No Arabic abstract
We show that highly confined superfluid films are extremely nonlinear mechanical resonators, offering the prospect to realize a mechanical qubit. Specifically, we consider third-sound surface waves, with nonlinearities introduced by the van der Waals interaction with the substrate. Confining these waves to a disk, we derive analytic expressions for the cubic and quartic nonlinearities and determine the resonance frequency shifts they introduce. We predict single-phonon shifts that are three orders of magnitude larger than in current state-of-the-art nonlinear resonators. Combined with the exquisitely low intrinsic dissipation of superfluid helium and the strongly suppressed acoustic radiation loss in phononic crystal cavities, we predict that this could allow blockade interactions between phonons as well as two-level-system-like behavior. Our work provides a new pathway towards extreme mechanical nonlinearities, and towards quantum devices that use mechanical resonators as qubits.
We show that an isotropic dipolar particle in the vicinity of a substrate made of nonreciprocal plasmonic materials can experience a lateral Casimir force and torque when the particles temperature differs from that of the slab and the environment. We connect the existence of the lateral force to the asymmetric dispersion of nonreciprocal surface polaritons and the existence of the lateral torque to the spin-momentum locking of such surface waves. Using the formalism of fluctuational electrodynamics, we show that the features of lateral force and torque should be experimentally observable using a substrate of doped Indium Antimonide (InSb) placed in an external magnetic field, and for a variety of dielectric particles. Interestingly, we also find that the directions of the lateral force and the torque depend on the constituent materials of the particles, which suggests a sorting mechanism based on lateral nonequilibrium Casimir physics.
We study the ground-state entanglement in systems of spins forming the boundary of a quantum spin network in arbitrary geometries and dimensionality. We show that as long as they are weakly coupled to the bulk of the network, the surface spins are strongly entangled, even when distant and non directly interacting, thereby generalizing the phenomenon of long-distance entanglement occurring in quantum spin chains. Depending on the structure of the couplings between surface and bulk spins, we discuss in detail how the patterns of surface entanglement can range from multi-pair bipartite to fully multipartite. In the context of quantum information and communication, these results find immediate application to the implementation of quantum routers, that is devices able to distribute quantum correlations on demand among multiple network nodes.
Motivated by recent realizations of Dy$_{2}$Ti$_{2}$O$_{7}$ and Ho$_{2}$Ti$_{2}$O$_{7}$ spin ice thin films, and more generally by the physics of confined gauge fields, we study a model of spin ice thin film with surfaces perpendicular to the $[001]$ cubic axis. The resulting open boundaries make half of the bonds on the interfaces inequivalent. By tuning the strength of these inequivalent orphan bonds, dipolar interactions induce a surface ordering equivalent to a two-dimensional crystallization of magnetic surface charges. This surface ordering can also be expected on the surfaces of bulk crystals. In analogy with partial wetting in soft matter, spins just below the surface are more correlated than in the bulk, but emph{not} ordered. For ultrathin films made of one cubic unit cell, once the surfaces are ordered, a square ice phase is stabilized over a finite temperature window, as confirmed by its entropy and the presence of pinch points in the structure factor. Ultimately, the square ice degeneracy is lifted at lower temperature and the system orders in analogy with the well-known $F$-transition of the $6$-vertex model.
The ultrafast dynamics of surface electromagnetic waves photogenerated on aluminum film perforated with subwavelength holes array was studied in the visible spectral range by the technique of transient photomodulation with 100 fs time resolution. We observed a pronounced blueshift of the resonant transmission band that reveals the important role of plasma attenuation in the optical response of nanohole arrays. The blueshift is inconsistent with plasmonic mechanism of extraordinary transmission and points to the crucial role of interference in the formation of transmission bands. The transient photomodulation spectra were successfully modeled within the Boltzmann equation approach for the electron-phonon relaxation dynamics, involving non-equilibrium hot electrons and quasi-equilibrium phonons.
We investigate the influence of spatial dispersion on atom-surface quantum friction. We show that for atom-surface separations shorter than the carriers mean free path within the material, the frictional force can be several orders of magnitude larger than that predicted by local optics. In addition, when taking into account spatial dispersion effects, we show that the commonly used local thermal equilibrium approximation underestimates by approximately 95% the drag force, obtained by employing the recently reported nonequilibrium fluctuation-dissipation relation for quantum friction. Unlike the treatment based on local optics, spatial dispersion in conjunction with corrections to local thermal equilibrium not only change the magnitude but also the distance scaling of quantum friction.