No Arabic abstract
An improvement of the scheme by Brunner and Simon [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 010405 (2010)] is proposed in order to show that quantum weak measurements can provide a method to detect ultrasmall longitudinal phase shifts, even with white light. By performing an analysis in the frequency domain, we find that the amplification effect will work as long as the spectrum is large enough, irrespective of the behavior in the time domain. As such, the previous scheme can be notably simplified for experimental implementations.
We experimentally demonstrate storage and on-demand release of phase-sensitive, photon-number superposition states of the form $alpha |0rangle + beta e^{itheta} |1rangle$ for an optical quantized oscillator mode. For this purpose, we introduce a phase-probing mechanism to a storage system composed of two concatenated optical cavities, which was previously employed for storage of phase-insensitive single-photon states [Phys. Rev. X 3, 041028 (2013)]. This is the first demonstration of all-optically storing highly nonclassical and phase-sensitive quantum states of light. The strong nonclassicality of the states after storage becomes manifest as a negative region in the corresponding Wigner function shifted away from the origin in phase space. This negativity is otherwise, without the phase information of the memory system, unobtainable. While our scheme includes the possibility of optical storage, on-demand release and synchronization of arbitrary single-rail qubit states, it is not limited to such states. In fact, our technique is extendible to more general phase-sensitive states such as multiphoton superposition or entangled states, and thus it represents a significant step toward advanced optical quantum information processing, where highly non-classical states are utilized as resources.
Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are promising quantum sensors for their long spin coherence time under ambient conditions. However, their spin resonances are relatively insensitive to non-magnetic parameters such as temperature. A magnetic-nanoparticle-nanodiamond hybrid thermometer, where the temperature change is converted to the magnetic field variation near the Curie temperature, was demonstrated to have enhanced temperature sensitivity (11 mK Hz^{-1/2}) [Phys. Rev. X 8, 011042 (2018)], but the sensitivity was limited by the large spectral broadening of ensemble spins in nanodiamonds. To overcome this limitation, here we showed an improved design of a hybrid nanothermometer using a single NV center in a diamond nanopillar coupled with a single magnetic nanoparticle of copper-nickel alloy, and demonstrated a temperature sensitivity of 76 uK Hz^{-1/2}. This hybrid design enabled detection of 2 millikelvins temperature changes with temporal resolution of 5 milliseconds. The ultra-sensitive nanothermometer offers a new tool to investigate thermal processes in nanoscale systems.
Accurately measuring mechanical displacements is essential for a vast portion of current technologies. Several optical techniques accomplish this task, allowing for non-contact sensing even below the diffraction limit. Here we introduce an optical encoding technique, dubbed linear photonic gears, that enables ultra-sensitive measurements of transverse displacements by mapping these into polarization rotations of a laser beam. In ordinary ambient conditions, we measure the relative shift between two objects with a resolution of 400 pm. We argue that a resolution of 50 pm should be achievable with existing state-of-the-art technologies. Our single-optical-path scheme is intrinsically stable and it could be implemented as a compact sensor, using integrated optics. We anticipate it may have a strong impact on both research and industry.
We theoretically propose a photonic flash based on a linearly coupled cavity system. Via driving the two side cavities by external fields, it forms a cyclic energy-level diagram and therefore the phase difference between the driving fields acts as a controller of the steady state due to the quantum interference effect. In the optical trimer structure, we show that the perfect photonic flash can be realized in the situation of resonant driving. The perfect photonic flash scheme is furthermore generalized to multiple coupled cavity system, where the cavities with odd and even number turn bright and dark alternatively. {Our proposal may be applied in the designing of quantum neon and realizing a controllable photonic localization.
This paper studies a quantum risk-sensitive estimation problem and investigates robustness properties of the filter. This is a direct extension to the quantum case of analogous classical results. All investigations are based on a discrete approximation model of the quantum system under consideration. This allows us to study the problem in a simple mathematical setting. We close the paper with some examples that demonstrate the robustness of the risk-sensitive estimator.