Controlled exchange interaction between pairs of neutral atoms in an optical lattice

Ultracold atoms trapped by light offer robust quantum coherence and controllability, providing an attractive system for quantum information processing and for the simulation of complex problems in condensed matter physics. Many quantum information processing schemes require the manipulation and deterministic entanglement of individual qubits; this would typically be accomplished using controlled, state-dependent, coherent interactions among qubits. Recent experiments have made progress towards this goal by demonstrating entanglement among an ensemble of atoms confined in an optical lattice. Until now, however, there has been no demonstration of a key operation: controlled entanglement between atoms in isolated pairs. Here we use an optical lattice of double-well potentials to isolate and manipulate arrays of paired (87)Rb atoms, inducing controlled entangling interactions within each pair. Our experiment realizes proposals to use controlled exchange coupling in a system of neutral atoms. Although 87Rb atoms have nearly state-independent interactions, when we force two atoms into the same physical location, the wavefunction exchange symmetry of these identical bosons leads to state-dependent dynamics. We observe repeated interchange of spin between atoms occupying different vibrational levels, with a coherence time of more than ten milliseconds. This observation demonstrates the essential component of a neutral atom quantum SWAP gate (which interchanges the state of two qubits). Its 'half-implementation', the root SWAP gate, is entangling, and together with single-qubit rotations it forms a set of universal gates for quantum computation.     

Microfluidic sorting in an optical lattice

The response of a microscopic dielectric object to an applied light field can profoundly affect its kinetic motion. A classic example of this is an optical trap, which can hold a particle in a tightly focused light beam. Optical fields can also be used to arrange, guide or deflect particles in appropriate light-field geometries. Here we demonstrate an optical sorter for microscopic particles that exploits the interaction of particles-biological or otherwise-with an extended, interlinked, dynamically reconfigurable, three-dimensional optical lattice. The strength of this interaction with the lattice sites depends on the optical polarizability of the particles, giving tunable selection criteria. We demonstrate both sorting by size (of protein microcapsule drug delivery agents) and sorting by refractive index (of other colloidal particle streams). The sorting efficiency of this method approaches 100%, with values of 96% or more observed even for concentrated solutions with throughputs exceeding those reported for fluorescence-activated cell sorting. This powerful, non-invasive technique is suited to sorting and fractionation within integrated ('lab-on-a-chip') microfluidic systems, and can be applied in colloidal, molecular and biological research.     

囚禁在光格中的波色-爱因斯坦凝聚体孤子

利用数值模拟解Gross-Pitaevskii方程来研究囚禁在光格中的波色-爱因斯坦凝聚体明孤子，发现周期性光格可被用作为可控的物质波分裂器，其分裂效果与孤子在光格中的初始位置、势阱中的原子数、以及光格电势的幅度、波矢有关。     

Tonks-Girardeau gas of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice

Strongly correlated quantum systems are among the most intriguing and fundamental systems in physics. One such example is the Tonks-Girardeau gas, proposed about 40 years ago, but until now lacking experimental realization; in such a gas, the repulsive interactions between bosonic particles confined to one dimension dominate the physics of the system. In order to minimize their mutual repulsion, the bosons are prevented from occupying the same position in space. This mimics the Pauli exclusion principle for fermions, causing the bosonic particles to exhibit fermionic properties. However, such bosons do not exhibit completely ideal fermionic (or bosonic) quantum behaviour; for example, this is reflected in their characteristic momentum distribution. Here we report the preparation of a Tonks-Girardeau gas of ultracold rubidium atoms held in a two-dimensional optical lattice formed by two orthogonal standing waves. The addition of a third, shallower lattice potential along the long axis of the quantum gases allows us to enter the Tonks-Girardeau regime by increasing the atoms' effective mass and thereby enhancing the role of interactions. We make a theoretical prediction of the momentum distribution based on an approach in which trapped bosons acquire fermionic properties, finding that it agrees closely with the measured distribution.     

Photon blockade in an optical cavity with one trapped atom

At low temperatures, sufficiently small metallic and semiconductor devices exhibit the 'Coulomb blockade' effect, in which charge transport through the device occurs on an electron-by-electron basis. For example, a single electron on a metallic island can block the flow of another electron if the charging energy of the island greatly exceeds the thermal energy. The analogous effect of 'photon blockade' has been proposed for the transport of light through an optical system; this involves photon-photon interactions in a nonlinear optical cavity. Here we report observations of photon blockade for the light transmitted by an optical cavity containing one trapped atom, in the regime of strong atom-cavity coupling. Excitation of the atom-cavity system by a first photon blocks the transmission of a second photon, thereby converting an incident poissonian stream of photons into a sub-poissonian, anti-bunched stream. This is confirmed by measurements of the photon statistics of the transmitted field. Our observations of photon blockade represent an advance over traditional nonlinear optics and laser physics, into a regime with dynamical processes involving atoms and photons taken one-by-one.     

Evidence for superfluidity of ultracold fermions in an optical lattice

The study of superfluid fermion pairs in a periodic potential has important ramifications for understanding superconductivity in crystalline materials. By using cold atomic gases, various models of condensed matter can be studied in a highly controllable environment. Weakly repulsive fermions in an optical lattice could undergo d-wave pairing at low temperatures, a possible mechanism for high temperature superconductivity in the copper oxides. The lattice potential could also strongly increase the critical temperature for s-wave superfluidity. Recent experimental advances in bulk atomic gases include the observation of fermion-pair condensates and high-temperature superfluidity. Experiments with fermions and bosonic bound pairs in optical lattices have been reported but have not yet addressed superfluid behaviour. Here we report the observation of distinct interference peaks when a condensate of fermionic atom pairs is released from an optical lattice, implying long-range order (a property of a superfluid). Conceptually, this means that s-wave pairing and coherence of fermion pairs have now been established in a lattice potential, in which the transport of atoms occurs by quantum mechanical tunnelling and not by simple propagation. These observations were made for interactions on both sides of a Feshbach resonance. For larger lattice depths, the coherence was lost in a reversible manner, possibly as a result of a transition from superfluid to insulator. Such strongly interacting fermions in an optical lattice can be used to study a new class of hamiltonians with interband and atom-molecule couplings.     

Quantum simulation of antiferromagnetic spin chains in an optical lattice

Understanding exotic forms of magnetism in quantum mechanical systems is a central goal of modern condensed matter physics, with implications for systems ranging from high-temperature superconductors to spintronic devices. Simulating magnetic materials in the vicinity of a quantum phase transition is computationally intractable on classical computers, owing to the extreme complexity arising from quantum entanglement between the constituent magnetic spins. Here we use a degenerate Bose gas of rubidium atoms confined in an optical lattice to simulate a chain of interacting quantum Ising spins as they undergo a phase transition. Strong spin interactions are achieved through a site-occupation to pseudo-spin mapping. As we vary a magnetic field, quantum fluctuations drive a phase transition from a paramagnetic phase into an antiferromagnetic phase. In the paramagnetic phase, the interaction between the spins is overwhelmed by the applied field, which aligns the spins. In the antiferromagnetic phase, the interaction dominates and produces staggered magnetic ordering. Magnetic domain formation is observed through both in situ site-resolved imaging and noise correlation measurements. By demonstrating a route to quantum magnetism in an optical lattice, this work should facilitate further investigations of magnetic models using ultracold atoms, thereby improving our understanding of real magnetic materials.     

A Mott insulator of fermionic atoms in an optical lattice

Strong interactions between electrons in a solid material can lead to surprising properties. A prime example is the Mott insulator, in which suppression of conductivity occurs as a result of interactions rather than a filled Bloch band. Proximity to the Mott insulating phase in fermionic systems is the origin of many intriguing phenomena in condensed matter physics, most notably high-temperature superconductivity. The Hubbard model, which encompasses the essential physics of the Mott insulator, also applies to quantum gases trapped in an optical lattice. It is therefore now possible to access this regime with tools developed in atomic physics. However, an atomic Mott insulator has so far been realized only with a gas of bosons, which lack the rich and peculiar nature of fermions. Here we report the formation of a Mott insulator of a repulsively interacting two-component Fermi gas in an optical lattice. It is identified by three features: a drastic suppression of doubly occupied lattice sites, a strong reduction of the compressibility inferred from the response of double occupancy to an increase in atom number, and the appearance of a gapped mode in the excitation spectrum. Direct control of the interaction strength allows us to compare the Mott insulating regime and the non-interacting regime without changing tunnel-coupling or confinement. Our results pave the way for further studies of the Mott insulator, including spin-ordering and ultimately the question of d-wave superfluidity.     

An optical lattice clock

The precision measurement of time and frequency is a prerequisite not only for fundamental science but also for technologies that support broadband communication networks and navigation with global positioning systems (GPS). The SI second is currently realized by the microwave transition of Cs atoms with a fractional uncertainty of 10(-15) (ref. 1). Thanks to the optical frequency comb technique, which established a coherent link between optical and radio frequencies, optical clocks have attracted increasing interest as regards future atomic clocks with superior precision. To date, single trapped ions and ultracold neutral atoms in free fall have shown record high performance that is approaching that of the best Cs fountain clocks. Here we report a different approach, in which atoms trapped in an optical lattice serve as quantum references. The 'optical lattice clock' demonstrates a linewidth one order of magnitude narrower than that observed for neutral-atom optical clocks, and its stability is better than that of single-ion clocks. The transition frequency for the Sr lattice clock is 429,228,004,229,952(15) Hz, as determined by an optical frequency comb referenced to the SI second.     

Trapping an atom with single photons

The creation of a photon-atom bound state was first envisaged for the case of an atom in a long-lived excited state inside a high-quality microwave cavity. In practice, however, light forces in the microwave domain are insufficient to support an atom against gravity. Although optical photons can provide forces of the required magnitude, atomic decay rates and cavity losses are larger too, and so the atom-cavity system must be continually excited by an external laser. Such an approach also permits continuous observation of the atom's position, by monitoring the light transmitted through the cavity. The dual role of photons in this system distinguishes it from other single-atom experiments such as those using magneto-optical traps, ion traps or a far-off-resonance optical trap. Here we report high-finesse optical cavity experiments in which the change in transmission induced by a single slow atom approaching the cavity triggers an external feedback switch which traps the atom in a light field containing about one photon on average. The oscillatory motion of the trapped atom induces oscillations in the transmitted light intensity; we attribute periodic structure in intensity-correlation-function data to 'long-distance' flights of the atom between different anti-nodes of the standing-wave in the cavity. The system should facilitate investigations of the dynamics of single quantum objects and may find future applications in quantum information processing.     

二维双色型光晶格中玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚的局域化

利用含时变分法研究了二维双色型光晶格中玻色爱因斯坦凝聚中稳定局域态的性质.根据含时变分法利用高斯型试探波函数和Euler-Lagrange方程给出了高斯型局域态的波包宽度随时间变化的二阶微分方程,确定稳定了局域态的波包宽度.利用数值计算方法直接求解了Gross-Pitaevskii方程,给出了稳定局域态的空间分布.结果表明,在原子之间存在非线性排斥和吸引作用,或者非线性相互作用为零时,在二维玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚中均可以形成稳定的局域态.     

处于圆极化电磁场中的二能级原子

研究了处于圆极化电磁场中的二能级原子,通过求解薛定谔方程,得出了系统的波函数、能量本征值和动量本征值,处于圆极化电磁场中的二能级原子的能级发生了分裂,原子质心动量取值为(P0 jhk),这一结论可以解释Bragg现象。     

含原子差集阵的三因子构造法

讨论了用三因子法构造混合水平强度为2的正交表,运用Kronecker和,提出了用原子差集阵构造正交表的方法,并得到了更多的试验次数为72的正交表。     

Motion analysis for human interaction detection using optical flow on lattice superpixels

We develop a new video-based motion analysis algorithm to determine whether two persons have any interaction in their meeting. The interaction between two persons can be very general, such as shaking hands, exchanging objects, and so on. To make the motion analysis robust to image noise, we segment each video frame into a set of superpixels and then derive a motion feature and a motion pattern for each superpixel by averaging the optical flow within the superpixel. Specifically, we use the lattice cut to construct the superpixels, which are spatially and temporally consistent across frames. Based on the motion feature and the motion pattern of the superpixels, we develop an algorithm to divide an input video sequence into three consecutive periods: 1) two persons walking toward each other, 2) two persons meeting each other, and 3) two persons walking away from each other. The experiment show that the proposed algorithm can accurately distinguish the videos with and without human interactions.     

反抛物势与双光晶格势中的三维玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚涡旋孤子

提出了一种处理囚禁于反抛物势和双光晶格复合势中玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚涡旋孤子动力学的能量密度泛函和直接数值仿真相结合的方法.利用静态Gross-Pitaevskii方程和柱对称玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚涡旋孤子试探波函数,给出了玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚静态涡旋孤子能量密度泛函的解析式,再运用数值模拟含时Gross-Pi-taevskii方程的方法,得到了稳定演化的涡旋孤子;并且通过调控双光晶格势,实现了玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚涡旋孤子从某一晶格势槽为初始位置到任意位置的操控,为玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚的实验和应用研究提供了一定的理论依据.值得指出的是,双涡旋孤子的稳定演化与操控是最重要的发现.     

处于圆极化电磁场中的∧型三能级原子

研究了处于圆极化电磁场中的^型三能级原子，通过求解薛定谔方程，得出了系统的波函数、能量本征值和动量本征值．处于圆极化电磁场中的∧型三能级原子的能级发生了分裂，原子质心动量取值为（P0＋jhk），这一结论可以解释为Bragg现象．     

Tunable ion-photon entanglement in an optical cavity

Proposed quantum networks require both a quantum interface between light and matter and the coherent control of quantum states. A quantum interface can be realized by entangling the state of a single photon with the state of an atomic or solid-state quantum memory, as demonstrated in recent experiments with trapped ions, neutral atoms, atomic ensembles and nitrogen-vacancy spins. The entangling interaction couples an initial quantum memory state to two possible light-matter states, and the atomic level structure of the memory determines the available coupling paths. In previous work, the transition parameters of these paths determined the phase and amplitude of the final entangled state, unless the memory was initially prepared in a superposition state (a step that requires coherent control). Here we report fully tunable entanglement between a single (40)Ca(+) ion and the polarization state of a single photon within an optical resonator. Our method, based on a bichromatic, cavity-mediated Raman transition, allows us to select two coupling paths and adjust their relative phase and amplitude. The cavity setting enables intrinsically deterministic, high-fidelity generation of any two-qubit entangled state. This approach is applicable to a broad range of candidate systems and thus is a promising method for distributing information within quantum networks.     

由两个EPR对进行任意两粒子态的隐形传送

提出应用两对纠缠粒子为量子通道时进行任意两粒子态的隐形传送方案.传送者进行Bell态测量后,接收者通过对应的单位变换就能重新构造出具有确定几率的原始态.