We propose and demonstrate first steps towards schemes where the librational mode of levitating ferromagnets is strongly coupled to the electronic spin of Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond. Experimentally, we levitate ferromagnets in a Paul trap and employ magnetic fields to attain oscillation frequencies in the hundreds of kHz range with Q factors close to $10^4$. These librational frequencies largely exceed the decoherence rate of NV centers in typical CVD grown diamonds offering prospects for sideband resolved operation. We also prepare and levitate composite diamond-ferromagnet particles and demonstrate both coherent spin control of the NV centers and read-out of the particle libration using the NV spin. Our results will find applications in ultra-sensitive gyroscopy and bring levitating objects a step closer to spin-mechanical experiments at the quantum level.
We report observations of Ramsey interferences and spin echoes from electron spins inside a levitating macroscopic particle. The experiment is realized using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers hosted in a micron-sized diamond stored in a Paul trap both under atmospheric conditions and under vacuum. Spin echoes are used to show that the Paul trap preserves the coherence time of the embedded electron spins for more than microseconds. Conversely, the NV spin is employed to demonstrate high angular stability of the diamond even under vacuum. These results are significant steps towards strong coupling of NV spins to the rotational mode of levitating diamonds.
It is demonstrated how quantum mechanics emerges from the stochastic dynamics of force-carriers. It is shown that the quantum Moyal equation corresponds to some dynamic correlations between the momentum of a real particle and the position of a virtual particle, which are not present in classical mechanics. The new concept throws light on the physical meaning of quantum theory, showing that the Planck constant square is a second-second cross-cumulant.
In 1956 Dyson analyzed the low-energy excitations of a ferromagnet using a Hamiltonian that was non-Hermitian with respect to the standard inner product. This allowed for a facile rendering of these excitations (known as spin waves) as weakly interacting bosonic quasi-particles. More than 50 years later, we have the full denouement of non-Hermitian quantum mechanics formalism at our disposal when considering Dysons work, both technically and contextually. Here we recast Dysons work on ferromagnets explicitly in terms of two inner products, with respect to which the Hamiltonian is always self-adjoint, if not manifestly Hermitian. Then we extend his scheme to doped antiferromagnets described by the t-J model, in hopes of shedding light on the physics of high-temperature superconductivity.
Adiabatic transport of information is a widely invoked resource in connection with quantum information processing and distribution. The study of adiabatic transport via spin-half chains or clusters is standard in the literature, while in practice the true realisation of a completely isolated two-level quantum system is not achievable. We explore here, theoretically, the extension of spin-half chain models to higher spins. Considering arrangements of three spin-one particles, we show that adiabatic transport, specifically a generalisation of the Dark State Adiabatic Passage procedure, is applicable to spin-one systems. We thus demonstrate a qutrit state transfer protocol. We discuss possible ways to physically implement this protocol, considering quantum dot and nitrogen-vacancy implementations.
It is generally believed that dispersive polarimetric detection of collective angular momentum in large atomic spin systems gives rise to: squeezing in the measured observable, anti-squeezing in a conjugate observable, and collective spin eigenstates in the long-time limit (provided that decoherence is suitably controlled). We show that such behavior only holds when the particles in the ensemble cannot be spatially distinguished-- even in principle-- regardless of whether the measurement is only sensitive to collective observables. While measuring a cloud of spatially-distinguishable spin-1/2 particles does reduce the uncertainty in the measured spin component, it generates neither squeezing nor anti-squeezing. The steady state of the measurement is highly mixed, albeit with a well-defined value of the measured collective angular momentum observable.