Quantum Computing and Quantum Simulation with Group-II Atoms

Recent experimental progress in controlling neutral group-II atoms for optical clocks, and in the production of degenerate gases with group-II atoms has given rise to novel opportunities to address challenges in quantum computing and quantum simulation. In these systems, it is possible to encode qubits in nuclear spin states, which are decoupled from the electronic state in the $^1$S$_0$ ground state and the long-lived $^3$P$_0$ metastable state on the clock transition. This leads to quantum computing scenarios where qubits are stored in long lived nuclear spin states, while electronic states can be accessed independently, for cooling of the atoms, as well as manipulation and readout of the qubits. The high nuclear spin in some fermionic isotopes also offers opportunities for the encoding of multiple qubits on a single atom, as well as providing an opportunity for studying many-body physics in systems with a high spin symmetry. Here we review recent experimental and theoretical progress in these areas, and summarise the advantages and challenges for quantum computing and quantum simulation with group-II atoms.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, review for special issue of "Quantum Information Processing" on "Quantum Information with Neutral Particles

Measuring absolute frequencies beyond the GPS limit via long-haul optical frequency dissemination

open15openClivati, Cecilia; Cappellini, Giacomo; Livi, Lorenzo F.; Poggiali, Francesco; de Cumis, Mario Siciliani; Mancini, Marco; Pagano, Guido; Frittelli, Matteo; Mura, Alberto; Costanzo, Giovanni A.; Levi, Filippo; Calonico, Davide; Fallani, Leonardo; Catani, Jacopo; Inguscio, MassimoClivati, Cecilia; Cappellini, Giacomo; Livi, Lorenzo F.; Poggiali, Francesco; de Cumis, Mario Siciliani; Mancini, Marco; Pagano, Guido; Frittelli, Matteo; Mura, Alberto; Costanzo, Giovanni A.; Levi, Filippo; Calonico, Davide; Fallani, Leonardo; Catani, Jacopo; Inguscio, Massim

Measuring absolute frequencies beyond the GPS limit via long-haul optical frequency dissemination

Global Positioning System (GPS) dissemination of frequency standards is ubiquitous at present, providing the most widespread time and frequency reference for the majority of industrial and research applications worldwide. On the other hand, the ultimate limits of the GPS presently curb further advances in high-precision, scientific and industrial applications relying on this dissemination scheme. Here, we demonstrate that these limits can be reliably overcome even in laboratories without a local atomic clock by replacing the GPS with a 642-km-long optical fiber link to a remote primary caesium frequency standard. Through this configuration we stably address the 1S0—3P0 clock transition in an ultracold gas of 173Yb, with a precision that exceeds the possibilities of a GPS-based measurement, dismissing the need for a local clock infrastructure to perform beyond-GPS high-precision tasks. We also report an improvement of two orders of magnitude in the accuracy on the transition frequency reported in literature

Structure of Spin Correlations in High Temperature SU(NN) Quantum Magnets

Quantum magnets with a large SU($N$) symmetry are a promising playground for the discovery of new forms of exotic quantum matter. Motivated by recent experimental efforts to study SU($N$) quantum magnetism in samples of ultracold fermionic alkaline-earth-like atoms in optical lattices, we study here the temperature dependence of spin correlations in the SU($N$) Heisenberg spin model in a wide range of temperatures. We uncover a sizeable regime in temperature, starting at $T=\infty$ down to intermediate temperatures and for all $N\ge2$, in which the correlations have a common spatial structure on a broad range of lattices, with the sign of the correlations alternating from one Manhattan shell to the next, while the amplitude of the correlations is rapidly decreasing with distance. Focussing on the one-dimensional chain and the two-dimensional square and triangular lattice for certain $N$, we discuss the appearance of a disorder and a Lifshitz temperature, separating the commensurate Manhattan high-$T$ regime from a low-$T$ incommensurate regime. We observe that this temperature window is associated to an approximately $N$-independent entropy reduction from the $\ln(N)$ entropy at infinite temperature. Our results are based on high-temperature series arguments and as well as large-scale numerical full diagonalization results of thermodynamic quantities for SU($3$) and SU($4$) square lattice samples, corresponding to a total Hilbert space of up to $4\times 10^9$ states.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Quantum trajectories and open many-body quantum systems

The study of open quantum systems has become increasingly important in the past years, as the ability to control quantum coherence on a single particle level has been developed in a wide variety of physical systems. In quantum optics, the study of open systems goes well beyond understanding the breakdown of quantum coherence. There, the coupling to the environment is sufficiently well understood that it can be manipulated to drive the system into desired quantum states, or to project the system onto known states via feedback in quantum measurements. Many mathematical frameworks have been developed to describe such systems, which for atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) systems generally provide a very accurate description of the open quantum system on a microscopic level. In recent years, AMO systems including cold atomic and molecular gases and trapped ions have been applied heavily to the study of many-body physics, and it has become important to extend previous understanding of open system dynamics in single- and few-body systems to this many-body context. A key formalism that has already proven very useful in this context is the quantum trajectories technique. This was developed as a numerical tool for studying dynamics in open quantum systems, and falls within a broader framework of continuous measurement theory as a way to understand the dynamics of large classes of open quantum systems. We review the progress that has been made in studying open many-body systems in the AMO context, focussing on the application of ideas from quantum optics, and on the implementation and applications of quantum trajectories methods. Control over dissipative processes promises many further tools to prepare interesting and important states in strongly interacting systems, including the realisation of parameter regimes in quantum simulators that are inaccessible via current techniques.Comment: 66 pages, 29 figures, review article submitted to Advances in Physics - comments and suggestions are welcom