News: Research Highlights

Wed January 1, 2014

Quantum Interference Between Independent Reservoirs in Open Quantum Systems

When a quantum system interacts with multiple reservoirs, the environmental effects are usually treated in an additive manner. We showed that that assumption breaks down for non-Markovian environments that have finite memory times. Specifically, we demonstrated that quantum interferences between independent environments could qualitatively modify the dynamics of the physical system. We illustrated that effect...
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Wed January 1, 2014

Buffer-gas loaded magneto-optical traps for Yb, Tm, Er, and Ho

Novel physics in areas like quantum information, cold controlled chemistry and precision measurements is predicted to be accessible with molecules at temperatures in the mK regime. These approaches require molecular beam sources which are unavailable at present. In particular, providing cold, slow and bright beams of a general set of molecules, ideally independent of their...
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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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Tue January 1, 2013

Coupling of NV Centers to Photonic Crystal Nanobeams in Diamond

The realization of efficient optical interfaces for solid-state atom-like systems is an important problem in quantum science with potential applications in quantum communications and quantum information processing. We described and demonstrated a technique for coupling single nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers to suspended diamond photonic crystal cavities with quality factors up to 6000. Specifically, we presented...
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Tue January 1, 2013

Progress on Laser Cooling of CaF

The internal structure and the long-range dipole-dipole interactions of ultracold polar molecules open new avenues in studying physics such as the quantum simulation of strongly correlated Hamiltonians, ultracold controlled chemistry or precision measurements. At present, a reliable general method to produce an ultracold sample of molecules is desired, but not available. The goal of this...
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Tue January 1, 2013

Nanometer-scale Thermometry in a Living Cell

Sensitive probing of temperature variations on nanometre scales is an outstanding challenge in many areas of modern science and technology. In particular, a thermometer capable of subdegree temperature resolution over a large range of temperatures as well as integration within a living system could provide a powerful new tool in many areas of biological, physical...
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Tue January 1, 2013

All-optical Sensing of a Single-molecule Electron Spin

We demonstrated an all-optical method for magnetic sensing of individual molecules in ambient conditions at room temperature. Our approach was based on shallow nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers near the surface of a diamond crystal, which we used to detect single paramagnetic molecules covalently attached to the diamond surface. The manipulation and readout of the NV centers...
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Tue January 1, 2013

Quantum Logic between Remote Quantum Registers

We considered two approaches to dark-spin-mediated quantum computing in hybrid solid-state spin architectures. First, we reviewed the notion of eigenmode-mediated unpolarized spin-chain state transfer and extended the analysis to various experimentally relevant imperfections: quenched disorder, dynamical decoherence, and uncompensated long-range coupling. In finite-length chains, the interplay between disorder-induced localization and decoherence yielded a natural optimal...
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