Quantum systems engineering

Abstract:

The nature of the transition between the familiar classical, macroscopic world and the quantum, microscopic one continues to be poorly understood. Expanding the regime of observable quantum behaviour to large-scale objects is therefore an exciting open problem. In macroscopic systems of interacting particles, rapid thermalization usually destroys any quantum coherence before it can be measured or used at room temperature. Here, we demonstrate quantum processing in the vibrational modes of a macroscopic diamond sample under ambient conditions. Using ultrafast Raman scattering, we create an extended, highly non-classical state in the optical phonon modes of bulk diamond. Direct measurement of phonon coherence and correlations establishes the non-classical nature of the crystal dynamics. These results show that optical phonons in diamond provide a unique opportunity for the study of large-scale quantum behaviour, and highlight the potential for diamond as a micro-photonic quantum processor capable of operating at terahertz rates.

Abstract:

We introduce the method of path-sums which is a tool for exactly evaluating a function of a discrete matrix with possibly non-commuting entries, based on the closed-form resummation of infinite families of terms in the corresponding Taylor series. If the matrix is finite, our approach yields the exact result in a finite number of steps. We achieve this by combining a mapping between matrix powers and walks on a weighted directed graph with a universal graph-theoretic result on the structure of such walks. We present path-sum expressions for a matrix raised to a complex power, the matrix exponential, matrix inverse, and matrix logarithm. We show that the quasideterminants of a matrix can be naturally formulated in terms of a path-sum, and present examples of the application of the path-sum method. We show that obtaining the inversion height of a matrix inverse and of quasideterminants is an NP-complete problem.

Abstract:

Quantum entanglement in the motion of macroscopic solid bodies has implications both for quantum technologies and foundational studies of the boundary between the quantum and classical worlds. Entanglement is usually fragile in room-temperature solids, owing to strong interactions both internally and with the noisy environment. We generated motional entanglement between vibrational states of two spatially separated, millimeter-sized diamonds at room temperature. By measuring strong nonclassical correlations between Raman-scattered photons, we showed that the quantum state of the diamonds has positive concurrence with 98% probability. Our results show that entanglement can persist in the classical context of moving macroscopic solids in ambient conditions.