971 research outputs found
A metastable superconducting qubit
We propose a superconducting qubit design, based on a tunable RF-SQUID and
nanowire kinetic inductors, which has a dramatically reduced transverse
electromagnetic coupling to its environment, so that its excited state should
be metastable. If electromagnetic interactions are in fact responsible for the
current excited-state decay rates of superconducting qubits, this design should
result in a qubit lifetime orders of magnitude longer than currently possible.
Furthermore, since accurate manipulation and readout of superconducting qubits
is currently limited by spontaneous decay, much higher fidelities may be
realizable with this design.Comment: version
Molecular dynamics investigations on a quantum system in a thermostat
The model quantum system of fermions in a one dimensional harmonic oscillator
potential is investigated by a molecular dynamics method at constant
temperature. Although in quantum mechanics the equipartition theorem cannot be
used like in the Nose-Hoover-thermostat it is possible to couple an additional
degree of freedom to the system which acts as a thermometer and drives the
system towards the desired temperature via complex time steps.Comment: 11 pages, 8 postscript figures, uses 'epsfig.sty'. Submitted to
PHYSICA A. More information available at
http://obelix.physik.uni-osnabrueck.de/~schnac
Loading of a surface-electrode ion trap from a remote, precooled source
We demonstrate loading of ions into a surface-electrode trap (SET) from a
remote, laser-cooled source of neutral atoms. We first cool and load
neutral Sr atoms into a magneto-optical trap from an oven that
has no line of sight with the SET. The cold atoms are then pushed with a
resonant laser into the trap region where they are subsequently photoionized
and trapped in an SET operated at a cryogenic temperature of 4.6 K. We present
studies of the loading process and show that our technique achieves ion loading
into a shallow (15 meV depth) trap at rates as high as 125 ions/s while
drastically reducing the amount of metal deposition on the trap surface as
compared with direct loading from a hot vapor. Furthermore, we note that due to
multiple stages of isotopic filtering in our loading process, this technique
has the potential for enhanced isotopic selectivity over other loading methods.
Rapid loading from a clean, isotopically pure, and precooled source may enable
scalable quantum information processing with trapped ions in large, low-depth
surface trap arrays that are not amenable to loading from a hot atomic beam
Electrothermal feedback in superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors
We investigate the role of electrothermal feedback in the operation of
superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs). It is found that the
desired mode of operation for SNSPDs is only achieved if this feedback is
unstable, which happens naturally through the slow electrical response
associated with their relatively large kinetic inductance. If this response is
sped up in an effort to increase the device count rate, the electrothermal
feedback becomes stable and results in an effect known as latching, where the
device is locked in a resistive state and can no longer detect photons. We
present a set of experiments which elucidate this effect, and a simple model
which quantitatively explains the results
An equations-of-motion approach to quantum mechanics: application to a model phase transition
We present a generalized equations-of-motion method that efficiently
calculates energy spectra and matrix elements for algebraic models. The method
is applied to a 5-dimensional quartic oscillator that exhibits a quantum phase
transition between vibrational and rotational phases. For certain parameters,
10 by 10 matrices give better results than obtained by diagonalising 1000 by
1000 matrices.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Production and state-selective detection of ultracold, ground state RbCs molecules
Using resonance-enhanced two-photon ionization, we detect ultracold,
ground-state RbCs molecules formed via photoassociation in a laser-cooled
mixture of 85Rb and 133Cs atoms. We obtain extensive bound-bound excitation
spectra of these molecules, which provide detailed information about their
vibrational distribution, as well as spectroscopic data on the RbCs ground
a^3\Sigma^+ and excited (2)^3\Sigma^+, (1)^1\Pi states. Analysis of this data
allows us to predict strong transitions from observed excited levels to the
absolute vibronic ground state of RbCs, potentially allowing the production of
stable, ultracold polar molecules at rates as large as 10^7 s^{-1}
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