291 research outputs found
Mesoscopic entanglement of noninteracting qubits using collective spontaneous emission
We describe an experimentally straightforward method for preparing an
entangled W state of up to 100 qubits. Our repeat-until-success protocol relies
on detection of single photons from collective spontaneous emission in free
space. Our method allows entanglement preparation in a wide range of qubit
implementations that lack entangling qubit-qubit interactions. We give detailed
numerical examples for entanglement of neutral atoms in optical lattices and of
nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond. The simplicity of our method should enable
preparation of mesoscopic entangled states in a number of physical systems in
the near future.Comment: replaced; corrected per referee comment
Wavelength-Scale Imaging of Trapped Ions using a Phase Fresnel lens
A microfabricated phase Fresnel lens was used to image ytterbium ions trapped
in a radio frequency Paul trap. The ions were laser cooled close to the Doppler
limit on the 369.5 nm transition, reducing the ion motion so that each ion
formed a near point source. By detecting the ion fluorescence on the same
transition, near diffraction limited imaging with spot sizes of below 440 nm
(FWHM) was achieved. This is the first demonstration of imaging trapped ions
with a resolution on the order of the transition wavelength.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
Low-loss flake-graphene saturable absorber mirror for laser mode-locking at sub-200-fs pulse duration
Saturable absorbers are a key component for mode-locking femtosecond lasers.
Polymer films containing graphene flakes have recently been used in
transmission as laser mode-lockers, but suffer from high nonsaturable loss,
limiting their application in low-gain lasers. Here we present a saturable
absorber mirror based on a film of pure graphene flakes. The device is used to
mode lock an erbium-doped fiber laser, generating pulses with state-of-the-art,
sub-200-fs duration. The laser characteristic indicate that the film exhibits
low nonsaturable loss (13% per pass) and large absorption modulation depth (45%
of low-power absorption)
Quantum optical waveform conversion
Currently proposed architectures for long-distance quantum communication rely
on networks of quantum processors connected by optical communications channels
[1,2]. The key resource for such networks is the entanglement of matter-based
quantum systems with quantum optical fields for information transmission. The
optical interaction bandwidth of these material systems is a tiny fraction of
that available for optical communication, and the temporal shape of the quantum
optical output pulse is often poorly suited for long-distance transmission.
Here we demonstrate that nonlinear mixing of a quantum light pulse with a
spectrally tailored classical field can compress the quantum pulse by more than
a factor of 100 and flexibly reshape its temporal waveform, while preserving
all quantum properties, including entanglement. Waveform conversion can be used
with heralded arrays of quantum light emitters to enable quantum communication
at the full data rate of optical telecommunications.Comment: submitte
Fast gates for ion traps by splitting laser pulses
We present a fast phase gate scheme that is experimentally achievable and has an operation time more than two orders of magnitude faster than current experimental schemes for low numbers of pulses. The gate time improves with the number of pulses following an inverse power law. Unlike
implemented schemes which excite precise motional sidebands, thus limiting
the gate timescale, our scheme excites multiple motional states using discrete
ultra-fast pulses.We use beam-splitters to divide pulses into smaller components
to overcome limitations due to the finite laser pulse repetition rate. This provides
gate times faster than proposed theoretical schemes when we optimize a practical
setup
Phase-coherent repetition rate multiplication of a mode-locked laser from 40 MHz to 1 GHz by injection locking
We have used injection locking to multiply the repetition rate of a passively
mode-locked femtosecond fiber laser from 40 MHz to 1 GHz while preserving
optical phase coherence between the master laser and the slave output. The
system is implemented almost completely in fiber and incorporates gain and
passive saturable absorption. The slave repetition rate is set to a rational
harmonic of the master repetition rate, inducing pulse formation at the least
common multiple of the master and slave repetition rates
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