A cavity entanglement and state swapping method to accelerate the search for axion dark matter

In cavity-based axion dark matter detectors, quantum noise remains a primary barrier to achieving the scan rate necessary for a comprehensive search of axion parameter space. Here we introduce a method of scan rate enhancement in which an axion-sensitive cavity is coupled to an auxiliary resonant circuit through simultaneous two-mode squeezing (entangling) and state swapping interactions. We show analytically that when combined, these interactions can amplify an axion signal before it becomes polluted by vacuum noise introduced by measurement. This internal amplification yields a wider bandwidth of axion sensitivity, increasing the rate at which the detector can search through frequency space. With interaction rates predicted by circuit simulations of this system, we show that this technique can increase the scan rate up to 15-fold relative to the scan rate of a detector limited by vacuum noise.

Realizing coherently convertible dual-type qubits with the same ion species

Trapped ions constitute one of the most promising systems for implementing quantum computing and networking. For large-scale ion-trap-based quantum computers and networks, it is critical to have two types of qubits, one for computation and storage, while the other for auxiliary operations like runtime qubit detection, sympathetic cooling, and repetitive entanglement generation through photon links. Dual-type qubits have previously been realized in hybrid systems using two ion species, which, however, introduces significant experimental challenges for laser setup, gate operations as well as the control of the fraction and positioning of each qubit type within an ion crystal. Here we solve these problems by implementing two coherently-convertible qubit types using the same ion species. We encode the qubits into two pairs of clock states of the 171Yb+ ions, and achieve fast and high-fidelity conversion between the two types using narrow-band lasers. We further demonstrate that operations on one qubit type, including sympathetic laser cooling, gates and qubit detection, have crosstalk errors less than 0.03% on the other type, well below the error threshold for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Our work showcases the feasibility and advantages of using coherently convertible dual-type qubits with the same ion species for future large-scale quantum computing and networking.

Perturbation impact of spectators on a cross-resonance gate in a tunable coupling superconducting circuit

Cross-resonance (CR) gate has emerged as a promising scheme for fault-tolerant quantum computation with fixed-frequency qubits. We experimentally implement entangling CR gate by using a microwave-only control in a tunable coupling superconducting circuit, where the tunable coupler provides extra degrees of freedom to verify optimal condition for constructing CR gate. By developing three-qubit CR Hamiltonian tomography protocol, we systematically investigate the dependency of gate fidelities on spurious qubit interactions and present the first experimental approach to the evaluation of the perturbation impact arising from spectator qubits. Our results reveal that the spectator qubits lead to reductions in CR gate fidelity dependent on ZZ interaction and particular frequency detunings between spectator and gate qubits, demonstrating a more serious impact from the target spectator than from the control spectator. Our experiments uncover optimal CR operation regime and provide insight into an improvement of the CR gate by suppression of unwanted qubit interactions.

High Fidelity Entangling Gates in a 3D Ion Crystal under Micromotion

Ion trap is one of the most promising candidates for quantum computing. Current schemes mainly focus on a linear chain of up to about one hundred ions in a Paul trap. To further scale up the qubit number, one possible direction is to use 2D or 3D ion crystals (Wigner crystals). In these systems, ions are generally subjected to large micromotion due to the strong fast-oscillating electric field, which can significantly influence the performance of entangling gates. In this work, we develop an efficient numerical method to design high-fidelity entangling gates in a general 3D ion crystal. We present numerical algorithms to solve the equilibrium configuration of the ions and their collective normal modes. We then give a mathematical description of the micromotion and use it to generalize the gate scheme for linear ion chains into a general 3D crystal. The involved time integral of highly oscillatory functions is expanded into a fast-converging series for accurate and efficient evaluation and optimization. As a numerical example, we show a high-fidelity entangling gate design between two ions in a 100-ion crystal, with a theoretical fidelity of 99.9%.

Searching for Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence with Polarization Data from SPTpol

We present a search for anisotropic cosmic birefringence in 500 deg$^2$ of southern sky observed at 150 GHz with the SPTpol camera on the South Pole Telescope. We reconstruct a map of cosmic polarization rotation anisotropies using higher-order correlations between the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) $E$ and $B$ fields. We then measure the angular power spectrum of this map, which is found to be consistent with zero. The non-detection is translated into an upper limit on the amplitude of the scale-invariant cosmic rotation power spectrum, $L(L+1)C_L^{alphaalpha}/2pi < 0.10 times 10^{-4}$ rad$^2$ (0.033 deg$^2$, 95% C.L.). This upper limit can be used to place constraints on the strength of primordial magnetic fields, $B_{1 rm Mpc} < 17 {rm nG} $ (95% C.L.), and on the coupling constant of the Chern-Simons electromagnetic term $g_{agamma} < 4.0 times 10^{-2}/H_I $ (95% C.L.), where $H_I$ is the inflationary Hubble scale. For the first time, we also cross-correlate the CMB temperature fluctuations with the reconstructed rotation angle map, a signal expected to be non-vanishing in certain theoretical scenarios, and find no detectable signal. We perform a suite of systematics and consistency checks and find no evidence for contamination.

Constraints on Cosmological Parameters from the 500 deg$^2$ SPTpol Lensing Power Spectrum

We present cosmological constraints based on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing potential power spectrum measurement from the recent 500 deg$^2$ SPTpol survey, the most precise CMB lensing measurement from the ground to date. We fit a flat $Lambda$CDM model to the reconstructed lensing power spectrum alone and in addition with other data sets: baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) as well as primary CMB spectra from Planck and SPTpol. The cosmological constraints based on SPTpol and Planck lensing band powers are in good agreement when analysed alone and in combination with Planck full-sky primary CMB data. With weak priors on the baryon density and other parameters, the CMB lensing data alone provide a 4% constraint on $sigma_8Omega_m^{0.25} = 0.0593 pm 0.025$.. Jointly fitting with BAO data, we find $sigma_8=0.779 pm 0.023$, $Omega_m = 0.368^{+0.032}_{-0.037}$, and $H_0 = 72.0^{+2.1}_{-2.5},text{km},text{s}^{-1},text{Mpc}^{-1} $, up to $2,sigma$ away from the central values preferred by Planck lensing + BAO. However, we recover good agreement between SPTpol and Planck when restricting the analysis to similar scales. We also consider single-parameter extensions to the flat $Lambda$CDM model. The SPTpol lensing spectrum constrains the spatial curvature to be $Omega_K = -0.0007 pm 0.0025$ and the sum of the neutrino masses to be $sum m_{ u} < 0.23$ eV at 95% C.L. (with Planck primary CMB and BAO data), in good agreement with the Planck lensing results. With the differences in the $S/N$ of the lensing modes and the angular scales covered in the lensing spectra, this analysis represents an important independent check on the full-sky Planck lensing measurement.

A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing Potential and Power Spectrum from 500 deg$^2$ of SPTpol Temperature and Polarization Data

We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing potential using 500 deg$^2$ of 150 GHz data from the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. The lensing potential is reconstructed with signal-to-noise per mode greater than unity at lensing multipoles $L lesssim 250$, using a quadratic estimator on a combination of CMB temperature and polarization maps. We report measurements of the lensing potential power spectrum in the multipole range of $100< L < 2000$ from sets of temperature-only, polarization-only, and minimum-variance estimators. We measure the lensing amplitude by taking the ratio of the measured spectrum to the expected spectrum from the best-fit $Lambda$CDM model to the $textit{Planck}$ 2015 TT+lowP+lensing dataset. For the minimum-variance estimator, we find $A_{rm{MV}} = 0.944 pm 0.058{rm (Stat.)}pm0.025{rm (Sys.)}$; restricting to only polarization data, we find $A_{rm{POL}} = 0.906 pm 0.090 {rm (Stat.)} pm 0.040 {rm (Sys.)}$. Considering statistical uncertainties alone, this is the most precise polarization-only lensing amplitude constraint to date (10.1 $sigma$), and is more precise than our temperature-only constraint. We perform null tests and consistency checks and find no evidence for significant contamination.

CMB Polarization B-mode Delensing with SPTpol and Herschel

We present a demonstration of delensing the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode polarization anisotropy. This process of reducing the gravitational-lensing generated B-mode component will become increasingly important for improving searches for the B modes produced by primordial gravitational waves. In this work, we delens B-mode maps constructed from multi-frequency SPTpol observations of a 90 deg$^2$ patch of sky by subtracting a B-mode template constructed from two inputs: SPTpol E-mode maps and a lensing potential map estimated from the $textit{Herschel}$ $500,mu m$ map of the CIB. We find that our delensing procedure reduces the measured B-mode power spectrum by 28% in the multipole range $300 < ell < 2300$; this is shown to be consistent with expectations from theory and simulations and to be robust against systematics. The null hypothesis of no delensing is rejected at $6.9 sigma$. Furthermore, we build and use a suite of realistic simulations to study the general properties of the delensing process and find that the delensing efficiency achieved in this work is limited primarily by the noise in the lensing potential map. We demonstrate the importance of including realistic experimental non-idealities in the delensing forecasts used to inform instrument and survey-strategy planning of upcoming lower-noise experiments, such as CMB-S4.

Directly characterizing the relative strength and momentum dependence of electron-phonon coupling using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering

The coupling between lattice and charge degrees of freedom in condensed matter materials is ubiquitous and can often result in interesting properties and ordered phases, including conventional superconductivity, charge density wave order, and metal-insulator transitions. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and both neutron and non-resonant x-ray scattering serve as effective probes for determining the behavior of appropriate, individual degrees of freedom -- the electronic structure and lattice excitation, or phonon dispersion, respectively. However, each provides less direct information about the mutual coupling between the degrees of freedom, usual through self-energy effects, which tend to renormalize and broaden spectral features precisely where the coupling is strong, impacting ones ability to quantitively characterize the coupling. Here we demonstrate that resonant inelastic x-ray scattering, or RIXS, can be an effective tool to directly determine the relative strength and momentum dependence of the electron-phonon coupling in condensed matter systems. Using a diagrammatic approach for an 8-band model of copper oxides, we study the contributions from the lowest order diagrams to the full RIXS intensity for a realistic scattering geometry, accounting for matrix element effects in the scattering cross-section as well as the momentum dependence of the electron-phonon coupling vertex. A detailed examination of these maps offers a unique perspective into the characteristics of electron-phonon coupling, which complements both neutron and non-resonant x-ray scattering, as well as Raman and infrared conductivity.

Initial Performance of BICEP3: A Degree Angular Scale 95 GHz Band Polarimeter

BICEP3 is a $550~mm$ aperture telescope with cold, on-axis, refractive optics designed to observe at the $95~GHz$ band from the South Pole. It is the newest member of the BICEP/Keck family of inflationary probes specifically designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at degree-angular scales. BICEP3 is designed to house 1280 dual-polarization pixels, which, when fully-populated, totals to $sim$9$times$ the number of pixels in a single Keck $95~GHz$ receiver, thus further advancing the BICEP/Keck programs $95~GHz$ mapping speed. BICEP3 was deployed during the austral summer of 2014-2015 with 9 detector tiles, to be increased to its full capacity of 20 in the second season. After instrument characterization measurements were taken, CMB observation commenced in April 2015. Together with multi-frequency observation data from Planck, BICEP2, and the Keck Array, BICEP3 is projected to set upper limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio to $r$ $lesssim 0.03$ at $95%$ C.L..