Applications of Atomic Ensembles for Photonic Quantum Information Processing and Fundamental Tests of Quantum Physics
Abstract
Quantum optics provides tools for the accurate control of light using atoms and also for manipulating atomic states using light. These techniques are being used for many applications, including quantum information processing and the generation of exotic quantum states. This thesis contains proposals for implementing a photonic quantum memory and a photon-photon gate, which are essential elements of photonic quantum information processing. Furthermore it proposes a scheme for the creation of many-body entangled states.
First a proposal for a new quantum memory protocol, called the atomic frequency sweep quantum memory, is presented. A two-level polariton model is derived that explains the coherent storage and retrieval of light through the manipulation of the atomic resonance frequency.
This is followed by a scheme for a deterministic photonic controlled-PHASE gate based on the strong interaction between two stationary collective Rydberg excitations in an atomic ensemble. Distortion effects caused by nonuniform interaction are quantified and compensation techniques for these effects are proposed.
Finally a proposal is presented that uses Rydberg dressing for the generation of energy cat states in an atomic medium, i.e. superposition states of all the atoms being in the ground or excited state, where these two states are connected by an optical transition and thus have a significant difference in energy. Considering the fragility of the state,
the effects of many different imperfections and decoherence sources are quantified.
The resulting cat state would allow testing of energy decoherence models with greatly improved sensitivity.
Description
Keywords
Physics--Atomic, Optics, Physics--Theory
Citation
Khazali, M. (2016). Applications of Atomic Ensembles for Photonic Quantum Information Processing and Fundamental Tests of Quantum Physics (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24969