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arXiv:2406.02494 · Physical Review Letters

Velocity Scanning Tomography for Room-Temperature Quantum Simulation

Jiefei Wang, Ruosong Mao, Xingqi Xu, Yunzhou Lu, Jianhao Dai, Xiao Liu, Gang‐Qin Liu, Dawei Lu, Huizhu Hu, Shiyao Zhu, Han Cai, Da‐Wei Wang

Published Oct 29, 2024• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum simulation offers an analog approach for exploring exotic quantum phenomena using controllable platforms, typically necessitating ultracold temperatures to maintain the quantum coherence. Superradiance lattices (SLs) have been harnessed to simulate coherent topological physics at room temperature, but the thermal motion of atoms remains a notable challenge in accurately measuring the physical quantities. To overcome this obstacle, we implement a velocity scanning tomography technique to discern the responses of atoms with different velocities, allowing cold-atom spectroscopic resolution within room-temperature SLs. By comparing absorption spectra with and without atoms moving at specific velocities, we can derive the Wannier-Stark ladders of the SL across various effective static electric fields, their strengths being proportional to the atomic velocities. We extract the Zak phase of the SL by monitoring the ladder frequency shift as a function of the atomic velocity, effectively demonstrating the topological winding of the energy bands. Our research signifies the feasibility of room-temperature quantum simulation and facilitates their applications in quantum information processing.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.133.183403

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Quantum simulation offers an analog approach for exploring exotic quantum phenomena using controllable platforms, typically necessitating ultracold temperatures to maintain the quantum coherence. Superradiance lattices (SLs) have been harnessed to simulate coherent topological physics at room temperature, but the thermal motion of atoms remains a notable challenge in accurately measuring the physical quantities. To overcome this obstacle, we implement a velocity scanning tomography technique to discern the responses of atoms with different velocities, allowing cold-atom spectroscopic resolution within room-temperature SLs. By comparing absorption spectra with and without atoms moving at specific velocities, we can derive the Wannier-Stark ladders of the SL across various effective static electric fields, their strengths being proportional to the atomic velocities. We extract the Zak phase of the SL by monitoring the ladder frequency shift as a function of the atomic velocity, effectively demonstrating the topological winding of the energy bands. Our research signifies the feasibility of room-temperature quantum simulation and facilitates their applications in quantum information processing.
Ultracold atoms provide a flexible platform for simulating topological phases. However, they are intrinsically prone to thermal noise, which can overwhelm topological response and hamper promised applications. On the other hand, topological invariants can be reconstructed from the energy spectra of particles subjected to a static force, based on the polarization relation between Wannier-Stark ladders and Zak phases. Such spectroscopic methods circumvent the obstacle to measuring topological invariants in thermal atoms. Here we reconstruct Zak phases from the anti-crossing between Wannier-Stark ladders in room-temperature superradiance lattices. Without dynamical manipulation routinely needed in ultracold atoms, we evaluate Zak phases directly from the absorption spectra. The thermal atomic motion, an essential source of noise in cold atoms, plays a key role in extracting Zak phases. Our approach paves the way of measuring topological invariants and developing their applications in room-temperature atoms.
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Harnessing the dynamics of complex quantum systems is an area of much interest and a quantum simulator has emerged as a promising platform to probe exotic topological phases. Since the flexibility offered by various controllable quantum systems has helped gain insight into the quantum simulation of such complicated problems, an analog quantum simulator has recently shown its feasibility to tackle the problems of exploring topological phases. However, digital quantum simulation and the detection of topological phases still remain elusive. Here, we develop and experimentally realize the digital quantum simulation of topological phases with a solid-state quantum simulator at room temperature. Distinct from previous works dealing with static topological phases, the topological phases emulated here are Floquet topological phases. Furthermore, we also illustrate the procedure of digitally simulating a quantum quench and observing the nonequilibrium dynamics of Floquet topological phases. Using a quantum quench, the 0- and π -energy topological invariants are unambiguously detected through measuring time-averaged spin polarizations. We believe our experiment opens up a new avenue to digitally simulate and detect Floquet topological phases with fast-developed programmable quantum simulators.
Quantum state tomography provides a powerful and versatile framework for characterizing quantum states across diverse quantum systems. However, tomography is still largely restricted to systems with a few degrees of freedom, while for continuous systems, it is typically tailored to quantum-optical platforms. For other many-body systems described by continuous quantum fields such as ultracold atomic gases, tomographic technique is not as well-established. The present thesis addresses this gap by providing new approaches to measurement and tomography of ultracold Bose gases trapped in one (1D) and two dimensions (2D). These systems serve as analog quantum field theory (QFT) simulators and exhibit novel physics absent in higher dimensions. We begin by systematically assessing state-of-the-art method for extracting the relative phase field in parallel 1D Bose gases with matter-wave interference. In particular, we derive a formula for the systematic phase shift due to longitudinal dynamics, a factor that is often ignored in previous modeling of the measurement. We further examine how the single-shot readout error propagates to correlation and distribution functions of the relative phase. Then, we broaden the scope of experimentally accessible quantities by developing a new methodology to extract the common phase field---the sum of the phase fields of the two parallel gases---from the already available density ripple data. We rigorously benchmark this new readout with numerical simulations and experimental data in 1D systems and further generalize it to 2D systems. By combining the relative and common phases information, we improve Gaussian state tomography in parallel 1D Bose gases and apply it to probe new physical phenomena in quantum field simulators. Specifically, we focus on two applications: (i) field-space entanglement detection at finite temperatures and out of equilibrium, and (ii) probing non-linear relaxation in near-integrable quantum systems. This thesis bridges theory and experiment in the simulation of QFTs and reveals new opportunities for exploring many-body quantum effects in ultracold bosonic gases.
Abstract The energy spectrum of quantum systems contain a wealth of information about their underlying properties. Spectroscopic techniques, especially those with access to spatially resolved measurements, can be challenging to implement in real-space systems of cold atoms in optical lattices. Here we explore a technique for probing energy spectra in synthetic lattices that is analogous to scanning tunneling microscopy. Using one-dimensional synthetic lattices of coupled atomic momentum states, we explore this spectroscopic technique and observe qualitative agreement between the measured and simulated energy spectra for small two- and three-site lattices as well as a uniform many-site lattice. Finally, through simulations, we show that this technique should allow for the exploration of the topological bands and the fractal energy spectrum of the Hofstadter model as realized in synthetic lattices.
Synthetic dimension approach has emerged as a versatile and powerful technique in cold-atom toolbox for quantum simulation, serving as a complementary alternative to conventional optical lattice platforms. By mapping internal or external atomic states into discrete lattice sites, this method provides precise control over local tunneling amplitudes, phases, and on-site potentials, enabling flexible engineering of tight-binding Hamiltonians. Such capabilities have facilitated the experimental exploration of topology, synthetic gauge fields, disorder-induced phenomena, and exotic time-dependent dynamics across a range of platforms, including hyperfine and Rydberg states, momentum lattices, and harmonic-trap modes. In this review, we summarize the underlying principles of the key experimental synthetic dimension platforms, and their recent advances in quantum simulation. We also discuss the advantages and current limitations of the synthetic method, and provide a perspective on future directions, including hybrid-dimensional architectures and the study of high-dimensional many-body physics.