Quantum systems engineering

Abstract:

We propose and analyze a scheme to cool atoms in an optical lattice to ultralow temperatures within a Bloch band and away from commensurate filling. The protocol is inspired by ideas from dark-state laser cooling but replaces electronic states with motional levels and spontaneous emission of photons by emission of phonons into a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which the lattice is immersed. In our model, achievable temperatures correspond to a small fraction of the Bloch bandwidth and are much lower than the reservoir temperature. This is also a novel realization of an open quantum optical system, where known tools are combined with new ideas involving cooling via a reservoir.

Abstract:

We introduce a figure of merit for a quantum memory which measures the preservation of entanglement between a qubit stored in and retrieved from the memory and an auxiliary qubit. We consider a general quantum memory system consisting of a medium of two level absorbers, with the qubit to be stored encoded in a single photon. We derive an analytic expression for our figure of merit taking into account Gaussian fluctuations in the Hamiltonian parameters, which, for example, model inhomogeneous broadening and storage time dephasing. Finally we specialize to the case of an atomic quantum memory where fluctuations arise predominantly from Doppler broadening and motional dephasing. © 2006 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We present a detailed analysis of the dynamical response of ultracold bosonic atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice subjected to a periodic modulation of the lattice depth. Following the experimental realization by Stöferle et al (2004 Phys. Rev. Lett. 92 130403), we study the excitation spectrum of the system as revealed by the response of the total energy as a function of the modulation frequency ω. By using the Time Evolving Block Decimation algorithm, we are able to simulate one-dimensional systems comparable in size to those in the experiment, with harmonic trapping and across many lattice depths ranging from the Mott-insulator (MI) to the superfluid (SF) regime. Our results produce many of the features seen in the experiment, namely a broad response in the SF regime, and narrow discrete resonances in the MI regime. We identify several signatures of the SF-MI transition that are manifested in the spectrum as it evolves from one limit to the other. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.