News: Research Highlights

Wed January 1, 2014

Magnetic Trapping of Molecules via Optical Loading and Magnetic Slowing

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Research Highlights
Wed January 1, 2014

Quantum Nanophotonic Phase Switch with a Single Atom

In analogy to transistors in classical electronic circuits, a quantum optical switch is an important element of quantum circuits and quantum networks. Operated at the fundamental limit where a single quantum of light or matter controls another field or material system, it may enable fascinating applications such as long-distance quantum communication, distributed quantum information processing and...
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Research Highlights
Wed January 1, 2014

Scattering Resonances and Bound States for Strongly Interacting Rydberg Polaritons

We provided a theoretical framework, which described slow-light polaritons interacting via atomic Rydberg states. We used a diagrammatic method to analytically derive the scattering properties of two polaritons. We identified new parameter regimes where polariton-polariton interactions were repulsive. Furthermore, in the regime of attractive interactions, we identified multiple two-polariton bound states, calculated their dispersion, and...
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Research Highlights
Wed January 1, 2014

Interferometric Probes of Many-body Localization

We proposed a method for detecting many-body localization (MBL) in disordered spin systems. The method involved pulsed, coherent spin manipulations that probed the dephasing of a given spin due to its entanglement with a set of distant spins. It allowed one to distinguish the MBL phase from a non-interacting localized phase and a delocalized phase....
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Research Highlights
Wed January 1, 2014

Many-body Dynamics of Dipolar Molecules in an Optical Lattice

Understanding the many-body dynamics of isolated quantum systems is one of the central challenges in modern physics. To this end, the direct experimental realization of strongly correlated quantum systems allows one to gain insights into the emergence of complex phenomena. Such insights enable the development of theoretical tools that broaden our understanding. In our study,...
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Research Highlights
Wed January 1, 2014

Properties of the ground 3F2 state and the excited 3P0 state of atomic thorium in cold collisions with 3He

We measure inelastic collisional cross sections for collisions between thorium (Th) and helium. We determine for Th 3F2-He the ratio of the momentum-transfer to Zeeman relaxation cross sections for collisions to be g~500 at 800 mK. For Th 3P0-He collisions, we observe no measureable quenching of this metastable state, even after 106 collisions. This allowed...
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Research Highlights
Tue January 1, 2013

Realizing Fractional Chern Insulators in Dipolar Spin Systems

Strongly correlated quantum systems can exhibit exotic behavior controlled by topology. We predicted that the v = 1/2 fractional Chern insulator arose naturally in a two-dimensional array of driven, dipolar interacting spins. As a specific implementation, we analyzed how to prepare and detect synthetic gauge potentials for the rotational excitations of ultracold polar molecules trapped...
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Research Highlights
Tue January 1, 2013

Quantum Nonlinear Optics: Strongly Interacting Photons

Quantum-optics researchers have been trying to achieve strong inter­actions between individual photons for decades. These interactions constitute a fundamental tool toward the ultimate control of light fields “quantum by quantum.” They can be used to realize deterministic two-qubit optical gates for scalable quantum computing and to produce highly correlated states for high-precision measurements. Also, they...
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Research Highlights
Tue January 1, 2013

Robustness of Quantum Memories Based on Majorana Zero Modes

We analyzed the rate at which quantum information encoded in zero-energy Majorana modes was lost in the presence of perturbations. We showed that information could survive for times that scale exponentially with the size of the chain both in the presence of quenching and time-dependent quadratic dephasing perturbations, even when the latter had spectral components...
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Research Highlights
Tue January 1, 2013

Many-body Localization with Dipoles

Systems of strongly interacting dipoles offer an attractive platform to study many-body localized phases, owing to their long coherence times and strong interactions. We explored conditions under which such localized phases persisted in the presence of power-law interactions and supplemented our analytic treatment with numerical evidence of localized states in one dimension. We proposed several...
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News type:
Research Highlights