Publications from 2016

In this work we develop a semi-analytical variational ansatz to study the properties of few photon excitations interacting with a collection of quantum emitters in regimes that go beyond the rotating wave approximation. This method can be used to approximate both the static and dynamical properties of a superconducting qubit in an open transmission line, including the spontaneous emission spectrum and the resonances in scattering experiments. The approximations are quantitatively accurate for rather strong couplings, as shown by a direct comparison to Matrix-Product-State numerical methods, and provide also a good qualitative description for stronger couplings well beyond the Markovian regime.

We study the spontaneous emission of a qubit interacting with a one-dimensional waveguide through a realistic minimal-coupling interaction. We show that the diamagnetic term A2 leads to an effective decoupling of a single qubit from the electromagnetic field. This effects is observable at any range of qubit-photon couplings. For this we study a setup consisting of a transmon that is suspended over a transmission line. We prove that the relative strength of the A2 term is controlled with the qubit-line separation and show that, as a consequence, the spontaneous emission rate of the suspended transmon onto the line can increase with such separation, instead of decreasing.

The one- and two-photon scattering matrix S is obtained analytically for a one-dimensional waveguide and a point-like scatterer with N excited levels (generalized V -type atom). We argue that the two-photon scattering matrix contains sufficient information to distinguish between different level structures which are equivalent for single-photon scattering, such as a V -atom with N = 2 excited levels and two two-level systems. In particular, we show that the scattering with the V -type atom exhibits a destructive interference effect leading to two-photon Coupled-Resonator-Induced Transparency, where the nonlinear part of the two-photon scattering matrix vanishes when each incident photon fulfills a single-photon condition for transparency.

In this work we study a system that consists of 2M matter qubits that interact through a boson sampling circuit, i.e., an M-port interferometer, embedded in two different architectures. We prove that, under the conditions required to derive a master equation, the qubits evolve according to effective bipartite XY spin Hamiltonians, with or without local and collective dissipation terms. This opens the door to the simulation of any bipartite spin or hard-core boson models and exploring dissipative phase transitions as the competition between coherent and incoherent exchange of excitations. We also show that in the purely dissipative regime this model has a large number of exact and approximate dark states, whose structure and decay rates can be estimated analytically. We finally argue that this system may be used for the adiabatic preparation of boson sampling states encoded in the matter qubits.

We present an analog quantum simulator of spacetimes containing traversable wormholes. A suitable spatial dependence in the external bias of a dc-SQUID array mimics the propagation of light in a 1D wormhole background. The impedance of the array places severe limitations on the type of spacetime that we are able to implement. However, we find that a wormhole throat radius in the submillimeter range is achievable. We show how to modify this spacetime in order to allow the existence of closed timelike curves. The quantum fluctuations of the phase associated to the finite array impedance might be seen as an analog of Hawking’s chronology-protection mechanism.

Quasiparticles in a Bose-Einstein condensate are sensitive to space-time distortions. Gravitational waves can induce transformations on the state of phonons that can be observed through quantum state discrimination techniques. We show that this method is highly robust to thermal noise and depletion. We derive a bound on the strain sensitivity that shows that the detection of waves in the kHz regime is not significantly affected by temperature in a wide range of parameters that are well within current experimental reach.

The quantum compass model consists of a two-dimensional square spin lattice where the orientation of the spin-spin interactions depends on the spatial direction of the bonds. It has remarkable symmetry properties and the ground state shows topological degeneracy. The implementation of the quantum compass model in quantum simulation setups like ultracold atoms and trapped ions is far from trivial, since spin interactions in those sytems typically are independent of the spatial direction. Ising spin interactions, on the contrary, can be induced and controlled in atomic setups with state-of-the art experimental techniques. In this work, we show how the quantum compass model on a rectangular lattice can be simulated by the use of the photon-assisted tunneling induced by periodic drivings on a quantum Ising spin model. We describe a procedure to adiabatically prepare one of the doubly-degenerate ground states of this model by adiabatically ramping down a transverse magnetic field, with surprising differences depending on the parity of the lattice size. Exact diagonalizations confirm the validity of this approach for small lattices. Specific implementations of this scheme are presented with ultracold atoms in optical lattices in the Mott insulator regime, as well as with Rydberg atoms.

We show how to use relativistic motion and local phase shifts to generate continuous variable Gaussian cluster states within cavity modes. Our results can be demonstrated experimentally using superconducting circuits where tuneable boundary conditions correspond to mirrors moving with velocities close to the speed of light. In particular, we propose the generation of a quadripartite square cluster state as a first example that can be readily implemented in the laboratory. Since cluster states are universal resources for universal one-way quantum computation, our results pave the way for relativistic quantum computation schemes

We realize tunable coupling between two superconducting transmission line resonators. The coupling is mediated by a non-hysteretic rf SQUID acting as a flux-tunable mutual inductance between the resonators. From the mode distance observed in spectroscopy experiments, we derive a coupling strength ranging between -320MHz and 37 MHz. In the case where the coupling strength is about zero, the microwave power cross transmission between the two resonators can be reduced by almost four orders of magnitude compared to the case where the coupling is switched on. In addition, we observe parametric amplification by applying a suitable additional drive tone.

We study effective light-matter interactions in a circuit QED system consisting of a single LC resonator, which is coupled symmetrically to multiple superconducting qubits. Starting from a minimal circuit model, we demonstrate that in addition to the usual collective qubit-photon coupling the resulting Hamiltonian contains direct qubit-qubit interactions, which have a drastic effect on the ground and excited state properties of such circuits in the ultrastrong coupling regime. In contrast to a superradiant phase transition expected from the standard Dicke model, we find an opposite mechanism, which at very strong interactions completely decouples the photon mode and projects the qubits into a highly entangled ground state. These findings resolve previous controversies over the existence of superradiant phases in circuit QED, but they more generally show that the physics of two- or multi-atom cavity QED settings can differ significantly from what is commonly assumed.

We study the Haldane model with nearest-neighbor interactions. This model is physically motivated by the associated ultracold atoms implementation. We show that the topological phase of the interacting model can be characterized by a physically observable winding number. The robustness of this number extends well beyond the topological insulator phase towards attractive and repulsive interactions that are comparable to the kinetic energy scale of the model. We identify and characterize the relevant phases of the model.