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arXiv:1612.00865 · Physical Review A

Giant acoustic atom: A single quantum system with a deterministic time delay

Lingzhen Guo, Arne L. Grimsmo, Anton Frisk Kockum, Mikhail Pletyukhov, Göran Johansson

Published May 8, 2017• 198 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the quantum dynamics of a single transmon qubit coupled to surface acoustic waves (SAWs) via two distant connection points.Since the acoustic speed is five orders of magnitude slower than the speed of light, the traveling time between the two connection points needs to be taken into account.Therefore, we treat the transmon qubit as a giant atom with a deterministic time delay.We find that the spontaneous emission of the system, formed by the giant atom and the SAWs between its connection points, initially decays polynomially in the form of pulses instead of a continuous exponential decay behavior, as would be the case for a small atom.We obtain exact analytical results for the scattering properties of the giant atom up to two-phonon processes by using a diagrammatic approach.We find that two peaks appear in the inelastic (incoherent) power spectrum of the giant atom, a phenomenon which does not exist for a small atom.The time delay also gives rise to features in the reflectance, transmittance, and second-order correlation functions of the system.Furthermore, we find the short-time dynamics of the giant atom for arbitrary drive strength by a numerically exact method for open quantum systems with a finite-time-delay feedback loop.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.95.053821

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We investigate the single photon scattering in a phonon-photon hybrid system in the waveguide quantum electrodynamics (QED) scheme. In our consideration, an artificial giant atom, which is dressed by the phonons in a surface acoustic wave resonator, interacts with a coupled resonator waveguide (CRW) nonlocally via two connecting sites. Together with the interference effect by the nonlocal coupling, the phonon serves as a controller to the transport of the photon in the waveguide. On the one hand, the coupling strength between the giant atom and the surface acoustic wave resonator modulates the width of the transmission valley or window in the near resonant regime. On the other hand, the two reflective peaks induced by the Rabi splitting degrade into a single one when the giant atom is large detuned from the surface acoustic resonator, which implies an effective dispersive coupling. Our study paves the way for the potential application of giant atoms in the hybrid system.
We demonstrate a giant atom by coupling a superconducting transmon qubit to a lithium niobate phononic waveguide at two points separated by about 600 acoustic wavelengths, with a propagation delay of 125 ns. The giant atom yields non-Markovian relaxation dynamics characterized by phonon backflow and a frequency-dependent effective decay rate varying four-fold over merely 4 MHz, corresponding to a Purcell factor exceeding 40. Exploiting this frequency-dependent dissipation, we prepare quantum superposition states with high purity. Our results establish phononic integrated circuits as a versatile platform for giant-atom physics, providing highly tunable quantum devices for advanced quantum information processing.
The quantum coupling of individual superconducting qubits to microwave photons leads to remarkable experimental opportunities. Here we consider the phononic case where the qubit is coupled to an electromagnetic surface acoustic wave antenna that enables supersonic (electromagnetic) propagation of the qubit oscillations. This can be considered as a giant atom that is many phonon wavelengths long. We study an exactly solvable toy model that captures these effects, and find that this non-Markovian giant atom has a suppressed relaxation, so long as an effective vacuum coupling exists between a qubit excitation and a localized wave packet of sound, even in the absence of a cavity for the sound waves. Finally, we consider practical implementations of these ideas in current surface acoustic wave devices.
We study the generation of quantum entanglement between two giant atoms coupled to a common one-dimensional waveguide. Here each giant atom interacts with the waveguide at two separate coupling points. Within the Wigner-Weisskopf framework for single coupling points, we obtain the time-delayed quantum master equations governing the evolution of the two giant atoms for three different coupling configurations: separated, braided, and nested couplings. For each coupling configuration, we consider both the Markovian and non-Markovian entanglement dynamics of the giant atoms, which are initially in two different separable states: single- and double-excitation states. Our results show that the generated entanglement depends on the phase shift, time delay, atomic initial state, and the coupling configuration. For the single-excitation initial state, there exists the steady-state entanglement for each coupling in both the Markovian and non-Markovian regimes due to the appearance of the dark state. For the double-excitation initial state, we observe entanglement sudden birth via adjusting the phase shift in both regimes. In particular, the maximally achievable entanglement for the nested coupling is about one order of magnitude larger than those of separate and braided couplings. We also find that the maximal entanglement for these three coupling configurations can be enhanced in the case of small time delays. This work can be utilized for the generation and control of entanglement in quantum networks based on giant-atom waveguide-QED systems, which have wide potential applications in quantum information processing.
The giant atom regime where the wavelength of the phonon field is smaller than the atomic size opens up new opportunities for exploring exotic phenomena and developing powerful quantum technologies. Here, we explore the radiation dynamics of a hybrid system consisting of a superconducting giant atomic ensemble and an acoustic waveguide. In particular, we show how to design the delayed feedback of the slow acoustic field on the giant atomic ensemble. This modulates the phonon superradiant dynamics into engineerable revival modes and unconventional scaling laws with respect to the number of giant atoms. These are a distinctive feature of time-delayed collective processes that have no analog in other settings. The recipes we provide for harnessing collective giant atoms can be exported to other platforms, laying the foundation for a variety of quantum simulations and applications.
We study the non-Markovian dynamics of a giant artificial atom coupled to a one-dimensional acoustic waveguide beyond the rotating-wave and weak-coupling approximations. By combining an optimized ESPRIT-based decomposition of the bath correlation function with the hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM), we achieve numerically exact simulations in regimes with long memory times, finite temperature, and strong system-bath coupling. Benchmarking against analytical results reveals the breakdown of perturbative non-Markovian approaches such as Redfield theory even at weak coupling in the presence of delay-induced memory. We further show that non-Markovian features, including excitation revivals, remain robust at finite temperature and can be enhanced by increasing the system-bath coupling strength. Our approach provides a versatile framework for studying non-Markovian quantum dynamics in structured environments relevant to giant-atom platforms.