase with decreasing density. In this regime, the pressure-density relation can approximate that required for dark energy. We apply this phenomenon to the expansion of the Universe with a very light scalar field and infer relations between the parameters available and cosmological observations. Majorana neutrinos at a mass that may have been recently determined, and fermions such as the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (LSP) may both be consistent with current observations of dark energy.

hep-ph

Spin-induced non-geodesic motion, gyroscopic precession, Wigner rotation and EPR correlations of massive spin 1/2 particles in a gravitational field

We investigate in a covariant manner the spin-induced non-geodesic motion of massive spin 1/2 particles in an arbitrary gravitational field for trajectories that are initially geodesic when spin is ignored. Using the WKB approximation for the wave function in curved spacetime, we compute the O(hbar) correction to the Wigner rotation of the spin 1/2 particle, whose O(1) contribution is zero on timelike geodesics. We develop conditions for the motion of observers in which the Wigner rotation is null. For the spherically symmetric Schwarzschild metric, we consider specific examples of particle motion in the equatorial plane for (i) circular orbits and (ii) radially infalling trajectories. For the former case we consider the entanglement for a perfectly anti-correlated EPR entangled pair of spins as the separate qubits traverse the circular orbit in same direction.

quant-ph

The Wigner rotation for photons in an arbitrary gravitational field

We investigate the Wigner rotation for photons, which governs the change in the polarization of the photon as it propagates through an arbitrary gravitational field. We give explicit examples in Schwarzschild spacetime, and compare with the corresponding flat spacetime results, which by the equivalence principle, holds locally at each spacetime point. We discuss the implications of the Wigner rotation for entangled photon states in curved spacetime, and lastly develop a sufficient condition for special (Fermi-Walker) frames in which the observer would detect no Wigner rotation.

quant-ph

Entanglement of Dirac fields in non-inertial frames

We analyze the entanglement between two modes of a free Dirac field as seen by two relatively accelerated parties. The entanglement is degraded by the Unruh effect and asymptotically reaches a non-vanishing minimum value in the infinite acceleration limit. This means that the state always remains entangled to a degree and can be used in quantum information tasks, such as teleportation, between parties in relative uniform acceleration. We analyze our results from the point of view afforded by the phenomenon of entanglement sharing and in terms of recent results in the area of multi-qubit complementarity.

quant-ph

The Unruh effect in an Ion Trap: An Analogy

We propose an experiment in which the phonon excitation of ion(s) in a trap, with a trap frequency exponentially modulated at rate $κ$, exhibits a thermal spectrum with an "Unruh" temperature given by T=hbar*kappa. We discuss the similarities of this experiment to the usual Unruh effect for quantum fields and uniformly accelerated detectors. We demonstrate a new Unruh effect for detectors that respond to anti-normally ordered moments using the ion's first blue sideband transition.

quant-ph

Using a laser to cool a semiconductor

A nonlocal energy-balance equation is derived for the optical absorption, photoluminescence and inelastic electron-phonon scattering, which determines the electron and hole temperatures for any given lattice temperature. The evolution of the lattice temperature is found to be determined by the difference between the power-loss density due to photoluminescence and the power-gain density due to optical absorption, as well as by the initial lattice temperature. We find that in addition to the expected decrease in the lattice temperature, the electron temperature also decreases with time. A laser-cooling power as high as 380 eV/s is predicted for the wide bandgap semiconductor AlN initially at room temperature when the pump-laser field is only 10 V/cm. Laser cooling is found to be more efficient for a large bandgap material, a weaker laser field, and a high initial lattice temperature. The laser-cooling rate then decreases as the lattice cools. The theory presented here provides quantitative predictions that can guide future experiments.

cond-mat.other

Analog of the Fizeau Effect in an Effective Optical Medium

Using a new approach, we propose an analog of the Fizeau effect for massive and massless particles in an effective optical medium derived from the static, spherically symmetric gravitational field. The medium is naturally perceived as a dispersive medium by matter de Broglie waves. Several Fresnel drag coefficients are worked out, with appropriate interpretations of the wavelengths used. In two cases, it turns out that the coefficients become independent of the wavelength even if the equivalent medium itself is dispersive. A few conceptual issues are also addressed in the process of derivation. It is shown that some of our results complement recent works dealing with real fluid or optical black holes.

gr-qc

Matter waves in a gravitational field: An index of refraction for massive particles in general relativity

We consider the propagation of massive-particle de Broglie waves in a static, isotropic metric in general relativity. We demonstrate the existence of an index of refraction that governs the waves and that has all the properties of a classical index of refraction. We confirm our interpretation with a WKB solution of the general-relativistic Klein-Gordon equation. Finally, we make some observations on the significance of the optical action.

gr-qc