27,756 research outputs found
Dispersive response of atoms trapped near the surface of an optical nanofiber with applications to quantum nondemolition measurement and spin squeezing
We study the strong coupling between photons and atoms that can be achieved
in an optical nanofiber geometry when the interaction is dispersive. While the
Purcell enhancement factor for spontaneous emission into the guided mode does
not reach the strong-coupling regime for individual atoms, one can obtain high
cooperativity for ensembles of a few thousand atoms due to the tight
confinement of the guided modes and constructive interference over the entire
chain of trapped atoms. We calculate the dyadic Green's function, which
determines the scattering of light by atoms in the presence of the fiber, and
thus the phase shift and polarization rotation induced on the guided light by
the trapped atoms. The Green's function is related to a full
Heisenberg-Langevin treatment of the dispersive response of the quantized field
to tensor polarizable atoms. We apply our formalism to quantum nondemolition
(QND) measurement of the atoms via polarimetry. We study shot-noise-limited
detection of atom number for atoms in a completely mixed spin state and the
squeezing of projection noise for atoms in clock states. Compared with
squeezing of atomic ensembles in free space, we capitalize on unique features
that arise in the nanofiber geometry including anisotropy of both the intensity
and polarization of the guided modes. We use a first principles stochastic
master equation to model the squeezing as function of time in the presence of
decoherence due to optical pumping. We find a peak metrological squeezing of ~5
dB is achievable with current technology for ~2500 atoms trapped 180 nm from
the surface of a nanofiber with radius a=225 nm.Comment: To be appeared on PR
Epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001): More than just honeycombs
The potential of graphene to impact the development of the next generation of
electronics has renewed interest in its growth and structure. The
graphitization of hexagonal SiC surfaces provides a viable alternative for the
synthesis of graphene, with wafer-size epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001) now
possible. Despite this recent progress, the exact nature of the graphene-SiC
interface and whether the graphene even has a semiconducting gap remain
controversial. Using scanning tunneling microscopy with functionalized tips and
density functional theory calculations, here we show that the interface is a
warped carbon sheet consisting of three-fold hexagon-pentagon-heptagon
complexes periodically inserted into the honeycomb lattice. These defects
relieve the strain between the graphene layer and the SiC substrate, while
still retaining the three-fold coordination for each carbon atom. Moreover,
these defects break the six-fold symmetry of the honeycomb, thereby naturally
inducing a gap: the calculated band structure of the interface is
semiconducting and there are two localized states near K below the Fermi level,
explaining the photoemission and carbon core-level data. Nonlinear dispersion
and a 33 meV gap are found at the Dirac point for the next layer of graphene,
providing insights into the debate over the origin of the gap in epitaxial
graphene on SiC(0001). These results indicate that the interface of the
epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001) is more than a dead buffer layer, but actively
impacts the physical and electronic properties of the subsequent graphene
layers
Experimental demonstration of phase-remapping attack in a practical quantum key distribution system
Unconditional security proofs of various quantum key distribution (QKD)
protocols are built on idealized assumptions. One key assumption is: the sender
(Alice) can prepare the required quantum states without errors. However, such
an assumption may be violated in a practical QKD system. In this paper, we
experimentally demonstrate a technically feasible "intercept-and-resend" attack
that exploits such a security loophole in a commercial "plug & play" QKD
system. The resulting quantum bit error rate is 19.7%, which is below the
proven secure bound of 20.0% for the BB84 protocol. The attack we utilize is
the phase-remapping attack (C.-H. F. Fung, et al., Phys. Rev. A, 75, 32314,
2007) proposed by our group.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure
Transport properties and anisotropy in rare earth doped CaFe2As2 single crystals with Tc above 40 K
In this paper we report the superconductivity above 40 K in the electron
doping single crystal Ca1-xRexFe2As2 (Re = La, Ce, Pr). The x-ray diffraction
patterns indicate high crystalline quality and c-axis orientation. the
resistivity anomaly in the parent compound CaFe2As2 is completely suppressed by
partial replacement of Ca by rare earth and a superconducting transition
reaches as high as 43 K, which is higher than the value in electron doping
FeAs-122 compounds by substituting Fe ions with transition metal, even
surpasses the highest values observed in hole doping systems with a transition
temperature up to 38 K. The upper critical field has been determined with the
magnetic field along ab-plane and c-axis, yielding the anisotropy of 2~3.
Hall-effect measurements indicate that the conduction in this material is
dominated by electron like charge carriers. Our results explicitly demonstrate
the feasibility of inducing superconductivity in Ca122 compounds via electron
doping using aliovalent rare earth substitution into the alkaline earth site,
which should add more ingredients to the underlying physics of the iron-based
superconductors.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figure
Valley dependent many-body effects in 2D semiconductors
We calculate the valley degeneracy () dependence of the many-body
renormalization of quasiparticle properties in multivalley 2D semiconductor
structures due to the Coulomb interaction between the carriers. Quite
unexpectedly, the dependence of many-body effects is nontrivial and
non-generic, and depends qualitatively on the specific Fermi liquid property
under consideration. While the interacting 2D compressibility manifests
monotonically increasing many-body renormalization with increasing , the
2D spin susceptibility exhibits an interesting non-monotonic dependence
with the susceptibility increasing (decreasing) with for smaller (larger)
values of with the renormalization effect peaking around .
Our theoretical results provide a clear conceptual understanding of recent
valley-dependent 2D susceptibility measurements in AlAs quantum wells.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Microscopic origin of local moments in a zinc-doped high- superconductor
The formation of a local moment around a zinc impurity in the high-
cuprate superconductors is studied within the framework of the bosonic
resonating-valence-bond (RVB) description of the model. A topological
origin of the local moment has been shown based on the phase string effect in
the bosonic RVB theory. It is found that such an moment distributes
near the zinc in a form of staggered magnetic moments at the copper sites. The
corresponding magnetic properties, including NMR spin relaxation rate, uniform
spin susceptibility, and dynamic spin susceptibility, etc., calculated based on
the theory, are consistent with the experimental measurements. Our work
suggests that the zinc substitution in the cuprates provide an important
experimental evidence for the RVB nature of local physics in the original (zinc
free) state.Comment: The topological reason of local moment formation is given. One figure
is adde
Decoherence and the retrieval of lost information
We found that in contrast with the common premise, a measurement on the
environment of an open quantum system can {\em reduce} its decoherence rate. We
demonstrate it by studying an example of indirect qubit's measurement, where
the information on its state is hidden in the environment. This information is
extracted by a distant device, coupled with the environment. We also show that
the reduction of decoherence generated by this device, is accompanied with
diminution of the environmental noise in a vicinity of the qubit. An
interpretation of these results in terms of quantum interference on large
scales is presented.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, additional explanations added, Phys. Rev. B, in
pres
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