18 research outputs found
Cavity cooling of a single atom
All conventional methods to laser-cool atoms rely on repeated cycles of
optical pumping and spontaneous emission of a photon by the atom. Spontaneous
emission in a random direction is the dissipative mechanism required to remove
entropy from the atom. However, alternative cooling methods have been proposed
for a single atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse cavity; the role of
spontaneous emission is replaced by the escape of a photon from the cavity.
Application of such cooling schemes would improve the performance of atom
cavity systems for quantum information processing. Furthermore, as cavity
cooling does not rely on spontaneous emission, it can be applied to systems
that cannot be laser-cooled by conventional methods; these include molecules
(which do not have a closed transition) and collective excitations of Bose
condensates, which are destroyed by randomly directed recoil kicks. Here we
demonstrate cavity cooling of single rubidium atoms stored in an intracavity
dipole trap. The cooling mechanism results in extended storage times and
improved localization of atoms. We estimate that the observed cooling rate is
at least five times larger than that produced by free-space cooling methods,
for comparable excitation of the atom
Single atom quantum walk with 1D optical superlattices
A proposal for the implementation of quantum walks using cold atom technology
is presented. It consists of one atom trapped in time varying optical
superlattices. The required elements are presented in detail including the
preparation procedure, the manipulation required for the quantum walk evolution
and the final measurement. These procedures can be, in principle, implemented
with present technology.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure
Long-distance quantum communication with atomic ensembles and linear optics
Quantum communication holds a promise for absolutely secure transmission of
secret messages and faithful transfer of unknown quantum states. Photonic
channels appear to be very attractive for physical implementation of quantum
communication. However, due to losses and decoherence in the channel, the
communication fidelity decreases exponentially with the channel length. We
describe a scheme that allows to implement robust quantum communication over
long lossy channels. The scheme involves laser manipulation of atomic
ensembles, beam splitters, and single-photon detectors with moderate
efficiencies, and therefore well fits the status of the current experimental
technology. We show that the communication efficiency scale polynomially with
the channel length thereby facilitating scalability to very long distances.Comment: 2 tex files (Main text + Supplement), 4 figure
Authenticated communication from quantum readout of PUFs
\u3cp\u3eQuantum readout of physical unclonable functions (PUFs) is a recently introduced method for remote authentication of objects. We present an extension of the protocol to enable the authentication of data: A verifier can check if received classical data were sent by the PUF holder. We call this modification QR-d or, in the case of the optical-PUF implementation, QSA-d. We discuss how QSA-d can be operated in a parallel way. We also present a protocol for authenticating quantum states.\u3c/p\u3
Secure communication with coded wavefronts
Communication between a sender and receiver can be made secure by encrypting the message using public or private shared keys. Quantum key distribution utilizes the unclonability of a quantum state to securely generate a key between the two parties [1]. However, without some way of authentication of either the sender or the receiver, a man-in-the-middle attack with an eavesdropper mimicking the receiver can break the security of the protocol
Asymmetric cryptography with physical unclonable keys
Secure communication is of paramount importance in modern society. Asymmetric cryptography methods such as the widely used RSA method allow secure exchange of information between parties who have not shared secret keys. However, the existing asymmetric cryptographic schemes rely on unproven mathematical assumptions for security. Further, the digital keys used in their implementation are susceptible to copying that might remain unnoticed. Here we introduce a secure communication method that overcomes these two limitations by employing Physical Unclonable Keys (PUKs). Using optical PUKs realized in opaque scattering materials and employing off-the-shelf equipment, we transmit messages in an error-corrected way. Information is transmitted as patterned wavefronts of few-photon wavepackets which can be successfully decrypted only with the receiver's PUK. The security of PUK-Enabled Asymmetric Communication (PEAC) is not based on any stored secret but on the hardness of distinguishing between different few-photon wavefronts