No Arabic abstract
The preparation of a mechanical oscillator driven by quantum back-action is a fundamental requirement to reach the standard quantum limit (SQL) for force measurement, in optomechanical systems. However, thermal fluctuating force generally dominates a disturbance on the oscillator. In the macroscopic scale, an optical linear cavity including a suspended mirror has been used for the weak force measurement, such as gravitational-wave detectors. This configuration has the advantages of reducing the dissipation of the pendulum (i.e., suspension thermal noise) due to a gravitational dilution by using a thin wire, and of increasing the circulating laser power. However, the use of the thin wire is weak for an optical torsional anti-spring effect in the cavity, due to the low mechanical restoring force of the wire. Thus, there is the trade-off between the stability of the system and the sensitivity. Here, we describe using a triangular optical cavity to overcome this limitation for reaching the SQL. The triangular cavity can provide a sensitive and stable system, because it can optically trap the mirrors motion of the yaw, through an optical positive torsional spring effect. To show this, we demonstrate a measurement of the torsional spring effect caused by radiation pressure forces.
We cast encryption via classical block ciphers in terms of operator spreading in a dual space of Pauli strings, a formulation which allows us to characterize classical ciphers by using tools well known in the analysis of quantum many-body systems. We connect plaintext and ciphertext attacks to out-of-time order correlators (OTOCs) and quantify the quality of ciphers using measures of delocalization in string space such as participation ratios and corresponding entropies obtained from the wave function amplitudes in string space. In particular, we show that in Feistel ciphers the entropy saturates its bound to exponential precision for ciphers with 4 or more rounds, consistent with the classic Luby-Rackoff result. The saturation of the string-space information entropy is accompanied by the vanishing of OTOCs. Together these signal irreversibility and chaos, which we take to be the defining properties of good classical ciphers. More precisely, we define a good cipher by requiring that the saturation of the entropy and the vanishing of OTOCs occurs to super-polynomial precision, implying that the cipher cannot be distinguished from a pseudorandom permutation with a polynomial number of queries. We argue that this criterion can be satisfied by $n$-bit block ciphers implemented via random reversible circuits with ${cal O}(n log n)$ gates. These circuits are composed of layers of $n/3$ non-overlapping non-local random 3-bit gates. In order to reach this speed limit we employ a two-stage circuit: this first stage deploys a set of linear inflationary gates that accelerate the growth of small individual strings; followed by a second stage implemented via universal gates that exponentially proliferate the number of macroscopic strings. We suggest that this two-stage construction would result in the scrambling of quantum states to similar precision and with circuits of similar size.
Here we report on the realization of a Michelson-Sagnac interferometer whose purpose is the precise characterization of the motion of membranes showing significant light transmission. Our interferometer has a readout noise spectral density (imprecision) of 3E-16 m/sqrt(Hz) at frequencies around the fundamental resonance of a SiN_x membrane at about 100 kHz, without using optical cavities. The readout noise demonstrated is more than 16 dB below the peak value of the membranes standard quantum limit (SQL). This reduction is significantly higher than those of previous works with nano-wires [Teufel et al., Nature Nano. 4, 820 (2009); Anetsberger et al., Nature Phys. 5, 909 (2009)]. We discuss the meaning of the SQL for force measurements and its relation to the readout performance and conclude that neither our nor previous experiments achieved a total noise spectral density as low as the SQL.
While the alignment and rotation of microparticles in optical traps have received increased attention recently, one of the earliest examples has been almost totally neglected the alignment of particles relative to the beam axis, as opposed to about the beam axis. However, since the alignment torques determine how particles align in a trap, they are directly relevant to practical applications. Lysozyme crystals are an ideal model system to study factors determining the orientation of nonspherical birefringent particles in a trap. Both their size and their aspect ratio can be controlled by the growth parameters, and their regular shape makes computational modeling feasible. We show that both external shape and internal birefringence anisotropy contribute to the alignment torque. Three-dimensionally trapped elongated objects either align with their long axis parallel or perpendicular to the beam axis depending on their size. The shape-dependent torque can exceed the torque due to birefringence, and can align negative uniaxial particles with their optic axis parallel to the electric field, allowing an application of optical torque about the beam axis.
The dynamics of an optically trapped particle are often determined by measuring intensity shifts of the back-scattered light from the particle using position sensitive detectors. We present a technique which measures the phase of the back-scattered light using balanced detection in an external Mach-Zender interferometer scheme where we separate out and beat the scattered light from the bead and that from the top surface of our trapping chamber. The technique has improved axial motion resolution over intensity-based detection, and can also be used to measure lateral motion of the trapped particle. In addition, we are able to track the Brownian motion of trapped 1 and 3 $mu$m diameter beads from the phase jitter and show that, similar to intensity-based measurements, phase measurements can also be used to simultaneously determine displacements of the trapped bead as well as the spring constant of the trap. For lateral displacements, we have matched our experimental results with a simulation of the overall phase contour of the back-scattered light for lateral displacements by using plane wave decomposition in conjunction with Mie scattering theory. The position resolution is limited by path drifts of the interferometer which we have presently reduced to obtain a displacement resolution of around 2 nm for 1.1 $mu$m diameter probes by locking the interferometer to a frequency stabilized diode laser.
Optomechanical systems are suitable for elucidating quantum phenomena at the macroscopic scale in the sense of the mass scale. The systems should be well-isolated from the environment to avoid classical noises, which conceal quantum signals. Optical levitation is a promising way to isolate optomechanical systems from the environment. To realize optical levitation, all degrees of freedom need to be trapped. Until now, longitudinal trapping and rotational trapping of a mirror with optical radiation pressure have been studied in detail and validated with various experiments. However, less attention has been paid to the transversal trapping of a mirror. Herein, we report a pioneering result where we experimentally confirmed transversal trapping of a mirror of a Fabry-Perot cavity using a torsional pendulum. Through this demonstration, we experimentally proved that optical levitation is realizable with only two Fabry-Perot cavities that are aligned vertically. This work paves the way toward optical levitation and realizing a macroscopic quantum system.