Quantum squeezed states offer metrological enhancement as compared to their classical counterparts. Here, we devise and numerically explore a method for performing SU(1,1) interferometry beyond the standard quantum limit, using quasi-cyclic nonlinear wave mixing dynamics of ultracold atoms in a ring cavity. The method is based on generating quantum correlations between many atoms via photon-mediated optomechanical interaction. Timescales of the interferometer operation are here given by the inverse of photonic recoil frequency, and are orders of magnitude shorter than the timescales of collisional spin mixing--based interferometers. Such shorter timescales should enable not only faster measurement cycles but also lower atomic losses from the trap during measurement, which may lead to significant quantum metrological gain in matter-wave interferometry with state-of-the-art cavity setups.
Quantum squeezed states offer metrological enhancement as compared to their classical counterparts. Here, we devise and numerically explore a method for performing SU(1,1) interferometry beyond the standard quantum limit, using quasi-cyclic nonlinear wave mixing dynamics of ultracold atoms in a ring cavity. The method is based on generating quantum correlations between many atoms via photon-mediated optomechanical interaction. Timescales of the interferometer operation are here given by the inverse of photonic recoil frequency, and are orders of magnitude shorter than the timescales of collisional spin mixing--based interferometers. Such shorter timescales should enable not only faster measurement cycles but also lower atomic losses from the trap during measurement, which may lead to significant quantum metrological gain in matter-wave interferometry with state-of-the-art cavity setups.
Abstract An ensemble of atoms can operate as a quantum sensor by placing atoms in a superposition of two different states. Upon measurement of the sensor, each atom is individually projected into one of the two states. Creating quantum correlations between the atoms, that is entangling them, could lead to resolutions surpassing the standard quantum limit 1–3 set by projections of individual atoms. Large amounts of entanglement 4–6 involving the internal degrees of freedom of laser-cooled atomic ensembles 4–16 have been generated in collective cavity quantum-electrodynamics systems, in which many atoms simultaneously interact with a single optical cavity mode. Here we report a matter-wave interferometer in a cavity quantum-electrodynamics system of 700 atoms that are entangled in their external degrees of freedom. In our system, each individual atom falls freely under gravity and simultaneously traverses two paths through space while entangled with the other atoms. We demonstrate both quantum non-demolition measurements and cavity-mediated spin interactions for generating squeezed momentum states with directly observed sensitivity 3.4−0.9+1.1 3 . 4 − 0.9 + 1.1 dB and 2.5−0.6+0.6 2 . 5 − 0.6 + 0.6 dB below the standard quantum limit, respectively. We successfully inject an entangled state into a Mach–Zehnder light-pulse interferometer with directly observed sensitivity 1.7−0.5+0.5 1 . 7 − 0.5 + 0.5 dB below the standard quantum limit. The combination of particle delocalization and entanglement in our approach may influence developments of enhanced inertial sensors 17,18 , searches for new physics, particles and fields 19–23 , future advanced gravitational wave detectors 24,25 and accessing beyond mean-field quantum many-body physics 26–30 .
Atom interferometers measure the relative phase shifts between coherent matter-wave paths that arise from interactions with external fields or inertial forces. Due to their exceptional phase sensitivity, atom interferometers became an essential tool for precision measurements and fundamental physics experiments, finding applications in geodesy, gravimetry, and inertial navigation. However, their measurement precision is limited by quantum projection noise, which arises from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, preventing the measurement of atomic states with absolute precision. The generation of entanglement between the atoms offers a path to surpass this so-called standard quantum limit, thereby enhancing the interferometer’s phase sensitivity beyond classical measurement bounds. This thesis reports on the development of an atom interferometer experiment designed to realize cavity-mediated, squeezed Mach-Zehnder-type interferometry with ultra-cold 87Rb atoms. The experiment combines cavity-aided spin-squeezing with cavity-mediated Mach-Zehnder interferometry to demonstrate entanglement-enhanced phase sensitivity. The experiment is centered on a triangular optical cavity that mediates all relevant atom-light interactions. The cavity provides optical trapping, spin-squeezing, and Raman beam-splitter operations, enabling to perform interferometry on a continuously trapped atomic ensemble. The thesis elaborates on the fundamental theoretical framework, the cavity design, and the full optical setup, including the detailed configuration of the developed laser stabilization methods. Experimentally, continuous loading methods were explored, resulting in an accumulation of up to 4 × 106 atoms in the dipole trap within a cycle time of 500 ms. The AC Stark shift compensation method developed for continuous loading was further applied for in-trap cooling to 10 µK, and optical pumping for efficient atomic state preparation. Coherent state control was verified via observation of microwave-driven Rabi oscillations, and used to characterize atom-cavity coupling. These presented results establish the experimental groundwork for the future development of cavity-mediated, entanglement-enhanced Mach-Zehnder-type atom interferometry.
Ultra-cold atoms are highly sensitive to both inertial effects and electromagnetic fields, making atom interferometers excellent candidates for a variety of precision sensing applications. Furthermore, highly tunable atomic interactions combined with well established experimental techniques for trapping, cooling and manipulating ensembles of ultra-cold atoms, make them well suited to quantum enhancement. For these reasons, ensembles of ultra-cold atoms are excellent candidates for quantum-enhanced measurement devices. Broadly, this thesis presents a number of theoretical results which share the aim of progressing the proof-of-principle regime of current experiments to genuinely useful, ultra-precise quantum enhanced sensors.In Chapter 4 we explore the challenge of devising a useful, quantum-enhanced inertial measurement - to date no such experiment has been performed. Specifically, we present a model of a spin-squeezed rotation sensor utilising the Sagnac effect in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate in a ring trap. The two input states for the interferometer are seeded using Raman pulses with Laguerre-Gauss beams and are amplified by the bosonic enhancement of spin-exchange collisions, resulting in spin-squeezing and potential quantum enhancement in the interferometry. The ring geometry has an advantage over separated beam path atomic rotation sensors due to the uniform condensate density. We model the interferometer both analytically and numerically for realistic experimental parameters and find that significant quantum enhancement is possible. However, this enhancement is partially degraded when working in a regime with strong atomic interactions, indicating that perhaps interaction-based squeezing is not the best route to a quantum-enhanced inertial measurement.Continuing the theme of practical spin-squeezing with atomic interactions, in Chapter 5 we explore methods to combat detection noise, which is currently one of the most significant experimental limitations for quantum-enhanced atom interferometers. A useful quantum-enhanced interferometer requires nonclassical states with a high particle number and the (close to) optimal exploitation of the states' quantum correlations. Unfortunately, the single-particle detection resolution demanded by conventional protocols, such as spin squeezing via one-axis twisting, places severe limits on the particle number. Additionally, the challenge of finding optimal measurements (that saturate the quantum Cram´er-Rao bound) for an arbitrary nonclassical state limits most metrological protocols to only moderate levels of quantum enhancement. “Interaction-based readout” protocols have been shown to allow optimal interferometry or to provide robustness against detection noise at the expense of optimality. We prove that one has great flexibility in constructing an optimal protocol, thereby allowing it to also be robust to detection noise. This requires the full probability distribution of outcomes in an optimal measurement basis, which is typically easily-accessible and can be determined from specific criteria we provide. Additionally, we quantify the robustness of several classes of interaction-based readouts under realistic experimental constraints. We determine that optimal and robust quantum metrology is achievable in current spin-squeezing experiments.Macroscopic superposition states (known as spin-cat states in atomic ensembles) achieve the ultimate quantum precision limit. In Chapters 6 and 7 we turn our attention to studying decoherence that arises in creating and manipulating these states. In its simplest form, decoherence occurs when a quantum state is entangled with a second state, but the results of measurements made on the second state are not accessible. As the second state has effectively ``measured the first, in Chapter 6 we argue that the quantum Fisher information is the relevant metric for predicting and quantifying this kind of decoherence. In particular we apply this analysis to studying decoherence imparted on spin-cat states via atom-light interactions, which are an essential process in atom interferometry. We find that, compared to classical atomic states, spin-cat states are highly susceptible to this kind of decoherence. We investigate the required optical field occupation, such that this decoherence is negligible.Finally, in Chapter 7 we explore the deleterious effects of spatial and phase dynamics during the creation of spin-cat states via one-axis twisting in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate. We simulate the breathing dynamics in 1 spatial dimension, employing the method of Sinatra and Castin, whereby the state is expanded into the Fock basis, with each basis state evolving within the Hartree-Fock approximation. This method is able to capture both multi-mode effects and quantum correlations, which allows us to calculate the quantum Fisher information. We find that so long as the time taken for the condensate to reach a spin-cat state is an integer multiple of the breathing period, it is sometimes possible to realise something extremely close to a spin-cat state, despite significant dynamics. These results indicate that large non-linearities, and the associated speed-up in entangling dynamics, are not fundamentally incompatible with the production of fragile, highly entangled states such as spin-cat states.
Quantum-enhanced precision measurements have emerged as one of the most useful applications of quantum optics. Exploiting quantum states of light and quantum processes, classical measurement limits can be surpassed, leading to improvements in areas including clocks, spectroscopy, magnetometry, and imaging. One measurement where straightforward quantum enhancements are possible is phase sensing with an interferometer. One can inject squeezed vacuum states into the dark port of the beamsplitter in a traditional interferometer to reduce the quantum noise and reach phase sensitivities beyond the shot noise limit. An alternate approach is to replace the beamsplitters of an interferometer with nonlinear parametric amplifiers, which produce nonclassical states of light that can be used to surpass classical performance. This so called SU(1,1) interferometer can theoretically approach sensitivities that scale as 1/n, the Heisenberg limit where n is the interior phase sensing photon number, compared to the shot noise limit of 1/ √ n for a traditional interferometer [1]. I will present our group’s experimental progress in testing a Mach-Zender SU(1,1) interferometer using four-wave mixers (4WMs) in hot Rb atoms as the parametric beamsplitters. The 4WM process generates entangled twin beams which serve as the two arms of the interferometer, and are then recombined in a second 4WM cell, resulting in a phase-sensitive output. We will extend the work done on this interferometer [2, 3] by performing a detailed analysis of the output signal to noise through homodyne measurements, and will attempt to observe the better-than-shot-noise scaling of the sensitivity. We will also consider the various difficulties of this optical interferometer such as the susceptibility to loss and imperfect mode-matching within the interferometer. Our group is also considering an analogous SU(1,1) interferometer in a cold atom system. Collisions in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms give rise to a 4WM process that produces spin states of the atoms which are entangled in atom number. These interactions can be controlled to set up an SU(1,1) atom interferometer, where the relevant measurements are now atomic population differences rather than photon intensities. These enhancements can lead to drastic improvements in atomic spin interferometry [3, 4].
Atom interferometer has been proven to be a powerful tool for precision metrology. Here we propose a cavity-aided nonlinear atom interferometer, based on the quasi-periodic spin mixing dynamics of an atomic spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensate trapped in an optical cavity. We unravel that the phase sensitivity can be greatly enhanced with the cavity-mediated nonlinear interaction. The influence of encoding phase, splitting time and recombining time on phase sensitivity are carefully studied. In addition, we demonstrate a dynamical phase transition in the system. Around the criticality, a small cavity light field variation can arouse a strong response of the atomic condensate, which can serve as a new resource for enhanced sensing. This work provides a robust protocol for cavity-enhanced metrology.