Quantum Revivals and Generation of Non-Classical States in an N Spin System
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Quantum revivals and generation of non-classical states in an N spin system Shane Dooley Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Leeds A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 30th September 2014 Intellectual Property and Publication Statements The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own, except where work which has formed part of jointly authored publications has been included. The contribution of the candidate and the other authors to this work has been explic- itly indicated below. The candidate confirms that appropriate credit has been given within the thesis where reference has been made to the work of others. Chapter 5 is based on the publication: Shane Dooley, Francis McCrossan, Derek Harland, Mark J. Everitt and Timothy P. Spiller. Collapse and revival and cat states with an N-spin system. Phys. Rev. A 87 052323 (2013). Francis McCrossan contributed to the preminary investigations that led to this paper. Derek Harland and Mark Everitt contributed spin Wigner function plots. Timothy P. Spiller supervised the project. All other work is directly attributable to Shane Dooley. Section 4.4 and chapter 6 and are based on the publication: Shane Dooley and Timothy P. Spiller. Fractional revivals, multiple- Schr¨odinger-catstates, and quantum carpets in the interaction of a qubit with N qubits. Phys. Rev. A 90 012320 (2014). Timothy P. Spiller supervised the project. All other work is directly attibutable to Shane Dooley. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright ma- terial and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. c 2014, The University of Leeds and Shane Dooley. Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Tim Spiller, for his support and patience throughout my PhD, and for always having time for me when I knocked on his door. I have been fortunate to have learned from many people over the last four years, including collaborators Mark Everitt, Derek Harland and Jaewoo Joo; fellow PhD students Terrence Farrelly, Suva De, Andreas Kurcz, Jonathan Busch, Abbas Al-Shimary, Veiko Palge, Luis Rico Gutierrez, Tom Barlow, Oleg Kim, James DeLisle and Monovie Asita; and summer students Francis McCrossan and Anthony Hayes. I would especially like to thank Tim Proctor, Adam Stokes and Paul Knott at Leeds for all the \board sessions". The last four months of my PhD were spent at NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Japan, and I am very grateful to Bill Munro for giving me that opportunity. Also at NTT, I would like to thank Yuichiro Matsuzaki and George Knee for many interesting discussions, and at NII Tokyo, Kae Nemoto, Emi Yukawa and Burkhard Scharfenberger. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Carmel and Brendan, my brother Mark and my sister Niamh for their love and support. Abstract The generation of non-classical states of large quantum systems is an important topic of study. It is of fundamental interest because the generation of larger and larger non-classical states extends quantum theory further and further into the classical domain, and it is also of practical interest because such states are an important resource for quantum technologies. The focus of this thesis is the \spin star model" for the interaction of a single spin-1=2 particle with N other spin-1=2 particles. Although this is a simple model, we show that its dynamics include many inter- esting quantum phenomena, including fractional revival, and Jaynes- Cummings-like collapse and revival. Starting with a spin coherent state of the N spin system { an easily prepared state, in principle { we show that these dynamics can be used to generate a wide variety of non-classical states of the N spin system, including Schr¨odingercat states, GHZ states, multiple-Schr¨odingercat states and spin squeezed states. Contents 1 Introduction1 2 Background4 2.1 The quantum harmonic oscillator . .4 2.1.1 Coherent states . .6 2.1.2 Phase space pictures . .7 2.1.3 Non-classical oscillator states . 11 2.2 A system of N spin-1=2 particles . 15 2.2.1 Spin coherent states . 19 2.2.2 Spin phase space pictures . 24 2.2.3 Non-classical spin states . 26 2.3 The bosonic limit . 32 3 Motivation: Quantum Metrology 37 3.1 The standard quantum limit . 37 3.2 A quantum advantage . 44 3.3 Ultimate limits to precision . 50 3.4 Estimating a magnetic field with unknown direction . 58 4 The Spin Star Model 68 4.1 Candidates for implementation . 70 4.2 Exact solution . 72 4.3 Effective Hamiltonian: Large Detuning . 79 4.4 Effective Hamiltonian: On resonance and initial spin coherent state 81 iv CONTENTS 5 The Jaynes-Cummings Approximation 85 5.1 The Jaynes-Cummings Model . 86 5.1.1 The dispersive limit . 87 5.1.2 On resonance . 88 5.2 The JC approximation of the spin star model . 97 5.2.1 Dynamics . 99 6 Beyond the Jaynes-Cummings Approximation { I 110 6.1 Fractional Revival . 110 6.1.1 The Kerr Hamiltonian . 111 6.1.2 The Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian . 112 6.1.3 The one-axis-twisting Hamiltonian . 114 6.2 The spin star model . 116 6.2.1 Fractional revivals, multiple cat states and quantum carpets 118 7 Beyond the Jaynes-Cummings Approximation { II 126 7.1 An ensemble of NV centres coupled to a flux qubit . 127 7.2 Spin squeezing . 133 8 Conclusion 146 A 150 A.1 Useful expressions . 150 A.2 The spin coherent state as an approximate eigenstate . 151 A.3 Approximating the Hamiltonian . 155 A.3.1 The Jaynes-Cummings approximation . 157 A.3.2 The one-axis twisting approximation . 158 References 172 v Chapter 1 Introduction Since the 1920's, there has been much interest in the generation of quantum states that call attention to the differences between the familiar classical world of our experience and the underlying quantum world. A famous early example is the Schr¨odinger'scat thought experiment [Schr¨odinger(1935)], where a cat is neither \alive" nor \dead" but is entangled with a decaying atom in such a way that it is in a quantum superposition of \alive" and \dead". The phrase \Schr¨odinger'scat" has since spread beyond the physics community into popular culture where { along with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle { it represents the strangeness of quantum physics. Even within physics, its technical meaning has expanded to include a quantum superposition of any two \classical" states. Steady progress in the control of quantum systems has led to generation of such states in experiments on small quantum systems. For example, a Schr¨odinger's cat state of 100 photons has been generated recently in a superconducting cavity resonator [Vlastakis et al. (2013)]. A significant challenge is to generate such \non-classical states" for larger and larger quantum systems, which would be convincing evidence that quantum physics describes the world at macroscopic scales (but that the quantum effects are usually suppressed by interaction with the environment [Schlosshauer(2007); Zurek(2003)]). Another dimension to this progress is the so-called \second quantum revo- lution": the emerging field of quantum technology [Dowling & Milburn(2003)]. The aim of quantum technology is to engineer systems based on the laws of quan- tum physics, giving an improvement in some task over what is possible within a 1 classical framework. In every quantum technology, non-classical states (like the Schr¨odingercat state) are an important resource. The most well-known example of a proposed quantum technology is a quan- tum computer: a computer that operates on the principles of quantum physics. In principle, such a computer would be much more powerful than any classical computer. However, this requires precise control of a large quantum system and careful shielding of the system from unwanted interactions with its environment. Although there has been much progress in this direction, quantum computers are still far from reaching their full potential. A more mature quantum technology is quantum communication. In particular, quantum key distribution uses the principles of quantum physics to guarantee secure communication. There are already several companies selling commercial quantum key distribution systems. Another example of quantum technology is in the field of metrology (the science of measurement). In quantum metrology, a quantum system is used as a probe to measure some other system. By preparing the probe in a \non-classical" state it turns out that it is possible to significantly improve the precision of the measurement compared to the precision that is achieved by preparing the probe in a \classical" state. In this thesis our primary motivation is the generation of non-classical states of spin systems for quantum metrology. After giving some necessary background material in chapter2, we review (in chapter3) quantum metrology, and in par- ticular, the problem of estimating an unknown magnetic field with a system of N spin-1=2 particles. Then, in chapter4 we turn to the main focus of this thesis: the spin star model. This model describes the interaction of a single central spin with N outer spins that do not interact among themselves. We suggest that there are several promising candidates systems for implementation of the spin star model and we derive two effective Hamiltonians for the model in two different parameter regimes. In chapter5 we show that there is a parameter regime where the spin star model behaves like the well-known Jaynes-Cummings model for the interaction of an harmonic oscillator and a two-level system. We find interesting dynamics, such as \collapse and revival", analogous to that in the Jaynes-Cummings model 2 and we propose that these dynamics can be used to generate Schr¨odingercat states of the N spin system.