Ground-state cooling of a mechanical oscillator in a hybrid optomechanical system including an atomic ensemble

Uncovering the morphological effects of high-energy Ga+ focused ion beam milling on hBN single-photon emitter fabrication

Many techniques to fabricate complex nanostructures and quantum emitting defects in low dimensional materials for quantum information technologies rely on the patterning capabilities of focused ion beam (FIB) systems. In particular, the ability to pattern arrays of bright and stable room temperature single-photon emitters (SPEs) in 2D wide-bandgap insulator hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) via high-energy heavy-ion FIB allows for direct placement of SPEs without structured substrates or polymer-reliant lithography steps. However, the process parameters needed to create hBN SPEs with this technique are dependent on the growth method of the material chosen. Moreover, morphological damage induced by high-energy heavy-ion exposure may further influence the successful creation of SPEs. In this work, we perform atomic force microscopy to characterize the surface morphology of hBN regions patterned by Ga+ FIB to create SPEs at a range of ion doses and find that material swelling, and not milling as expected, is most strongly and positively correlated with the onset of non-zero SPE yields. Furthermore, we simulate vacancy concentration profiles at each of the tested doses and propose a qualitative model to elucidate how Ga+ FIB patterning creates isolated SPEs that is consistent with observed optical and morphological characteristics and is dependent on the consideration of void nucleation and growth from vacancy clusters. Our results provide novel insight into the formation of hBN SPEs created by high-energy heavy-ion milling that can be leveraged for monolithic hBN photonic devices and could be applied to a wide range of low-dimensional solid-state SPE hosts.

Optical nonreciprocity and slow light in coupled spinning optomechanical resonators

We study the optical transmission characteristics of coupled spinning optomechanical resonators with pump-probe driven lasers. Under the steady-state conditions, we focus on how changing the optical Sagnac effect due to same or opposite spinning directions of the resonators can give rise to non-reciprocal and delayed probe light transmission. We find that coupled resonators can exhibit distinct transmission features, can generate negative group delays (slow as well as fast light) and offer additional control of the probe light transmission as compared to the case of a single spinning resonator. Our results can be useful in achieving chiral light propagation in quantum communication technologies without using traditional magneto-optical means.

Quasi-Lie Brackets and the Breaking of Time-Translation Symmetry for Quantum Systems Embedded in Classical Baths

Many open quantum systems encountered in both natural and synthetic situations are embedded in classical-like baths. Often, the bath degrees of freedom may be represented in terms of canonically conjugate coordinates, but in some cases they may require a non-canonical or non-Hamiltonian representation. Herein, we review an approach to the dynamics and statistical mechanics of quantum subsystems embedded in either non-canonical or non-Hamiltonian classical-like baths which is based on operator-valued quasi-probability functions. These functions typically evolve through the action of quasi-Lie brackets and their associated Quantum-Classical Liouville Equations, or through quasi-Lie brackets augmented by dissipative terms. Quasi-Lie brackets possess the unique feature that, while conserving the energy (which the Noether theorem links to time-translation symmetry), they violate the time-translation symmetry of their algebra. This fact can be heuristically understood in terms of the dynamics of the open quantum subsystem. We then describe an example in which a quantum subsystem is embedded in a bath of classical spins, which are described by non-canonical coordinates. In this case, it has been shown that an off-diagonal open-bath geometric phase enters into the propagation of the quantum-classical dynamics. Next, we discuss how non-Hamiltonian dynamics may be employed to generate the constant-temperature evolution of phase space degrees of freedom coupled to the quantum subsystem. Constant-temperature dynamics may be generated by either a classical Langevin stochastic process or a Nosé–Hoover deterministic thermostat. These two approaches are not equivalent but have different advantages and drawbacks. In all cases, the calculation of the operator-valued quasi-probability function allows one to compute time-dependent statistical averages of observables. This may be accomplished in practice using a hybrid Molecular Dynamics/Monte Carlo algorithms, which we outline herein.