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arXiv:1006.0947 · Physical Review A

Qubit initialization and readout with finite coherent amplitudes in cavity QED

Ricardo Kennedy, Leonhard Horstmeyer, Andrzej Dragan, Terry Rudolph

Published Nov 12, 2010• 1 citation
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Abstract

We consider a unitary transfer of an arbitrary state of a two-level atomic qubit in a cavity to the finite amplitude coherent state cavity field. Such a transfer can be used to either provide an effective readout measurement on the atom by a subsequent measurement on the light field or as a method for initializing a fixed atomic state---a so-called ``attractor state,'' studied previously for the case of an infinitely strong cavity field. We show that, with a suitable adjustment of the coherent amplitude and evolution time, the qubit transfers all its information to the field, attaining a selected state of high purity irrespective of the initial state.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.82.054302

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We consider a unitary transfer of an arbitrary state of a two-level atomic qubit in a cavity to the finite amplitude coherent state cavity field. Such a transfer can be used to either provide an effective readout measurement on the atom by a subsequent measurement on the light field or as a method for initializing a fixed atomic state---a so-called ``attractor state,'' studied previously for the case of an infinitely strong cavity field. We show that, with a suitable adjustment of the coherent amplitude and evolution time, the qubit transfers all its information to the field, attaining a selected state of high purity irrespective of the initial state.
A single two-level emitter coupled to a single mode of an electromagnetic resonator constitutes the most fundamental instance of light--matter interaction. Realizations of this type of system are investigated in the field of cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED). Particularly important are schemes in which the coupling is strong enough to exceed the spontaneous emission rate as well as cavity damping. In this case, the coherent exchange of excitation between source and photon is the dominating process, providing the unique possibility to deterministically control the quantum evolution of the system. Great progress has recently been accomplished, technologically as well as conceptually, and the focus section in this issue of Journal of Optics B: Quantum and Semiclassical Optics features five articles highlighting important recent developments in the field. Strong coupling between single atoms and the electromagnetic cavity field have been achieved in two distinct regimes, the optical and the microwave region. The latter is represented by the micromaser, a high-Q microwave cavity pumped by a beam of highly excited Rydberg atoms. It has proved to be an almost ideal system for the generation of non-classical field states. A constraint in these experiments is the fact that the field inside the cavity can only be examined indirectly, by analysing the occupation of atoms leaving the cavity. While only two atomic states were previously identified for this purpose, V A Reshetov shows in his article (pages 119--126) that more information on the field may be extracted by taking advantage of the Zeeman substructure of the atomic levels. In the optical domain of cavity QED, by contrast, the state of the resonator field may be probed directly by measuring the light leaking from the cavity using photodetectors. In order to minimize damping, high-quality cavities must be employed. In most optical experiments these are Fabry--Perot resonators with ultra-high reflectivity mirrors, with losses as low as a few parts per million being state of the art. At the same time, the coupling of atoms and photons is enhanced by reducing the length of the cavity, so that strong coupling conditions are reached. A very attractive application of this type of cavity QED setup is the possibility of exerting control over the quantum dynamics of the system. An impressive example is the implementation of quantum feedback, reported in the paper by W P Smith and L A Orozco (pages 127--134). Using information gained from detecting a single photon escaping from the cavity, active feedback is applied to halt the dynamical evolution of the system. This is the first time active feedback has been used to modify the quantum evolution of a system at the single-photon level. The authors discuss how detunings between the subsystems affect the quantum feedback, an issue particularly relevant for ensembles of atoms with a spread in detuning. Perfect quantum feedback in this case requires the use of additional parameters to control the system. The majority of optical cavity QED experiments performed so far have used as a medium atoms traversing the cavity on random trajectories, such as, for example, thermal atomic beams. In this case, the observation of quantum effects is degraded in two ways. The Doppler effect and the finite transit time lead to line broadening, while the spatial structure of the cavity mode results in atoms in different locations experiencing different coupling with the photonic field. J E Reiner et al (pages 135--142) investigate the impact of these effects on quantum fluctuations in their cavity QED system. In order to overcome line broadening, they have developed a continuous cold atomic beam, extracted from a magneto-optical trap. An even better control of broadening effects and fluctuating coupling strength is provided by trapping the atoms inside the cavity and cooling them to temperatures at which their position spread is smaller than the optical wavelength. Much recent activity has been devoted to developing such an ultimate cavity QED system. A Vukics et al (pages 143--153) present a theoretical proposal for dynamically trapping and cooling atoms inside a cavity. By driving the atoms with a standing wave injected from the side of the cavity and by weakly exciting the cavity field itself, they predict three-dimensional trapping of the atom for periods around 1 second, an extremely long time on the typical scale of cavity QED dynamics. The essential component of their scheme is the interference between the two driving fields, determining the temperature of the particle and the stable trapping positions. In the quest for better confinement of radiation, lately, an appealing alternative to the Fabry--Perot cavity has been investigated -- the optical microsphere resonator. A sphere with a diameter of a few tens of microns, it supports so-called whispering gallery modes near its circumference, for which quality factors up to 10 10 have been measured. In order to exploit the correspondingly low field damping rates for cavity QED, a method must be found to couple atomic or solid state emitters to these modes. S Göotzinger et al (pages 154--158) report the coupling of single nanocrystals on the surface of a microsphere through the evanescent field of the mode. Selective excitation of a single nano-emitter was accomplished with a scanning confocal microscope. The system is a promising candidate for cavity QED with single-quantum emitters. The ability to fully control the quantum dynamics of atoms and light is beginning to spawn early applications. The most notable example is quantum information processing. This requires the coherent manipulation of single-quantum systems, which is ideally provided by cavity QED interaction in the strong-coupling limit. The development of practical devices will be among the principal future tasks for research in the field. This will include physical systems, which have not been covered in this issue, such as semiconductors, quantum dots as emitters, or photonic crystals as resonator structures. Cavity QED is therefore guaranteed to remain a vigorous field in the years to come.
A scheme for the distant transfer of a qubit atomic state and atomic entangled states are presented.In the scheme,the identical two-level atoms interact simultaneously with a highly detuned cavity mode and are driven by a strong classical field,and the atomic state evolution is independent of cavity field state.Thus the scheme is insensitive to both the cavity decay and the thermal field and the requirement on the quality factor of the cavity is greatly loosened, which is of importance from the experimental point of view.
In this work, we develop a coherent control technique for cavity QED based on amplitude amplification. We consider two physical platforms. In the first setting, we study a three-level quantum emitter coupled to a single mode of an optical cavity and introduce a protocol for producing traveling single photons based on oblivious amplitude amplification. As the key ingredient of our protocol, we propose an extension of oblivious amplitude amplification which uses reflection unitaries solely on the signal qubit, along with UUU and U†U^\daggerU†, where the unitary UUU prepares the initial state. Our approach improves the scaling of the single-photon-generation protocol length from N∼1/pN\sim 1/pN∼1/p to N∼1/pN\sim 1/\sqrt{p}N∼1/p​, with ppp denoting the success probability of obtaining a short single photon from a single application of the weak control pulse. Furthermore, our protocol also reduces the error from intrinsic cavity loss compared to protocols using a single strong control pulse in various experimentally relevant regimes, suggesting the application of our methods for error reduction. In the second setting, we consider a superconducting qubit coupled to a single bosonic mode of a microwave cavity in a circuit QED architecture in the dispersive regime for preparing Fock states. Using fixed-point amplitude amplification, we obtain a protocol for preparing Fock states whose length scales as O(n1/4)O(n^{1/4})O(n1/4), where nnn is the number of photons. Additionally, as an application of our methods for state preparation, we describe a protocol for preparing NOON states.
This work is about the prospects provided by atoms coupled to optical cavities for the realization of concepts from the field of quantum information theory. In the first part we present a scheme for trapping an atom in its ground state in a cavity, which is basically in the vacuum state. Therefore losses are strongly suppressed. In the second part we investigate the generation of entangled qubits by the sequential coupling of an ancillary system to initially uncorrelated qubits. We characterize all achievable states and give a recipe for the generation on demand of an arbitrary state. In particular we discuss the case of an atom coupled to a cavity as a source. Finally we turn to collective effects in a system of many atoms coupled to the same mode of a cavity and show that they are suitable for the preparation of the atoms in an entangled state.
A single two-level atom can be used to prepare an arbitrary photon number state (Fock state) in a high Q cavity . The atom undergoes a controlled succession of interactions with two cavity modes. One of them contains a coherent field. The atom transfers photons one by one from this field to the initially empty second mode. The scheme can be extended to prepare a quantum superposition of the vacuum with a Fock state, a highly non-classical situation. We discuss the feasibility of the experiment with our present Rydberg-atom cavity QED set-up.
We introduce a complete Bell measurement on atomic qubits based on two-photon interactions with optical cavities and discrimination of coherent states of light. The dynamical system is described by the Dicke model for two three-level atoms interacting in two-photon resonance with a single mode of the radiation field, which is known to effectively generate a nonlinear two-photon interaction between the field and two states of each atom. For initial coherent states with a large mean photon number, the field state is well represented by two coherent states at half-revival time. For certain product states of the atoms, we prove the coherent generation of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with two atomic qubits and two orthogonal Schr\"odinger cat states as a third qubit. For arbitrary atomic states, we show that discriminating the two states of the field corresponds to different operations in the Bell basis of the atoms. By repeating this process with a second cavity prepared in a phase-shifted coherent state, we demonstrate the implementation of a complete Bell measurement. The experimental feasibility of our protocols is discussed for cavity-QED, circuit-QED, and trapped-ion setups.