Measuring small longitudinal phase shifts via weak measurement amplification

Weak measurement amplification,which is considered as a very promising scheme in precision measurement,has been applied to various small physical quantities estimations.Since many physical quantities can be converted into phase signals,it is interesting and important to consider measuring small longitudinal phase shifts by using weak measurement.Here,we propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel weak measurement amplification-based small longitudinal phase estimation,which is suitable for polarization interferometry.We realize one order of magnitude amplification measurement of a small phase signal directly introduced by a liquid crystal variable retarder and show that it is robust to the imperfection of interference.Besides,we analyze the effect of magnification error which is never considered in the previous works,and find the constraint on the magnification.Our results may find important applications in high-precision measurements,e.g.,gravitational wave detection.

Stark Tuning of Telecom Single-Photon Emitters Based on a Single Er^(3+)

The implementation of scalable quantum networks requires photons at the telecom band and long-lived spin coherence.The single Er^(3+) in solid-state hosts is an important candidate that fulfills these critical requirements simultaneously.However,to entangle distant Er^(3+) ions through photonic connections,the emission frequency of individual Er^(3+) in solid-state matrix must be the same,which is challenging because the emission frequency of Er^(3+) depends on its local environment.Herein,we propose and experimentally demonstrate the Stark tuning of the emission frequency of a single Er^(3+) in a Y_(2)SiO_(5) crystal by employing electrodes interfaced with a silicon photonic crystal cavity.We obtain a Stark shift of 182.9±0.8 MHz,which is approximately 27 times of the optical emission linewidth,demonstrating promising applications in tuning the emission frequency of independent Er^(3+) into the same spectral channels.Our results provide a useful solution for construction of scalable quantum networks based on single Er^(3+) and a universal tool for tuning emission of individual rare-earth ions.

Temperature-free mass tracking of a levitated nanoparticle

Mass measurement is an essential analytical tool in the characterization of materials.Here we present a method for measuring the mass of an individual nanoparticle which has a fg-level mass.This method enables a temperatureindependent mass measurement with the assistance of a sinusoidal electrostatic driving force.With this approach,we successfully track the change in properties of an optically levitated nanoparticle,such as mass,temperature,and electric charge,with air pressure.An abrupt change in the mass of silica nanoparticles is found to violate the Zhuravlev model.This method can be utilized to extend the mass analysis of materials,such as thermogravimetric analysis,to individual microor nano-particles.

Transporting Cold Atoms towards a GaN-on-Sapphire Chip via an Optical Conveyor Belt

Trapped atoms on photonic structures inspire many novel quantum devices for quantum information processing and quantum sensing.Here,we demonstrate a hybrid photonic-atom chip platform based on a Ga N-onsapphire chip and the transport of an ensemble of atoms from free space towards the chip with an optical conveyor belts.Due to our platform’s complete optical accessibility and careful control of atomic motion near the chip with a conveyor belt,successful atomic transport towards the chip is made possible.The maximum transport efficiency of atoms is about 50%with a transport distance of 500μm.Our results open up a new route toward the efficient loading of cold atoms into the evanescent-field trap formed by the photonic integrated circuits,which promises strong and controllable interactions between single atoms and single photons.

Stable single photon sources in the near C-band range above 400K

The intrinsic characteristics of single photons became critical issues since the early development of quantum mechanics. Nowadays, acting as flying qubits, single photons are shown to play important roles in the quantum key distribution and quantum networks. Many different single photon sources (SPSs) have been developed. Point defects in silicon carbide (SiC) have been shown to be promising SPS candidates in the telecom range. In this work, we demonstrate a stable SPS in an epitaxial 3CSiC with the wavelength in the near C-band range, which is very suitable for fiber communications. The observed SPSs show high single photon purity and stable fluorescence at even above 400 K. The lifetimes of the SPSs are found to be almost linearly decreased with the increase of temperature. Since the epitaxial 3C-SiC can be conveniently nanofabricated, these stable near Cband SPSs would find important applications in the integrated photonic devices.

Dipole–dipole interactions enhance non-Markovianity and protect information against dissipation

Preserving non-Markovianity and quantum entanglement from decoherence effect is of theoretical and practical significance in the quantum information processing technologies.In this context, we study a system S that is initially correlated with an ancilla A, which interacts with the environment E via an amplitude damping channel.We also consider dipole-dipole interactions(DDIs) between the system and ancilla, which are responsible for strong correlations.We investigate the impact of DDIs and detuning on the non-Markovianity and information exchange in different environments.We show that DDIs are not only better than detuning at protecting the information(without destroying the memory effect) but also induce memory by causing a transition from Markovian to non-Markovian dynamics.In contrast, although detuning also protects the information, it causes a transition from non-Markovian to the Markovian dynamics.In addition, we demonstrate that the non-Markovianity grows with increasing DDI strength and diminishes with increasing detuning.We also show that the effects of negative detuning and DDIs can cancel out each other, causing a certain loss of coherence and information.

Taking tomographic measurements for photonic qubits 88 ns before they are created

We experimentally demonstrate that tomographic measurements can be performed for states of qubits before they are prepared.A variant of the quantum teleportation protocol is used as a channel between two instants in time,allowing measurements for polarization states of photons to be implemented 88 ns before they are created.Measurement data taken at the early time and later unscrambled according to the results of the protocol’s Bell measurements,produces density matrices with an average fidelity of 0.90±0.01 against the ideal states of photons created at the later time.Process tomography of the time reverse quantum channel finds an average process fidelity of 0.84±0.02.While our proof-of-principle implementation necessitates some post-selection,the general protocol is deterministic and requires no post-selection to sift desired states and reject a larger ensemble.

Gap plasmon-enhanced photoluminescence of monolayer MoS_2 in hybrid nanostructure

Monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides（TMDs） have attracted a lot of attention for their applications in optics and optoelectronics.Molybdenum disulfide（MoS2）,as one of those important materials,has been widely investigated due to its direct band gap and photoluminescence（PL） in visible range.Owing to the fact that the monolayer MoS2 suffers low light absorption and emission,surface plasmon polaritons（SPPs） are used to enhance both the excitation and emission efficiencies.Here,we demonstrate that the PL of MoS2 sandwiched between 200-nm-diameter gold nanoparticle（Au NP） and 150-nm-thick gold film is improved by more than 4 times compared with bare MoS2 sample.This study shows that gap plasmons can possess more optical and optoelectronic applications incorporating with many other emerging two-dimensional materials.

Demonstration of controlled high-dimensional quantum teleportation

Controlled quantum teleportation(CQT), which is regarded as the prelude and backbone for a genuine quantum internet, reveals the cooperation, supervision, and control relationship among the sender, receiver, and controller in the quantum network within the simplest unit. Compared with low-dimensional counterparts, high-dimensional CQT can exhibit larger information transmission capacity and higher superiority of the controller's authority. In this article, we report a proof-of-principle experimental realization of three-dimensional(3D) CQT with a fidelity of 97.4% ± 0.2%. To reduce the complexity of the circuit, we simulate a standard 4-qutrit CQT protocol in a 9×9-dimensional two-photon system with high-quality operations. The corresponding control powers are 48.1% ± 0.2% for teleporting a qutrit and 52.8% ± 0.3% for teleporting a qubit in the experiment, which are both higher than the theoretical value of control power in 2-dimensional CQT protocol(33%). The results fully demonstrate the advantages of high-dimensional multi-partite entangled networks and provide new avenues for constructing complex quantum networks.

Atom-referenced and stabilized soliton microcomb

For the applications of the frequency comb in microresonators,it is essential to obtain a fully frequency-stabilized microcomb laser source.In this study,we present a system for generating a fully atom-referenced stabilized soliton microcomb.The pump light around 1560.48 nm is locked to an ultra-low-expansion(ULE)cavity.This pump light is then frequency-doubled and referenced to the atomic transition of87Rb.The repetition rate of the soliton microcomb is injection-locked to an atomic-clockstabilized radio frequency(RF)source,leading to mHz stabilization at 1 s.As a result,all comb lines have been frequencystabilized based on the atomic reference and the ULE cavity,achieving a very high precision of approximately 18 Hz at 1 s,corresponding to the frequency stability of 9.5×10^(-14).Our approach provides a fully stabilized microcomb experiment scheme with no requirement of f-2f technique,which could be easily implemented and generalized to various photonic platforms,thus paving the way towards the ultraprecise optical sources for high precision spectroscopy.

Stimulated Brillouin interaction between guided phonons and photons in a lithium niobate waveguide

The Brillouin scattering is one of the strongest nonlinear optical effects in dielectrics[1].In particular,the backward Brillouin scattering(BBS)provides an efficient method to achieve low-noise optical gain for active photonics[2]and the coherent interconnects between 10 GHz phonons and photons[3].However,previous studies on BBS are primarily limited to the unconfined phonons[1]or phonon confined in suspended structures[4-6].

Breaking the efficiency limitations of dissipative Kerr solitons using nonlinear couplers

Dissipative Kerr solitons(DKS) have long been suffering from poor power conversion efficiency when driven by continuous-wave lasers. By deriving the critical coupling condition of a multimode nonlinear optics system in a generalized theoretical framework,two efficiency limitations of the conventional pump method of DKS are revealed: the effective coupling rate is too small and is also power-dependent. A general approach is provided to resolve this challenge by introducing two types of nonlinear couplers to couple the soliton cavity and CW input through nonlinear processes. The collective coupler opens multiple coupling channels and the self-adaptive coupler builds a power-independent effective external coupling rate to the DKS for approaching the generalized critical coupling condition, which promises near-unity power conversion efficiencies. For instance, a conversion efficiency exceeding 90% is predicted for aluminum nitride microrings with a nonlinear coupler utilizing second-harmonic generation. The mechanism applies to various nonlinear processes, including Raman and Brillouin scattering, and thus paves the way for micro-solitons toward practical applications.

A von-Neumann-like photonic processor and its application in studying quantum signature of chaos

Photonic quantum computation plays an important role and offers unique advantages.Two decades after the milestone work of Knill-Laflamme-Milburn,various architectures of photonic processors have been proposed,and quantum advantage over classical computers has also been demonstrated.It is now the opportune time to apply this technology to real-world applications.However,at current technology level,this aim is restricted by either programmability in bulk optics or loss in integrated optics for the existing architectures of processors,for which the resource cost is also a problem.Here we present a von-Neumann-like architecture based on temporal-mode encoding and looped structure on table,which is capable of multimode-universal programmability,resource-efficiency,phasestability and software-scalability.In order to illustrate these merits,we execute two different programs with varying resource requirements on the same processor,to investigate quantum signature of chaos from two aspects:the signature behaviors exhibited in phase space(13 modes),and the Fermi golden rule which has not been experimentally studied in quantitative way before(26 modes).The maximal program contains an optical interferometer network with 1694 freely-adjustable phases.Considering current state-of-the-art,our architecture stands as the most promising candidate for real-world applications.

Learning the imaging mechanism directly from optical microscopy observations

The optical microscopy image plays an important role in scientific research through the direct visualization of the nanoworld,where the imaging mechanism is described as the convolution of the point spread function(PSF)and emitters.Based on a priori knowledge of the PSF or equivalent PSF,it is possible to achieve more precise exploration of the nanoworld.However,it is an outstanding challenge to directly extract the PSF from microscopy images.Here,with the help of self-supervised learning,we propose a physics-informed masked autoencoder(PiMAE)that enables a learnable estimation of the PSF and emitters directly from the raw microscopy images.We demonstrate our method in synthetic data and real-world experiments with significant accuracy and noise robustness.PiMAE outperforms DeepSTORM and the Richardson–Lucy algorithm in synthetic data tasks with an average improvement of 19.6%and 50.7%(35 tasks),respectively,as measured by the normalized root mean square error(NRMSE)metric.This is achieved without prior knowledge of the PSF,in contrast to the supervised approach used by DeepSTORM and the known PSF assumption in the Richardson–Lucy algorithm.Our method,PiMAE,provides a feasible scheme for achieving the hidden imaging mechanism in optical microscopy and has the potential to learn hidden mechanisms in many more systems.

Entanglement quantification via weak measurements assisted by deep learning

Entanglement has been recognized as being crucial when implementing various quantum information tasks.Nevertheless, quantifying entanglement for an unknown quantum state requires nonphysical operations or post-processing measurement data. For example, evaluation methods via quantum state tomography require vast amounts of measurement data and likely estimation.

Realization of quantum ground state in an optomechanical crystal cavity

Ground-state cooling of the mechanical degree of freedom is a fundamental requirement for quantum state transfer between relevant optical and mechanical systems.Here,we fabricate optomechanical crystal cavities with co-localized mechanical and optical modes on a monolithic chip.The typical linewidth of the optical modes at telecom wavelength is as low as 0.95 GHz,and the mechanical resonant frequency is around 5 GHz,which means the optomechanical system can be operated in the resolved sideband regime.With the statistics of the asymmetry in the scattering rates of red and blue detuning driving processes,we initialize and characterize the mechanical system in its quantum ground-state of motion,with a mean thermal phonon occupancy nth=0.018±0.0034,corresponding to a mode temperature of 57.3 m K.It is a general platform for quantum state transfer between relevant optical and mechanical systems,as well as the quantum entanglement between these systems.

Experimental demonstration of separating the wave-particle duality of a single photon with the quantum Cheshire cat

As a fundamental characteristic of physical entities,wave-particle duality describes whether a microscopic entity exhibits wave or particle attributes depending on the specific experimental setup.This assumption is premised on the notion that physical properties are inseparable from the objective carrier.However,after the concept of the quantum Cheshire cats was proposed,which makes the separation of physical attributes from the entity possible,the premise no longer holds.Furthermore,an experimental demonstration of the separation of the wave and particle attributes inspired by this scenario remains scarce.In this work,we experimentally separated the wave and particle attributes of a single photon by exploiting the quantum Cheshire cat concept for the first time.By applying a weak disturbance to the evolution of the system,we achieve an effect similar to the quantum Cheshire cat and demonstrated the separation of the wave and particle attributes via the extraction of weak values.Our work provides a new perspective for the in-depth understanding of wave-particle duality and promotes the application of weak measurements in fundamentals of quantum mechanics.

Ringing spectroscopy in the magnomechanical system

The ringing phenomenon has been studied in optical whispering gallery mode(WGM)resonators and can be used to sense the ultrafast process in spectroscopy.Here we observe the ringing phenomenon in a magnomechanical system for the first time,which is induced by the interference between the microwave photons converted from the damped phonons and the probing microwave photons.This interference eventually appears as a transparency window even along with the ringing phenomenon in the measured microwave reflection spectrum,which is influenced by the scanning speed and the input power.Then,the ringing spectroscopy is used to measure the coupling strength between the magnon and phonon modes,and outline the displacement profile of𝑆1,2,2 mechanical mode in a YIG microsphere,demonstrating the theoretical analysis.In addition,the ring-up spectroscopy is developed in our magnomechanical system,laying the foundation for fast sensing based on mechanical motion.