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In this paper we propose an efficient method for creating macroscopically distinct mechanical superposition states in an ultra strongly-coupled light-matter system. By modulating the opto-mechanical coupling sinusoidally, the radiation pressure can be turned into a built-in resonant driving force effectively. Thus the mechanical displacement can be significantly amplified.

We consider an ensemble of atoms with $\Lambda$-type level structure trapped in a single-mode cavity, and propose a geometric scheme of coherent manipulation of quantum states on the subspace of zero-energy states within the quantum Zeno subspace of the system. We find that the particular subspace inherits the decoherence-free nature of the quantum Zeno subspace and features a symmetry-protected degeneracy, fulfilling all the conditions for a universal scheme of arbitrary unitary operations on it., Comment: 5 pages with 3 figures. Supplemental Material is available upon request

We propose a generalization of the coherent anomaly method to extract the critical exponents of a phase transition occurring in the steady-state of an open quantum many-body system. The method, originally developed by Suzuki [J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. {\bf 55}, 4205 (1986)] for equilibrium systems, is based on the scaling properties of the singularity in the response functions determined through cluster mean-field calculations. We apply this method to the dissipative transverse-field Ising model and the dissipative XYZ model in two dimensions obtaining convergent results already with small clusters., Accepted version, 9 pages, 7 figures

We study a scheme of thermal management where a three-qubit system assisted with a coherent auxiliary bath (CAB) is employed to implement heat management on a target thermal bath (TTB). We consider the CAB/TTB being ensemble of coherent/thermal two-level atoms (TLAs), and within the framework of collision model investigate the characteristics of steady heat current (also called target heat current (THC)) between the system and the TTB. It demonstrates that with the help of the quantum coherence of ancillae the magnitude and direction of heat current can be controlled only by adjusting the coupling strength of system-CAB. Meanwhile, we also show that the influences of quantum coherence of ancillae on the heat current strongly depend on the coupling strength of system—CAB, and the THC becomes positively/negatively correlated with the coherence magnitude of ancillae when the coupling strength below/over some critical value. Besides, the system with the CAB could serve as a multifunctional device integrating the thermal functions of heat amplifier, suppressor, switcher and refrigerator, while with thermal auxiliary bath it can only work as a thermal suppressor. Our work provides a new perspective for the design of multifunctional thermal device utilizing the resource of quantum coherence from the CAB.

By considering a 3-mode optomechanical system formed by two cavities interacting with a common mechanical mode, we demonstrate that phonon-counting measurements lead to a significant enhancement of entanglement in the output of the two cavities. This conclusion still holds for an inefficient detector, but the dependence on system parameters changes qualitatively from the ideal limit of perfect projective measurements. We find non-trivial optimal points for the entanglement as functions of detector efficiency, measurement outcome, and optical drive strengths. We characterize both the highest achievable entanglement as well as a ‘typical’ value, obtained at the most likely measurement outcome. Numerical results are well understood within an approximate analytical approach based on perturbation theory around the ideal detector limit.

The influence of an early-strength agent on the frost resistance of a cement-stabilized macadam material used in road engineering was explored by mixing 5% cement into the cement mixture in...

We study how strong mechanical squeezing (beyond 3 dB) can be achieved through reservoir engineering in an optomechanical system which is far from the resolved-sideband regime. In our proposed setup, the effect of unwanted counter-rotating terms is suppressed by quantum interference from two auxiliary cavities. In the weak coupling regime, we develop an analytical treatment based on the effective master equation approach, which allows us to obtain explicitly the condition of maximum squeezing.

We study theoretically the generation of strong entanglement of two mechanical oscillators in an unresolved-sideband optomechanical cavity, using a reservoir engineering approach. In our proposal, the effect of unwanted counter-rotating terms is suppressed via destructive quantum interference by the optical field of two auxiliary cavities. For arbitrary values of the optomechanical interaction, the entanglement is obtained numerically. In the weak-coupling regime, we derive an analytical expression for the entanglement of the two mechanical oscillators based on an effective master equation, and obtain the optimal parameters to achieve strong entanglement. Our analytical results are in accord with numerical simulations.

Zearalenone (ZEN) is one of the most widely distributed harmful mycotoxins produced by Fusarium species, especially deposited in corn oil. In this study, we systematically tracked the changes of ZEN in the refining of corn oil, and especially during neutralization process. An alkali neutralization process could remove certain amounts of ZEN that was much more than that of others refining steps. In a mimicking condition, ZEN contents decreased continuously and significantly with increasing neutralization temperature. However, when returned to neutral, recoverable ZEN decreased with increasing temperature, which confirmed more degradation of ZEN at high temperature. HPLC-Q/TOF MS and NMR evidence showed that non-reversible hydrolyzate followed decarboxylation was observed in a high-temperature alkali neutralization condition. The results may serve as the scientific basis for the elimination of zearalenone in refined vegetable oils, and provide clues to understanding the oil-safety aspects of elimination of zearalenone.

With a perturbative treatment based on the Keldysh Green's function technique, we study the resonant enhancement of nonlinear interaction effects in a four-mode optomechanical ring. In such a system, we identify five distinct types of resonant scattering between unperturbed polariton modes, induced by the nonlinear optomechanical interaction. By computing the cavity density of states and optomechanical induced transparency signal, we find that the largest nonlinear effects are induced by a decay process involving the two phonon-like polaritons. In contrast to the conventional two-mode optomechanical system, our proposed system can exhibit prominent nonlinear features even in the regime when the single-photon coupling is much smaller than the cavity damping., 16 pages, 11 figures, 1 table

Quantum entanglement in mechanical systems is not only a key signature of macroscopic quantum effects, but has wide applications in quantum technologies. Here we proposed an effective approach for creating strong steady-state entanglement between two directly coupled mechanical oscillators (or a mechanical oscillator and a microwave resonator) in a modulated optomechanical system. The entanglement is achieved by combining the processes of a cavity cooling and the two-mode parametric interaction, which can surpass the bound on the maximal stationary entanglement from the two-mode parametric interaction. In principle, our proposal allows one to cool the system from an initial thermal state to an entangled state with high purity by a monochromatic driving laser. Also, the obtained entangled state can be used to implement the continuous-variable teleportation with high fidelity. Moreover, our proposal is robust against the thermal fluctuations of the mechanical modes under the condition of strong optical pumping., 8 pages, 9 figures

Recent advances on optical control of mechanical motion in an optomechanical resonator have stimulated strong interests in exploring quantum behaviors of otherwise classical, macroscopic mechanical systems and especially in exploiting mechanical degrees of freedom for applications in quantum information processing. In an optomechanical resonator, an optically- active mechanical mode can couple to any of the optical resonances supported by the resonator via radiation pressure. This unique property leads to a remarkable phenomenon: mechanically-mediated conversion of optical fields between vastly different wavelengths. The resulting optomechanical interfaces can play a special role in a hybrid quantum network, enabling quantum communication between disparate quantum systems. In this review, we introduce the basic concepts of optomechanical interactions and discuss recent theoretical and experimental progresses in this field. A particular emphasis is on taking advantage of mechanical degrees of freedom, while avoiding detrimental effects of thermal mechanical motion.

In this work, we study an entanglement concentration scheme in a 3-mode optomechanical system. The scheme is based on phonon counting measurements, which can be performed through photon counting of an auxiliary cavity connected to the mechanical resonator. The amount of entanglement between the two cavity output modes is found to increase logarithmically with the number of detected phonons (photons). Such an entanglement concentration scheme is deterministic since, independently of the number of detected phonons (photons), the measurement always leads to an increase in output entanglement. Besides numerical simulations, we provide analytical results and physical insight for the improved entanglement and the concentration efficiency.

We theoretically study the unique applications of optomechanics based on traveling-wave microresonators, where the optomechanical coupling of degenerate modes can be enhanced selectively by optically pumping in different directions. We show that the unique features of degenerate optical modes can be applied to the entangled photon generation of clockwise and counter-clockwise optical modes, and the nonclassicality of entangled photon pair is discussed. The coherent coupling between the clockwise and counter-clockwise optical mods and two acoustic modes is also studied, in which the relative phase of the optomechanical couplings plays a key role in the optical non-reciprocity. The parity-time symmetry of acoustic modes can be observed in the slightly deformed microresonator with the interaction of forward and backward stimulated Brillouin Scattering in the triple-resonance system. In addition, the degenerate modes are in the decoherence-free subspace, which is robust against environmental noises. Based on parameters realized in recent experiments, these optomechanical devices should be readily achievable., 9 pages, 5 figures

Entangled light beams are important resources for quantum information processing. For some applications like teleportation, only the entanglement between two wave packets (two harmonic oscillators) is needed. So the calculation of output-photon entanglement involves projecting continuous output modes onto wave-packet modes by filter functions, thus resulting in a strong dependence of entanglement on the filter functions. In this paper, we aim at optimizing the filter functions to obtain a large entanglement in a relatively short time, which is important for utilizing the entangled light beams more efficiently in real experiments. We outline the general optimization procedures based on our previous schemes of generating entangled beams in a multimode optomechanical system. Moreover, we give analytic insights into as well as physical explanations of the wave-packet optimization, which are helpful for experimental estimations.

Using a perturbative treatment, we quantify the influence of non-adiabatic leakage and system dissipation on the transfer fidelity of a stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) process. We find that, optimizing transfer time rather than coupling profiles, leads to a significant improvement of the transfer fidelity. The upper bound of the fidelity has been found as a simple analytical function of system cooperativities. We also provide a systematic approach to reach this upper bound efficiently., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures

We provide analytic insight into the generation of stationary itinerant photon entanglement in a three-mode optomechanical system. We identify the parameter regime of maximal entanglement and show that strong entanglement is possible even for weak many-photon optomechanical couplings. We also show that strong tripartite entanglement is generated between the photonic and phononic output fields; unlike the bipartite photon-photon entanglement, this tripartite entanglement diverges as one approaches the boundary of system stability.

We propose a theoretical scheme to observe the loss of quantum coherence through the coupling of the superconducting charge qubit system to a nanomechanical resonator (NAMR), which has already been successfully fabricated in experiment and is convenient to manipulate. With a similar form to the usual cavity QED system, this qubit-NAMR composite system with engineered coupling exhibits the collapse and revival phenomenon in a progressive decoherence process. Corresponding to the two components of superposition of the two charge eigenstates, the state of the nanomechanical resonator evolves simultaneously towards two distinct quasi-classical states. Therefore the generalized “which way” detection by the NAMR induces the quantum decoherence of the charge qubit.

The manipulation of single spins in double quantum dots by making use of the exchange interaction and a highly inhomogeneous magnetic field was discussed in [W. A. Coish and D. Loss, Phys. Rev. B 75, 161302 (2007)]. However, such large inhomogeneity is difficult to achieve through the slanting field of a micromagnet in current designs of lateral double dots. Therefore, we examine an analogous spin manipulation scheme directly applicable to realistic GaAs double dot setups. We estimate that typical gate times, realized at the singlet-triplet anticrossing induced by the inhomogeneous micromagnet field, can be a few nanoseconds. We discuss the optimization of initialization, read-out, and single-spin gates through suitable choices of detuning pulses and an improved geometry. We also examine the effect of nuclear dephasing and charge noise. The latter induces fluctuations of both detuning and tunneling amplitude. Our results suggest that this scheme is a promising approach for the realization of fast single-spin operations., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures

Diabolical points, which originate from parameter-dependent accidental degeneracies of a system's energy levels, have played a fundamental role in the discovery of the Berry phase as well as in photonics (conical refraction), in chemical dynamics, and more recently in novel materials such as graphene, whose electronic band structure possess Dirac points. Here we discuss diabolical points in an optomechanical system formed by multiple scatterers in an optical cavity with periodic boundary conditions. Such configuration is close to experimental setups using micro-toroidal rings with indentations or near-field scatterers. We find that the optomechanical coupling is no longer an analytic function near the diabolical point and demonstrate the topological phase arising through the mechanical motion. Similar to a Fabry-Perot resonator, the optomechanical coupling can grow with the number of scatterers. We also introduce a minimal quantum model of a diabolical point, which establishes a connection to the motion of an arbitrary-spin particle in a 2D parabolic quantum dot with spin-orbit coupling., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures

We show how strong steady-state entanglement can be achieved in a three-mode optomechanical system (or other parametrically-coupled bosonic system) by using one of the modes as a cold reservoir to effectively laser-cool a delocalized Bogoliubov mode. This approach allows one to surpass the bound on the maximum stationary intracavity entanglement possible with a coherent two-mode squeezing interaction. Unlike typical dissipative entanglement schemes, the entangling dynamics here are most effective in a regime where the effects of the engineered reservoir cannot be described by a Markovian Lindblad master equation., 5 pages plus supplementary information; final published version

We present an ultrafast feasible scheme for ground state cooling of a mechanical resonator via repeated random time-interval measurements on an auxiliary flux qubit. We find that the ground state cooling can be achieved with \emph{several} such measurements. The cooling efficiency hardly depends on the time-intervals between any two consecutive measurements. The scheme is also robust against environmental noises., 4 pages, 3 figures

We propose a circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED) realization of a protocol to generate a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state for $N$ superconducting transmon qubits homogeneously coupled to a superconducting transmission line resonator in the dispersive limit. We derive an effective Hamiltonian with pairwise qubit exchange interactions of the XY type, $\tilde{g}(XX+YY)$, that can be globally controlled. Starting from a separable initial state, these interactions allow to generate a multi-qubit GHZ state within a time $t_{\text{GHZ}}\sim \tilde{g}^{-1}$. We discuss how to probe the non-local nature and the genuine $N$-partite entanglement of the generated state. Finally, we investigate the stability of the proposed scheme to inhomogeneities in the physical parameters., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in PRB

We revisit the problem of using a mechanical resonator to perform the transfer of a quantum state between two electromagnetic cavities (e.g. optical and microwave). We show that this system possesses an effective mechanical dark state which is immune to mechanical dissipation; utilizing this feature allows highly efficient transfer of intra-cavity states, as well as of itinerant photon states. We provide simple analytic expressions for the fidelity of transferring both Gaussian and non-Gaussian states., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures

We propose a scheme to realize a quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement of a superconducting flux qubit by a Josephson bifurcation amplifier. Our scheme can implement a perfect QND measurement for a qubit subject to a variable magnetic bias. Measurement back-action induced qubit relaxation can be suppressed and hence the QND fidelity is expected to be high over a wide range of bias conditions., 7 pages, 4 figures

We propose a one-step scheme to generate Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states for superconducting flux qubits or charge qubits in a circuit QED setup. The GHZ state can be produced within the coherence time of the multiqubit system. Our scheme is independent of the initial state of the transmission line resonator and works in the presence of higher harmonic modes. Our analysis also shows that the scheme is robust to various operation errors and environmental noise.

We study the role of qubit dephasing in cooling a mechanical resonator by quantum back-action. With a superconducting flux qubit as a specific example, we show that ground-state cooling of a mechanical resonator can only be realized if the qubit dephasing rate is sufficiently low., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We propose a scheme with dc-control of finite bandwidth to implement two-qubit gate for superconducting flux qubits at the optimal point. We provide a detailed non-perturbative analysis on the dynamic evolution of the qubits interacting with a common quantum bus. An effective qubit-qubit coupling is induced while decoupling the quantum bus with proposed pulse sequences. The two-qubit gate is insensitive to the initial state of the quantum bus and applicable to non-perturbative coupling regime which enables rapid two-qubit operation. This scheme can be scaled up to multi-qubit coupling., 10 pages; 6 figures

We propose a quantum description of the cooling of a micromechanical flexural oscillator by a one-dimensional transmission line resonator via a force that resembles cavity radiation pressure. The mechanical oscillator is capacitively coupled to the central conductor of the transmission line resonator. At the optimal point, the micromechanical oscillator can be cooled close to the ground state, and the cooling can be measured by homodyne detection of the output microwave signal., 8 pages, 6 figures

We describe a mechanism to detect quantum phase transition (QPT) in a system by a coherent probe weakly coupled to it. We illustrate this mechanism by a circuit QED architecture where a superconducting Josephson junction qubit array interacts with a one-dimensional superconducting transmission line resonator (TLR). The superconducting qubit array is modeled as an Ising chain in transverse field. Our investigation shows that the QPT phenomenon in the superconducting qubit array can be evidently revealed by the correlation spectrum of TLR output: At the critical point, the drastic broadening of spectrum indicates the occurrence of QPT. We also show the generalization of this mechanism to other QPT systems.

We study a new quantum heat engine (QHE), which is assisted by a Maxwell's demon. The QHE requires three steps: thermalization, quantum measurement, and quantum feedback controlled by the Maxwell demon. We derive the positive-work condition and operation efficiency of this composite QHE. Using controllable superconducting quantum circuits as an example, we show how to construct our QHE. The essential role of the demon is explicitly demonstrated in this macroscopic QHE.

We design theoretically a new device to realize the general quantum storage based on dcSQUID charge qubits. The distinct advantages of our scheme are analyzed in comparison with existing storage scenarios. More arrestingly, the controllable XY-model spin interaction has been realized for the first time in superconducting qubits, which may have more potential applications besides those in quantum information processing. The experimental feasibility is also elaborated., 4 pages, 2 figures

In the viewpoint of quasi normal modes, we describe a novel decoherence mechanism of charge qubit of Josephson Junctions (JJ) in a lossy micro-cavity, which can appear in the realistic experiment for quantum computation based on JJ qubit. We show that the nonlinear coupling of a charge qubit to quantum cavity field can result in an additional dissipation of resonant mode due to its effective interaction between those non-resonant modes and a resonant mode, which is induced by the charge qubit itself. We calculate the characterized time of the novel decoherence by making use of the system plus bath method., 6 pages, 2 figurs

We propose a theoretical protocol for quantum logic gates between two Josephson junction charge-phase qubits through the control of their coupling to a large junction. In the low excitation limit of the large junction when $E_{J}\gg E_{c}$, it behaves effectively as a quantum data-bus mode of a harmonic oscillator. Our protocol is efficient and fast. In addition, it does not require the data-bus to stay adiabatically in its ground state, as such it can be implemented over a wide parameter regime independent of the data-bus quantum state., 5 pages, 1 figure

In a recent publication [Y.D. Wang and A.A. Clerk, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 153603 (2012)], we demonstrated that one can use interference to significantly increase the fidelity of state transfer between two electromagnetic cavities coupled to a common mechanical resonator over a naive sequential-transfer scheme based on two swap operations. This involved making use of a delocalized electromagnetic mode which is decoupled from the mechanical resonator, a so-called "mechanically-dark" mode. Here, we demonstrate the existence of a new "hybrid" state transfer scheme which incorporates the best elements of the dark-mode scheme (protection against mechanical dissipation) and the double-swap scheme (fast operation time). Importantly, this new scheme also does not require the mechanical resonator to be prepared initially in its ground state. We also provide additional details on the previously-described interference-enhanced transfer schemes, and provide an enhanced discussion of how the interference physics here is intimately related to the optomechanical analogue of electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT). We also compare the various transfer schemes over a wide range of relevant experimental parameters, producing a "phase diagram" showing the the optimal transfer scheme for different points in parameter space., 39 pages, 11 figures NJP 14 (Focus issue on Optomechanics)

We study a method to cool down the vibration mode of a micro-mechanical beam using a capacitively-coupled superconducting transmission line. The Coulomb force between the transmission line and the beam is determined by the driving microwave on the transmission line and the displacement of the beam. When the frequency of the driving microwave is smaller than that of the transmission line resonator, the Coulomb force can oppose the velocity of the beam. Thus, the beam can be cooled. This mechanism, which may enable to prepare the beam in its quantum ground state of vibration, is feasible under current experimental conditions., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures