Search

We present a group theoretical and ab-initio analysis of lattice point defects in fluorographene, with a focus on neutral and negative $\text{V}_{\text{CF}}$ vacancies. By using a combination of density functional theory calculations and group theory analysis, we investigate the many-body configurations of the defects and calculate the vertical absorption and zero-phonon line energies of the excited states and their dependence with strain. The description of the defects is extended by computing their formation energy, as well as further relevant parameters as the Jahn-Teller energy for neutral $\text{V}_{\text{CF}}$ and the zero field splitting for negative $\text{V}_{\text{CF}}$ vacancies. Based on our results, we discuss possible quantum applications of these color centers when coupled to mechanical oscillation modes of the hosting two-dimensional material. The symmetry and active orbitals of the defects exhibit a parallelism with those of the extensively studied NV centers in diamond. In this context, the studied defects emerge as interesting candidates for the development of two-dimensional quantum devices based on fluorographene.

The active driving of the electron spin of a color center is known as a method for the hyperpolarization of the surrounding nuclear spin bath and to initialize a system with large number of spins. Here, we investigate the efficiency of this approach for various spin coupling schemes in a one-dimensional Heisenberg chain coupled to a central spin. To extend our study to the realistic systems with a large number of interacting spins, we employ an approximate method based on Holstein-Primakoff transformation. The validity of the method for describing spin polarization dynamics is benchmarked by the exact numerics for a small lattice, where the accuracy of the bosonic Holstein-Primakoff approximation approach is confirmed. We, thus, extend our analysis to larger spin systems where the exact numerics are out of reach. The results prove the efficiency of the active driving method when the central spin interaction with the spin bath is long range and the inter-spin interactions in the bath spins is large enough. The method is then applied to the realistic case of optically active negatively charged boron vacancy centers ($V_B$) in hexagonal boron nitride. Our results suggest that a high degree of hyperpolarization in the boron and nitrogen nuclear spin lattices is achievable even starting from a fully thermal bath. As an initialization, our work provides the first step toward the realization of a two-dimensional quantum simulator based on natural nuclear spins and it can prove useful for extending the coherence time of the $V_B$ centers.

A scheme for the enhanced generation of higher photon-number states is realized, using an optical time-multiplexing setting that exploits a parametric down-conversion source for an iterative state generation. We use a quantum feedback mechanism for already generated photons to induce self-seeding of the consecutive nonlinear process, enabling us to coherently add photons to the light that propagates in the feedback loop. The addition can be carried out for any chosen number of round trips, resulting in a successive buildup of multiphoton states. Our system is only limited by loop losses. The looped design is rendered possible by a carefully engineered waveguide source that is compatible with and preserves the shape of the propagating mode. We compare the fidelities and success probabilities of our protocol with the common direct heralding of photon-number states. This comparison reveals that, for same the fidelity, our feedback-based setup significantly enhances success probabilities, being vital for an efficient utilization in quantum technologies. Moreover, quantum characteristics of the produced states are analyzed, and the flexibility of producing higher photon-number states with our setup beyond the common direct heralding is demonstrated., 10 pages. Comments are welcome

We propose a protocol that achieves arbitrary N-qubit interactions between nuclear spins and that can measure directly nuclear many-body correlators by appropriately making the nuclear spins interact with a nitrogen vacancy (NV) center electron spin. The method takes advantage of recently introduced dynamical decoupling techniques and demonstrates that action on the electron spin is sufficient to fully exploit nuclear spins as robust quantum registers. Our protocol is general, being applicable to other nuclear spin based platforms with electronic spin defects acting as mediators as the case of silicon carbide., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

The nitrogen vacancy (NV) color center in diamond is an enormously important platform for the development of quantum sensors, including for single spin and single molecule NMR. Detection of weak single-spin signals is greatly enhanced by repeated sequences of microwave pulses; in these dynamical decoupling (DD) techniques, the key control parameters swept in the experiment are the time intervals, $\tau$, between pulses. Here we show that, in fact, the pulse duration offers a powerful additional control parameter. While previously, a non-negligible pulse-width has been considered simply a source of experimental error, here we elucidate the underlying quantum dynamics: we identify a landscape of quantum-state crossings which are usually closed (inactive) but may be controllably activated (opened) by adjusting the pulse-width from zero. We identify these crossings with recently observed but unexpected dips (so called spurious dips) seen in the quantum coherence of the NV spin. With this new understanding, both the position and strength of these sharp features may be accurately controlled; they co-exist with the usual broader coherence dips of short-duration microwave pulses, but their sharpness allows for higher resolution spectroscopy with quantum diamond sensors, or their analogues.

Here we propose and analyse in detail protocols that can achieve rapid hyperpolarization of 13C nuclear spins in randomly oriented ensembles of nanodiamonds at room temperature. Our protocols exploit a combination of optical polarization of electron spins in nitrogen-vacancy centers and the transfer of this polarization to 13C nuclei by means of microwave control to overcome the severe challenges that are posed by the random orientation of the nanodiamonds and their nitrogen-vacancy centers. Specifically, these random orientations result in exceedingly large energy variations of the electron spin levels that render the polarization and coherent control of the nitrogen-vacancy center electron spins as well as the control of their coherent interaction with the surrounding 13C nuclear spins highly inefficient. We address these challenges by a combination of an off-resonant microwave double resonance scheme in conjunction with a realization of the integrated solid effect which, together with adiabatic rotations of external magnetic fields or rotations of nanodiamonds, leads to a protocol that achieves high levels of hyperpolarization of the entire nuclear-spin bath in a randomly oriented ensemble of nanodiamonds even at room temperature. This hyperpolarization together with the long nuclear spin polarization lifetimes in nanodiamonds and the relatively high density of 13C nuclei has the potential to result in a major signal enhancement in 13C nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and suggests functionalized and hyperpolarized nanodiamonds as a unique probe for molecular imaging both in vitro and in vivo., 19 pages,13 figures

In this paper, we establish a general relation which directly links the dissipated work done on a system driven arbitrarily far from equilibrium, a fundamental quantity in thermodynamics, and the R��nyi divergences, a fundamental concept in information theory. Specifically, we find that the generating function of the dissipated work under an arbitrary time-dependent driving process is related to the R��nyi divergences between a non-equilibrium state in the driven process and a non-equilibrium state in its time reversed process. This relation is a consequence of time reversal symmetry in driven process and is universally applicable to both finite classical system and finite quantum system, arbitrarily far from equilibrium., 5 pages and 2 figures

Environmental noise usually hinders the efficiency of charge transport through coherent quantum systems; an exception is dephasing-assisted transport (DAT). We show that linear triple quantum dots in a transport configuration and subjected to pure dephasing exhibit DAT if the coupling to the drain reservoir exceeds a threshold. DAT occurs for arbitrarily weak dephasing and the enhancement can be directly controlled by the coupling to the drain. Moreover, for specific settings, the enhanced current is accompanied by a reduction in relative shot noise. We identify the quantum Zeno effect and long-distance tunnelling as underlying dynamical processes involved in dephasing-assisted and -suppressed transport. Our analytical results are obtained by using the density matrix formalism and the characteristic polynomial approach to full counting statistics., Comment: To appear in New Journal of Physics, 20 pages, 5 figures

We present a study of the performance of the trapped-ion driven geometric phase gates introduced in [New J. Phys. 15, 083001 (2013)] when realized in a stimulated Raman transition. We show that the gate can achieve errors below the fault-tolerance threshold in the presence of laser intensity fluctuations. We also find that, in order to reduce the errors due to photon scattering below the fault-tolerance threshold, very intense laser beams are required to allow for large detunings in the Raman configuration without compromising the gate speed., Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures to be published in "Proceedings of the International School of Physics "E. Fermi""

The computation of scientific data can be very time consuming even if they are ultimately determined by a small number of parameters. The principle of compressed sampling suggests that we can achieve a considerable decrease in the computation time by avoiding the need to sample the full data set. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach at the hand of 2-D spectra in the context of ultra-fast non-linear spectroscopy of biological systems where numerical calculations are highly challenging due to the considerable computational effort involved in obtaining individual data points., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure

Recent observations of beating signals in the excitation energy transfer dynamics of photosynthetic complexes have been interpreted as evidence for sustained coherences that are sufficiently long-lived for energy transport and coherence to coexist. The possibility that coherence may be exploited in biological processes has opened up new avenues of exploration at the interface of physics and biology. The microscopic origin of these long-lived coherences, however, remains to be uncovered. Here we present such a mechanism and verify it by numerically exact simulations of system-environment dynamics. Crucially, the non-trivial spectral structures of the environmental fluctuations and particularly discrete vibrational modes can lead to the generation and sustenance of both oscillatory energy transport and electronic coherence on timescales that are comparable to excitation energy transport. This suggests that the non-trivial structure of protein environments plays a more significant role for coherence in biological processes than previously believed., Comment: Now with numerical confirmation of effect for ambient temperatures

We propose a scheme enabling controlled quantum coherent interactions between separated nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond in the presence of strong magnetic fluctuations. The proposed scheme couples nuclear qubits employing the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction between the electron spins and, crucially, benefits from the suppression of the effect of environmental magnetic field fluctuations thanks to a strong microwave driving. This scheme provides a basic building block for a full-scale quantum information processor or quantum simulator based on solid-state technology., replaced with published verion

The sub-ohmic spin-boson model is known to possess a novel quantum phase transition at zero temperature between a localised and delocalised phase. We present here an analytical theory based on a variational ansatz for the ground state, which describes a continuous localization transition with mean-field exponents for $0

A quantum memory for light is a key element for the realization of future quantum information networks. Requirements for a good quantum memory are (i) versatility (allowing a wide range of inputs) and (ii) true quantum coherence (preserving quantum information). Here we demonstrate such a quantum memory for states possessing Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entanglement. These multi-photon states are two-mode squeezed by 6.0 dB with a variable orientation of squeezing and displaced by a few vacuum units. This range encompasses typical input alphabets for a continuous variable quantum information protocol. The memory consists of two cells, one for each mode, filled with cesium atoms at room temperature with a memory time of about 1msec. The preservation of quantum coherence is rigorously proven by showing that the experimental memory fidelity 0.52(2) significantly exceeds the benchmark of 0.45 for the best possible classical memory for a range of displacements., main text 5 pages, supplementary information 3 pages

Currently laser cooling schemes are fundamentally based on the weak coupling regime. This requirement sets the trap frequency as an upper bound to the cooling rate. In this work we present a numerical study that shows the feasibility of cooling in the strong coupling regime which then allows cooling rates that are faster than the trap frequency with state of the art experimental parameters. The scheme we present can work for trapped atoms or ions as well as mechanical oscillators. It can also cool medium size ions chains close to the ground state., 5 pages 4 figures

Quantum state tomography, the ability to deduce the density matrix of a quantum system from measured data, is of fundamental importance for the verification of present and future quantum devices. It has been realized in systems with few components but for larger systems it becomes rapidly infeasible because the number of quantum measurements and computational resources required to process them grow exponentially in the system size. Here we show that we can gain an exponential advantage over direct state tomography for quantum states typically realized in nature. Based on singular value thresholding and matrix product state methods we introduce a state reconstruction scheme that relies only on a linear number of measurements. The computational resources for the postprocessing required to reconstruct the state with high fidelity from these measurements is polynomial in the system size., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure. See arxiv:1002.3839 for a closely related result

Physical interactions in quantum many-body systems are typically local: Individual constituents interact mainly with their few nearest neighbors. This locality of interactions is inherited by a decay of correlation functions, but also reflected by scaling laws of a quite profound quantity: The entanglement entropy of ground states. This entropy of the reduced state of a subregion often merely grows like the boundary area of the subregion, and not like its volume, in sharp contrast with an expected extensive behavior. Such "area laws" for the entanglement entropy and related quantities have received considerable attention in recent years. They emerge in several seemingly unrelated fields, in the context of black hole physics, quantum information science, and quantum many-body physics where they have important implications on the numerical simulation of lattice models. In this Colloquium we review the current status of area laws in these fields. Center stage is taken by rigorous results on lattice models in one and higher spatial dimensions. The differences and similarities between bosonic and fermionic models are stressed, area laws are related to the velocity of information propagation, and disordered systems, non-equilibrium situations, classical correlation concepts, and topological entanglement entropies are discussed. A significant proportion of the article is devoted to the quantitative connection between the entanglement content of states and the possibility of their efficient numerical simulation. We discuss matrix-product states, higher-dimensional analogues, and states from entanglement renormalization and conclude by highlighting the implications of area laws on quantifying the effective degrees of freedom that need to be considered in simulations., 28 pages, 2 figures, final version

Measurement connects the world of quantum phenomena to the world of classical events. It plays both a passive role, observing quantum systems, and an active one, preparing quantum states and controlling them. Surprisingly - in the light of the central status of measurement in quantum mechanics - there is no general recipe for designing a detector that measures a given observable. Compounding this, the characterization of existing detectors is typically based on partial calibrations or elaborate models. Thus, experimental specification (i.e. tomography) of a detector is of fundamental and practical importance. Here, we present the realization of quantum detector tomography: we identify the optimal positive-operator-valued measure describing the detector, with no ancillary assumptions. This result completes the triad, state, process, and detector tomography, required to fully specify an experiment. We characterize an avalanche photodiode and a photon number resolving detector capable of detecting up to eight photons. This creates a new set of tools for accurately detecting and preparing non-classical light., 6 pages, 4 figures,see video abstract at http://www.quantiki.org/video_abstracts/08072444

Since Hund's work on the ammonia molecule, the double well potential has formed a key paradigm in physics. Its importance is further underlined by the central role it plays in the Landau theory of phase transitions. Recently, the study of entanglement properties of many-body systems has added a new angle to the study of quantum phase transitions of discrete and continuous degrees of freedom, i.e., spin and harmonic chains. Here we show that control of the radial degree of freedom of trapped ion chains allows for the simulation of linear and non-linear Klein-Gordon fields on a lattice, in which the parameters of the lattice, the non-linearity and mass can be controlled at will. The system may be driven through a phase transition creating a double well potential between different configurations of the ion crystal. The dynamics of the system are controllable, local properties are measurable and tunnelling in the double well potential would be observable., 6 pages, 5 figures

We propose and study methods for detecting the Unruh effect in a Bose-Einstein condensate. The Bogoliubov vacuum of a Bose-Einstein condensate is used here to simulate a scalar field-theory, and accelerated atom dots or optical lattices as means for detecting phonon radiation due to acceleration effects. We study Unruh's effect for linear acceleration and circular acceleration. In particular, we study the dispersive effects of the Bogoliubov spectrum on the ideal case of exact thermalization. Our results suggest that Unruh's acceleration radiation can be tested using current accessible experimental methods., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We introduce a variational method for the approximation of ground states of strongly interacting spin systems in arbitrary geometries and spatial dimensions. The approach is based on weighted graph states and superpositions thereof. These states allow for the efficient computation of all local observables (e.g. energy) and include states with diverging correlation length and unbounded multi-particle entanglement. As a demonstration we apply our approach to the Ising model on 1D, 2D and 3D square-lattices. We also present generalizations to higher spins and continuous-variable systems, which allows for the investigation of lattice field theories., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

We find that generic entanglement is physical, in the sense that it can be generated in polynomial time from two-qubit gates picked at random. We prove as the main result that such a process generates the average entanglement of the uniform (Haar) measure in at most $O(N^3)$ steps for $N$ qubits. This is despite an exponentially growing number of such gates being necessary for generating that measure fully on the state space. Numerics furthermore show a variation cut-off allowing one to associate a specific time with the achievement of the uniform measure entanglement distribution. Various extensions of this work are discussed. The results are relevant to entanglement theory and to protocols that assume generic entanglement can be achieved efficiently., Comment: Replaced with version similar to the published. Added journal reference.

We demonstrate that even under positive partial transpose preserving operations in an asymptotic setting GHZ and W states are not reversibly interconvertible. We investigate the structure of minimal reversible entanglement generating set (MREGS) for tri-partite states under positive partial transpose (ppt) preserving operations. We demonstrate that the set consisting of W and EPR states alone cannot be an MREGS. In this context we prove the surprising result that the relative entropy of entanglement can be strictly sub-additive for certain pure tri-partite states which is crucial to keep open the possibility that the set of GHZ-state and EPR states together constitute an MREGS under ppt-preserving operations., Minor changes in the presentation, proof of strict sub-additivity of relative entropy of entanglement for pure tri-partite states moved into main text, results unchanged

We outline the basic questions that are being studied in the theory of entanglement. Following a brief review of some of the main achievements of entanglement theory for finite-dimensional quantum systems such as qubits, we will consider entanglement in infinite-dimensional systems. Asking for a theory of entanglement in such systems under experimentally feasible operations leads to the development of the theory of entanglement of Gaussian states. Results of this theory are presented and the tools that have been developed for it are applied to a number of problems., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures. Invited contribution to the EQIS' 03 volume of the International Journal of Quantum Information. Technical problem with figures resolved

We study arrays of mechanical oscillators in the quantum domain and demonstrate how the motions of distant oscillators can be entangled without the need for control of individual oscillators and without a direct interaction between them. These oscillators are thought of as being members of an array of nano-electromechanical resonators with a voltage being applicable between neighboring resonators. Sudden non-adiabatic switching of the interaction results in a squeezing of the states of the mechanical oscillators, leading to an entanglement transport in chains of mechanical oscillators. We discuss spatial dimensions, Q-factors, temperatures and decoherence sources in some detail, and find a distinct robustness of the entanglement in the canonical coordinates in such a scheme. We also briefly discuss the challenging aspect of detection of the generated entanglement., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, new material added

We show that no distillation protocol for Gaussian quantum states exists that relies on (i) arbitrary local unitary operations that preserve the Gaussian character of the state and (ii) homodyne detection together with classical communication and postprocessing by means of local Gaussian unitary operations on two symmetric identically prepared copies. This is in contrast to the finite-dimensional case, where entanglement can be distilled in an iterative protocol using two copies at a time. The ramifications for the distribution of Gaussian states over large distances will be outlined. We also comment on the generality of the approach and sketch the most general form of a Gaussian local operation with classical communication in a bipartite setting., 4 pages, 1 colour figure. This paper is closely related to [J. Fiurasek, PRL 89, 137904 (2002), quant-ph/0204069] and to [G. Giedke and J.I. Cirac, PRA 66, 032316 (2002), quant-ph/0204085]. In particular, the latter paper arrives with independent methods at the general result that distillation is not possible for an arbitrary number of input copies and general Gaussian operations. The title of our contribution in its printed version has been changed by the editors of Physical Review Letters

We study the entanglement cost under quantum operations preserving the positivity of the partial transpose (PPT-operations). We demonstrate that this cost is directly related to the logarithmic negativity, thereby providing the operational interpretation for this easily computable entanglement measure. As examples we discuss general Werner states and arbitrary bi-partite Gaussian states. Equipped with this result we then prove that for the anti-symmetric Werner state PPT-cost and PPT-entanglement of distillation coincide giving the first example of a truly mixed state for which entanglement manipulation is asymptotically reversible., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure

A general attenuator $\Phi_{\lambda, \sigma}$ is a bosonic quantum channel that acts by combining the input with a fixed environment state $\sigma$ in a beam splitter of transmissivity $\lambda$. If $\sigma$ is a thermal state the resulting channel is a thermal attenuator, whose quantum capacity vanishes for $\lambda\leq 1/2$. We study the quantum capacity of these objects for generic $\sigma$, proving a number of unexpected results. Most notably, we show that for any arbitrary value of $\lambda>0$ there exists a suitable single-mode state $\sigma(\lambda)$ such that the quantum capacity of $\Phi_{\lambda,\sigma(\lambda)}$ is larger than a universal constant $c>0$. Our result holds even when we fix an energy constraint at the input of the channel, and implies that quantum communication at a constant rate is possible even in the limit of arbitrarily low transmissivity, provided that the environment state is appropriately controlled. We also find examples of states $\sigma$ such that the quantum capacity of $\Phi_{\lambda,\sigma}$ is not monotonic in $\lambda$. These findings may have implications for the study of communication lines running across integrated optical circuits, of which general attenuators provide natural models., Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures; v2 is very close to the published version. In the SM we added Section I.D, on the comparison between quantum communication and non-locality distribution, and Section V, where we discuss a possible extension of our main result (Thm. 2)