Quantum information science | EPFL Graph Search

Quantum information science is a field that combines the principles of quantum mechanics with information science to study the processing, analysis, and transmission of information. It covers both theoretical and experimental aspects of quantum physics, including the limits of what can be achieved with quantum information. The term quantum information theory is sometimes used, but it does not include experimental research and can be confused with a subfield of quantum information science that deals with the processing of quantum information. Scientific and engineering studies Quantum teleportation, entanglement and the manufacturing of quantum computers depend on a comprehensive understanding of quantum physics and engineering. Google and IBM have invested significantly in quantum computer hardware research, leading to significant progress in manufacturing quantum computers since the 2010s. Currently, it is possible to create a quantum computer with over 100 qubits, but the e

Novel materials and algorithms for quantum technologies

Francesco Libbi

The enormous advancements in the ability to detect and manipulate single quantum states have lead to the emerging field of quantum technologies. Among these, quantum computation is the most far-reaching and challenging, aiming to solve problems that the classic computers could never address because of the exponential scaling, while quantum sensing exploits the ability to address single quantum states to realize ultra-sensitive and precise detectors. Defect centers in semiconductors play a primary role in these fields. The possibility to store information in the spin of their ground state, manipulate it through microwaves, and read it optically allows to use them as qubits. In addition, the very sharp dependence of their properties on temperature, strain and magnetic fields makes them very promising quantum sensors. In this Thesis we aim at contributing to the progress of quantum technologies both at the hardware and software level. From a hardware point of view, we study a key property of defect centers in semiconductors, the phonon-assisted luminescence, which can be measured to perform the readout of the information stored in a quantum bit, or to detect temperature variations. We predict the luminescence and study the exciton-phonon couplings within a rigorous many-body perturbation theory framework,an analysis that has never been performed for defect centers.In particular, we study the optical emission of the negatively-charged boron vacancy in 2D hexagonal boron nitride, which currently stands out among defect centers in 2D materials thanks to its promise for applications in quantum information and quantum sensing. We show that phonons are responsible for the observed luminescence, which otherwise would be dark due to symmetry. We also show that the symmetry breaking induced by the static Jahn-Teller effect is not able to describe the presence of the experimentally observed peak at 1.5 eV.The knowledge of the coupling between electrons and phonons is fundamental for the accurate prediction of all the features of the photoluminescence spectrum. However, the large number of atoms in a defect supercell hinders the possibility use density functional perturbation theory to study this coupling. In this work we present a finite-differences technique to calculate the electron-phonon matrix elements, which exploits the symmetries of the defect in such a way to use the very same set of displacement needed for the calculation of phonons. The computation of electron-phonon coupling thus becomes a simple post-processing of the finite-differences phonons calculation. On the quantum software side, we propose an improved quantum algorithm to calculate the Green's function through real-time propagation, and use it to compute the retarded Green's function for the 2-, 3- and 4-site Hubbard models. This novel protocol significantly reduces the number of controlled operations when compared to those previously suggested in literature. Such reduction is quite remarkable when considering the 2-site Hubbard model, for which we show that it is possible to obtain the exact time propagation of the

\ket{N\pm 1}

states by exponentiating one single Pauli component of the Hamiltonian, allowing us to perform the calculations on an actual superconducting quantum processor.

EPFL2022

Engineering and characterizing nonclassical states of light in quantum optical networks

Kilian Robert Seibold

The exploration of open quantum many-body systems -systems of microscopic size exhibiting quantum coherence and interacting with their surrounding- has emerged as a key research area over the last years. The recent advances in controlling and preserving quantum coherence at the level of a single particle, developed in a wide variety of physical platforms, have been a major driving force in this field. The driven dissipative nature is a common characteristic of a wide class of modern experimental platforms in quantum science and technology, such as photonic systems, ultracold atoms, optomechanical systems, or superconducting circuits. The interplay between the coherent quantum dynamics and dissipation in open quantum systems leads to a wide range of novel out-of-equilibrium behaviours. Among them, the emergence in these systems of dynamical phases with novel broken symmetries, topological phases and the occurrence of dissipative phase transitions are of particular interest. This thesis aims at establishing a theoretical framework to engineer, characterize and control nonclassical states of light in photonic quantum optical networks in different regimes. The emphasis is put on its implementation, in particular with respect to integration and scalability in photonic platforms. In this thesis, we tackle some interesting aspects arising in the study of the dynamics of driven dissipative coupled nonlinear optical resonators. In that context, we consider the dynamics of two coupled nonlinear photonic cavities in the presence of inhomogeneous coherent driving and local dissipations using the Lindblad master equation formalism.We show that this simple open quantum many-body system can be subject to dynamical instabilities. In particular, our analysis shows that this system presents highly nonclassical properties and its dynamics exhibits dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs), characterized by the robustness of its specific temporal or spatial waveform during propagation.In a second step, our intuition gained from this system composed of only few degrees of freedom is expanded to the study of systems of bigger size. In particular, we study DKSs originating from the parametric gain in Kerr microresonators. While DKSs are usually described using a classical mean-field approach, our work proposes a quantum-mechanical model formulated in terms of the truncated Wigner formalism. This analysis is motivated by the fact that technological implementations push towards the realization of DKSs in miniaturized integrated systems. These are operating at low power, a regime where quantum effects are expected to be relevant. Using the tools provided by the theory of open quantum systems, we propose a detailed investigation of the impact of quantum fluctuations on the spectral and dynamical properties of DKSs. We show that the quantum fluctuations arising from losses engender a finite lifetime to the soliton, and demonstrate that DKSs correspond to a specific class of dissipative time crystals.

EPFL2022

Microwave Photon-Mediated Interactions between Semiconductor Qubits

Pasquale Scarlino, Jann Hinnerk Ungerer

The realization of a coherent interface between distant charge or spin qubits in semiconductor quantum dots is an open challenge for quantum information processing. Here, we demonstrate both resonant (real) and nonresonant (virtual) photon-mediated coherent interactions between double quantum-dot charge qubits separated by several tens of micrometers. We present clear spectroscopic evidence of the resonant collective enhancement of the coupling of two qubits and the resonator. With both qubits in resonance with each other but detuned from the resonator, we observe exchange coupling between the qubits mediated by virtual photons. In both instances, pronounced bright and dark states governed by the symmetry of the qubit-field interaction are found. Our observations are in excellent quantitative agreement with master-equation simulations. The extracted two-qubit coupling strengths significantly exceed the linewidths of the combined resonator-qubit system, which indicates that this approach is viable for creating photon-mediated two-qubit gates in quantum-dot-based systems.

2018

Engineering and characterizing nonclassical states of light in quantum optical networks

Kilian Robert Seibold

EPFL2022

Novel materials and algorithms for quantum technologies

Francesco Libbi

\ket{N\pm 1}

states by exponentiating one single Pauli component of the Hamiltonian, allowing us to perform the calculations on an actual superconducting quantum processor.

EPFL2022