Study finds billions of quantum entangled electrons in ‘strange metal’

Junichiro Kono (left) and Qimiao Si in Kono’s Rice University laboratory in December 2019. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news.rice.edu/2020/01/16/study-finds-billions-of-quantum-entangled-electrons-in-strange-metal-2/

JADE BOYD

Physicists provide direct evidence of entanglement’s role in quantum criticality

In a new study, U.S. and Austrian physicists have observed quantum entanglement among “billions of billions” of flowing electrons in a quantum critical material.

The research, which appears this week in Science, examined the electronic and magnetic behavior of a “strange metal” compound of ytterbium, rhodium and silicon as it both neared and passed through a critical transition at the boundary between two well-studied quantum phases.

The study at Rice University and Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) provides the strongest direct evidence to date of entanglement’s role in bringing about quantum criticality, said study co-author Qimiao Si of Rice.

“When we think about quantum entanglement, we think about small things,” Si said. “We don’t associate it with macroscopic objects. But at a quantum critical point, things are so collective that we have this chance to see the effects of entanglement, even in a metallic film that contains billions of billions of quantum mechanical objects.”

Si, a theoretical physicist and director of the Rice Center for Quantum Materials (RCQM), has spent more than two decades studying what happens when materials like strange metals and high-temperature superconductors change quantum phases. Better understanding such materials could open the door to new technologies in computing, communications and more.

The international team overcame several challenges to get the result. TU Wien researchers developed a highly complex materials synthesis technique to produce ultrapure films containing one part ytterbium for every two parts rhodium and silicon (YbRh2Si2). At absolute zero temperature, the material undergoes a transition from one quantum phase that forms a magnetic order to another that does not.

Physicist Silke Bühler-Paschen of the Vienna University of Technology (Photo by Luisa Puiu/TU Wien)

At Rice, study co-lead author Xinwei Li, Junichiro Kono, performed terahertz spectroscopy experiments on the films at temperatures as low as 1.4 Kelvin. The terahertz measurements revealed the optical conductivity of the YbRh2Si2 films as they were cooled to a quantum critical point that marked the transition from one quantum phase to another.

then a graduate student in the lab of co-author and RCQM member

“With strange metals, there is an unusual connection between electrical resistance and temperature,” said corresponding author Silke Bühler-Paschen of TU Wien’s Institute for Solid State Physics. “In contrast to simple metals such as copper or gold, this does not seem to be due to the thermal movement of the atoms, but to quantum fluctuations at the absolute zero temperature.”

To measure optical conductivity, Li shined coherent electromagnetic radiation in the terahertz frequency range on top of the films and analyzed the amount of terahertz rays that passed through as a function of frequency and temperature. The experiments revealed “frequency over temperature scaling,” a telltale sign of quantum criticality, the authors said.

Kono, an engineer and physicist in Rice’s Brown School of Engineering, said the measurements were painstaking for Li, who’s now a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology. For example, only a fraction of the terahertz radiation shined onto the sample passed through to the detector, and the important measurement was how much that fraction rose or fell at different temperatures.

Former Rice University graduate student Xinwei Li in 2016 with the terahertz spectrometer he later used to measure entanglement in the conduction electrons flowing through a “strange metal” compound of ytterbium, rhodium and silicon. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

“Less than 0.1% of the total terahertz radiation was transmitted, and the signal, which was the variation of conductivity as a function of frequency, was a further few percent of that,” Kono said. “It took many hours to take reliable data at each temperature to average over many, many measurements, and it was necessary to take data at many, many temperatures to prove the existence of scaling.

“Xinwei was very, very patient and persistent,” Kono said. “In addition, he carefully processed the huge amounts of data he collected to unfold the scaling law, which was really fascinating to me.”

Making the films was even more challenging. To grow them thin enough to pass terahertz rays, the TU Wien team developed a unique molecular beam epitaxy system and an elaborate growth procedure. Ytterbium, rhodium and silicon were simultaneously evaporated from separate sources in the exact 1-2-2 ratio. Because of the high energy needed to evaporate rhodium and silicon, the system required a custom-made ultrahigh vacuum chamber with two electron-beam evaporators.

“Our wild card was finding the perfect substrate: germanium,” said TU Wien graduate student Lukas Prochaska, a study co-lead author. The germanium was transparent to terahertz, and had “certain atomic distances (that were) practically identical to those between the ytterbium atoms in YbRh2Si2, which explains the excellent quality of the films,” he said.

Si recalled discussing the experiment with Bühler-Paschen more than 15 years ago when they were exploring the means to test a new class of quantum critical point. The hallmark of the quantum critical point that they were advancing with co-workers is that the quantum entanglement between spins and charges is critical.

Former Rice University graduate student Xinwei Li (left) and Professor Junichiro Kono in 2016 with the terahertz spectrometer Li used to measure quantum entanglement in YbRh2Si2. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

“At a magnetic quantum critical point, conventional wisdom dictates that only the spin sector will be critical,” he said. “But if the charge and spin sectors are quantum-entangled, the charge sector will end up being critical as well.”

At the time, the technology was not available to test the hypothesis, but by 2016, the situation had changed. TU Wien could grow the films, Rice had recently installed a powerful microscope that could scan them for defects, and Kono had the terahertz spectrometer to measure optical conductivity. During Bühler-Paschen’s sabbatical visit to Rice that year, she, Si, Kono and Rice microscopy expert Emilie Ringe received support to pursue the project via an Interdisciplinary Excellence Award from Rice’s newly established Creative Ventures program.

“Conceptually, it was really a dream experiment,” Si said. “Probe the charge sector at the magnetic quantum critical point to see whether it’s critical, whether it has dynamical scaling. If you don’t see anything that’s collective, that’s scaling, the critical point has to belong to some textbook type of description. But, if you see something singular, which in fact we did, then it is very direct and new evidence for the quantum entanglement nature of quantum criticality.”

Si said all the efforts that went into the study were well worth it, because the findings have far-reaching implications.

“Quantum entanglement is the basis for storage and processing of quantum information,” Si said. “At the same time, quantum criticality is believed to drive high-temperature superconductivity. So our findings suggest that the same underlying physics — quantum criticality — can lead to a platform for both quantum information and high-temperature superconductivity. When one contemplates that possibility, one cannot help but marvel at the wonder of nature.”

Si is the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor in Rice’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Kono is a professor in Rice’s departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, and Materials Science and NanoEngineering and the director of Rice’s Applied Physics Graduate Program. Ringe is now at the University of Cambridge.

Additional co-authors include Maxwell Andrews, Maximilian Bonta, Werner Schrenk, Andreas Limbeck and Gottfried Strasser, all of the TU Wien; Hermann Detz, formerly of TU Wien and currently at Brno University; Elisabeth Bianco, formerly of Rice and currently at Cornell University; Sadegh Yazdi, formerly of Rice and currently at the University of Colorado Boulder; and co-lead author Donald MacFarland, formerly of TU Wien and currently at the University at Buffalo.

The research was supported by the European Research Council, the Army Research Office, the Austrian Science Fund, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program, the National Science Foundation, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Rice University.

RCQM leverages global partnerships and the strengths of more than 20 Rice research groups to address questions related to quantum materials. RCQM is supported by Rice’s offices of the provost and the vice provost for research, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences, the Brown School of Engineering, the Smalley-Curl Institute and the departments of Physics and Astronomy, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Materials Science and NanoEngineering.

Abstract-Terahertz Faraday and Kerr rotation spectroscopy of Bi 1 − x Sb x films in high magnetic fields up to 30 tesla

Xinwei Li, Katsumasa Yoshioka, Ming Xie, G. Timothy Noe, II, Woojoo Lee, Nicolas Marquez Peraca, Weilu Gao, Toshio Hagiwara, Ørjan S. Handegård, Li-Wei Nien, Tadaaki Nagao, Masahiro Kitajima, Hiroyuki Nojiri, Chih-Kang Shih, Allan H. MacDonald, Ikufumi Katayama, Jun Takeda, Gregory A. Fiete, and Junichiro Kono

https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.100.115145

We report results of terahertz Faraday and Kerr rotation spectroscopy measurements on thin films of ${\text{Bi}}_{1-x}{\text{Sb}}_x$, an alloy system that exhibits a semimetal-to-topological-insulator transition as the Sb composition $x$ increases. By using a single-shot time-domain terahertz spectroscopy setup combined with a table-top pulsed minicoil magnet, we conducted measurements in magnetic fields up to 30 T, observing distinctly different behaviors between semimetallic ($x<0.07$) and topological insulator ($x>0.07$) samples. Faraday and Kerr rotation spectra for the semimetallic films showed a pronounced dip that blueshifted with the magnetic field, whereas spectra for the topological insulator films were positive and featureless, increasing in amplitude with increasing magnetic field and eventually saturating at high fields ($>20$ T). Ellipticity spectra for the semimetallic films showed resonances, whereas the topological insulator films showed no detectable ellipticity. To explain these observations, we developed a theoretical model based on realistic band parameters and the Kubo formula for calculating the optical conductivity of Landau-quantized charge carriers. Our calculations quantitatively reproduced all experimental features, establishing that the Faraday and Kerr signals in the semimetallic films predominantly arise from bulk hole cyclotron resonances while the signals in the topological insulator films represent combined effects of surface carriers originating from multiple electron and hole pockets. These results demonstrate that the use of high magnetic fields in terahertz magnetopolarimetry, combined with detailed electronic structure and conductivity calculations, allows us to unambiguously identify and quantitatively determine unique contributions from different species of carriers of topological and nontopological nature in ${\mathrm{Bi}}_{1-x}{\mathrm{Sb}}_x$.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Abstract-Metallic mesh devices-based terahertz parallel-plate resonators: characteristics and applications

Chen Wang, Xinwei Li, Yuxin Huang, Wendao Xu, Ruiyun Zhou, Ruiqian Wang, Lijuan Xie, and Yibin Ying

https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-26-19-24992

The capability to design, fabricate, and optimize metamaterials based on various structures and material platforms has been crucial for the rapid development of modern terahertz (THz) technology. While the detailed structures of artificial unit cells within a metamaterial is certainly worth investigating, there has been increasing demand to integrate novel metamaterials with a traditional functional photonic device to form a hybrid device, whose performance is so significantly improved as to be promising for real-world applications. In this study, we proposed, for the first time, a THz parallel-plate resonator based on metallic mesh devices (MMDs) for chemical sensing applications. We studied the influences of various structural parameters through simulations, fabricated MMD-based resonator devices, and fully characterized the device performance through THz spectroscopy experiments. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrated that our device can detect a doxycycline hydrochloride aqueous solution whose concentrations is as low as 1 mg L−1 through resonance frequency shifts, evidencing the device sensitivity capable of delicate chemical sensing tasks. Our work presents a practical and low cost architecture for chemical sensing using THz radiation, which opens new avenues for numerous useful THz devices based on metamaterials.

© 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreemen

Rice U. lab finds evidence of matter-matter coupling

MIKE WILLIAMS
http://news.rice.edu/2018/08/23/rice-u-lab-finds-evidence-of-matter-matter-coupling/

HOUSTON – (Aug. 23, 2018) – After their recent pioneering experiments to couple light and matter to an extreme degree, Rice University scientists decided to look for a similar effect in matter alone. They didn’t expect to find it so soon.

Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, graduate student Xinwei Li and their international colleagues have discovered the first example of Dicke cooperativity in a matter-matter system, a result reported in Science this week.

Rice University scientists observed Dicke cooperativity in a magnetic crystal in which two types of spins, in iron (blue arrows) and erbium (red arrows), interacted with each other. The iron spins were excited to form a wave-like object called a spin wave; the erbium spins precessing in a magnetic field (B) behaved like two-level atoms. Illustration by Xinwei Li

The discovery could help advance the understanding of spintronics and quantum magnetism, Kono said. On the spintronics side, he said the work will lead to faster information processing with lower power consumption and will contribute to the development of spin-based quantum computing. The team’s findings on quantum magnetism will lead to a deeper understanding of the phases of matter induced by many-body interactions at the atomic scale.

Instead of using light to trigger interactions in a quantum well, a system that produced new evidence of ultrastrong light-matter coupling earlier this year, the Kono lab at Rice used a magnetic field to prompt cooperativity among the spins within a crystalline compound made primarily of iron and erbium.

“This is an emerging subject in condensed matter physics,” Kono said. “There’s a long history in atomic and molecular physics of looking for the phenomenon of ultrastrong cooperative coupling. In our case, we’d already found a way to make light and condensed matter interact and hybridize, but what we’re reporting here is more exotic.”

Dicke cooperativity, named for physicist Robert Dicke, happens when incoming radiation causes a collection of atomic dipoles to couple, like gears in a motor that don’t actually touch. Dicke’s early work set the stage for the invention of lasers, the discovery of cosmic background radiation in the universe and the development of lock-in amplifiers used by scientists and engineers.
                                              

Xinwei Li, left, and Junichiro Kono of Rice University led an international effort to find the first instance of Dicke cooperativity in a matter-matter system. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

“Dicke was an unusually productive physicist,” Kono said. “He had many high-impact papers and accomplishments in almost all areas of physics. The particular Dicke phenomenon that’s relevant to our work is related to superradiance, which he introduced in 1954. The idea is that if you have a collection of atoms, or spins, they can work together in light-matter interaction to make spontaneous emission coherent. This was a very strange idea.

“When you stimulate many atoms within a small volume, one atom produces a photon that immediately interacts with another atom in the excited state,” Kono said. “That atom produces another photon. Now you have coherent superposition of two photons.

“This happens between every pair of atoms within the volume and produces macroscopic polarization that eventually leads to a burst of coherent light called superradiance,” he said.

Taking light out of the equation meant the Kono lab had to find another way to excite the material’s dipoles, the compass-like magnetic force inherent in every atom, and prompt them to align. Because the lab is uniquely equipped for such experiments, when the test material showed up, Kono and Li were ready.

“The sample was provided by my colleague (and co-author) Shixun Cao at Shanghai University,” Kono said. Characterization tests with a small or no magnetic field performed by another co-author, Dmitry Turchinovich of the University of Duisburg-Essen, drew little response.

“But Dmitry is a good friend, and he knows we have a special experimental setup that combines terahertz spectroscopy, low temperatures and high magnetic field,” Kono said. “He was curious to know what would happen if we did the measurements.”

“Because we have some experience in this field, we got our initial data, identified some interesting details in it and thought there was something more we could explore in depth,” Li added.

“But we certainly didn’t predict this,” Kono said.

Li said that to show cooperativity, the magnetic components of the compound had to mimic the two essential ingredients in a standard light-atom coupling system where Dicke cooperativity was originally proposed: one a species of spins that can be excited into a wave-like object that simulates the light wave, and another with quantum energy levels that would shift with the applied magnetic field and simulate the atoms.

“Within a single orthoferrite compound, on one side the iron ions can be triggered to form a spin wave at a particular frequency,” Li said. “On the other side, we used the electron paramagnetic resonance of the erbium ions, which forms a two-level quantum structure that interacts with the spin wave.”

While the lab’s powerful magnet tuned the energy levels of the erbium ions, as detected by the terahertz spectroscope, it did not initially show strong interactions with the iron spin wave at room temperature. But the interactions started to appear at lower temperatures, seen in a spectroscopic measurement of coupling strength known as vacuum Rabi splitting.

Chemically doping the erbium with yttrium brought it in line with the observation and showed Dicke cooperativity in the magnetic interactions. “The way the coupling strength increased matches in an excellent manner with Dicke’s early predictions,” Li said. “But here, light is out of the picture and the coupling is matter-matter in nature.”

“The interaction we’re talking about is really atomistic,” Kono said. “We show two types of spin interacting in a single material. That’s a quantum mechanical interaction, rather than the classical mechanics we see in light-matter coupling. This opens new possibilities for not only understanding but also controlling and predicting novel phases of condensed matter.”

Co-authors of the paper are Motoaki Bamba, an associate professor at Osaka University; graduate students Ning Yuan, Maolin Xiang and Kai Xu and professors Zuanming Jin, Wei Ren and Guohong Ma at Shanghai University; Rice alumnus Qi Zhang, a research fellow at Argonne National Laboratory; and Yage Zhao, an undergraduate student at Peking University and former exchange student at Rice. Kono is a professor of electrical and computer engineering, of physics and astronomy, and of materials science and nanoengineering.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the PRESTO program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science’s KAKENHI program, the ImPACT Program of the Government of Japan’s Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, German Research Foundation,the European Commission and the Max Planck Society.

Read the abstract at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aat5162

Abstract-Continuous transition between weak and ultrastrong coupling through exceptional points in carbon nanotube microcavity exciton–polaritons

Weilu Gao, Xinwei Li, Motoaki Bamba,  Junichiro Kono,

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-018-0157-9

Non-perturbative coupling of photons and excitons produces hybrid particles, exciton–polaritons, which have exhibited a variety of many-body phenomena in various microcavity systems. However, the vacuum Rabi splitting (VRS), which defines the strength of photon–exciton coupling, is usually a single constant for a given system. Here, we have developed a unique architecture in which excitons in an aligned single-chirality carbon nanotube film interact with cavity photons in polarization-dependent manners. The system reveals ultrastrong coupling (VRS up to 329 meV or a coupling-strength-to-transition-energy ratio of 13.3%) for polarization parallel to the nanotube axis, whereas VRS is absent for perpendicular polarization. Between these two extremes, VRS is continuously tunable through polarization rotation with exceptional points separating crossing and anticrossing. The points between exceptional points form equienergy arcs onto which the upper and lower polaritons coalesce. The demonstrated on-demand ultrastrong coupling provides ways to explore topological properties of polaritons and quantum technology applications.

Quantum shift shows itself in coupled light and matter

Rice University scientists corral, quantify subtle movement in condensed matter system

MIKE WILLIAMS

http://news.rice.edu/2018/04/16/quantum-shift-shows-itself-in-coupled-light-and-matter/

HOUSTON – (April 16, 2018) – A team led by Rice University scientists used a unique combination of techniques to observe, for the first time, a condensed matter phenomenon about which others have only speculated. The research could aid in the development of quantum computers.

An electron (blue sphere) travels in a circular orbit in a DC magnetic field (B_dc). When an incoming light wave (E_ac) interacts with it, there is a component in the light wave whose electric field rotates in the same direction with the electron motion (red arrow on the left-hand side) and thus resonantly interacts with it – that is, the electron rapidly gains energy. The other component of the electric field rotates in the opposite direction with the electron (red arrow on the right-hand side), whose effect is typically negligible. However, when the electron and light wave mix to an extreme degree, the interaction effect can manifest as a Bloch-Siegert shift. Courtesy of Xinwei Li/Kono Lab

The researchers, led by Rice physicist Junichiro Kono and graduate student Xinwei Li, observed and measured what’s known as a Bloch-Siegert shift in strongly coupled light and matter.

Results of the complicated combination of modeling and experimentation are the subject of a paper in Nature Photonics. The technique could lead to a greater understanding of theoretical predictions in quantum phase transitions because the experimental parameters used in the Rice experiments are highly adjustable, according to Kono. Ultimately, he said, it may help in the development of robust quantum bits for advanced computing.

The Bloch-Siegert shift, a theory born in the 1940s, is a quantum interaction in which counter-rotating fields are able to interact. But such interactions have been difficult to detect.

The theory suggested to Kono and Li that it might be possible to detect such a shift when a light field rotating in one direction strongly couples with a matter-bound electron field rotating in the opposite direction. These interactions have proven difficult to create without the unique tools assembled by the Rice-led team.

“Light and matter should not resonate with each other when they are rotating in opposite directions,” Kono said. “However, in our case, we proved they can still strongly couple, or interact, even though they are not resonating with each other.”                           

   

A simplified schematic shows the basic idea behind a Rice University experiment to detect a Bloch-Siegert shift in strongly coupled light and matter. In this illustration, a light field rotating in the opposite direction to an orbiting electron still interacts with the electron in a cavity, in this case the empty space between two mirrors. The influence of resonance on the counter-rotating element defines the shift. Illustration by Xinwei Li

Kono and his colleagues created the resonance frequency shift in a two-level electron system induced by coupling with an electromagnetic field inside a cavity even when the electrons and field are rotating in opposite directions – a truly surprising effect that occurs only in a regime where light and matter are mixed together to an extreme degree.

In this case, the levels are those of two-dimensional electrons in solid gallium arsenide in a strong perpendicular magnetic field. They hybridize with the “vacuum” electromagnetic field in the cavity to form quasiparticles known as polaritons. This vacuum-matter hybridization had been expected to lead to a finite frequency shift, a vacuum Bloch-Siegert shift, in optical spectra for circularly polarized light counter-rotating with the electrons. The Rice team can now measure it.

“In condensed matter physics, we often look for new ground states (lowest-energy states). For that purpose, light-matter coupling is usually considered an enemy because light drives matter to an excited (higher-energy) state,” Kono said. “Here we have a unique system that is predicted to go into a new ground state because of strong light-matter coupling. Our technique will help us know when the strength of light-matter coupling exceeds a certain threshold.”

The research builds upon a strong vacuum field-matter coupling in a high-quality-factor cavity the lab first created and reported in 2016. The results at the time only hinted at the presence of a Bloch-Siegert shift. “Experimentally, we just demonstrated the new regime,” Li said. “But here, we have a very deep understanding of the physics involved.”

Kono and Li credited physicist Motoaki Bamba of Osaka University for providing a theoretical basis for the discovery and Katsumasa Yoshioka of Yokohama National University and a former visiting scholar at Rice for providing a device to produce circularly polarized light in the terahertz range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Xinwei Li, left, and Junichiro Kono. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

The lab used the light to probe the shift in an ultra-high quality, two-dimensional electron gas supplied by Purdue University physicist Michael Manfra and set in a gallium arsenide quantum well (to contain the particles) under the influence of a strong magnetic field and low temperature. A terahertz spectroscope measured activity in the system.

“Linearly polarized light means an alternating current electric field that is always oscillating in one direction,” Kono said. “In circularly polarized light, the electric field is rotating.” That allowed the researchers to distinguish between left- and right-rotating electrons in their vacuum-bound condensed matter in a magnetic field, and from that, measure the shift.

“In this work, both theoretically and experimentally, we demonstrated that even though the electron is rotating this way and the light is rotating (the other) way, they still strongly interact with each other, which leads to a finite frequency shift known as the Bloch-Siegert shift,” Kono said.

Observing the shift is a direct indication that ultra-strong light-matter coupling invalidated the rotating wave approximation, he said. “That approximation is behind almost all light-matter interaction phenomenon, including lasers, nuclear magnetic resonance and quantum computing,” Kono said. “In any resonant light-matter interaction, people are satisfied with this approximation, because the coupling is usually weak. But if the coupling between light and matter is strong, it doesn’t work. That’s clear evidence that we are in the ultra-strong coupling regime.”

Co-authors of the paper are Rice postdoctoral researcher Weilu Gao and graduate student Minhan Lou of Rice, Rice alumnus Qi Zhang of Argonne National Laboratory and graduate student Saeed Fallahi and visiting scholar Geoff Gardner of Purdue. Kono is a professor of electrical and computer engineering, of physics and astronomy, and of materials science and nanoengineering. Manfra is the Bill and Dee O’Brian Chair Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue. Bamba is an associate professor at Osaka. Yoshioka is a teaching assistant at Yokohama.

The National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the PRESTO program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency and the ImPACT program of the Government of Japan’s Council for Science, Technology and Innovation supported the research.

-30-

Read the open-access paper at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41566-018-0153-0

Light and matter merge in quantum coupling

Rice physicists probe photon-electron interactions in vacuum cavity experiments 

Mike Williams

http://news.rice.edu/2016/08/22/light-and-matter-merge-in-quantum-coupling-2/

Where light and matter intersect, the world illuminates. Where light and matter interact so strongly that they become one, they illuminate a world of new physics, according to Rice University scientists.

Rice physicists are closing in on a way to create a new condensed matter state in which all the electrons in a material act as one by manipulating them with light and a magnetic field. The effect made possible by a custom-built, finely tuned cavity for terahertz radiation shows one of the strongest light-matter coupling phenomena ever observed.

Rice graduate student Xinwei Li, with physicist Junichiro Kono, prepares a sample for a cavity quantum electrodynamics experiment. They are part of a team probing the boundaries of light-matter interactions as they bridge traditional condensed matter physics and cavity-based quantum optics. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

The work by Rice physicist Junichiro Kono and his colleagues is described in Nature Physics. It could help advance technologies like quantum computers and communications by revealing new phenomena to those who study cavity quantum electrodynamics and condensed matter physics, Kono said.

Condensed matter in the general sense is anything solid or liquid, but condensed matter physicists study forms that are much more esoteric, like Bose-Einstein condensates. A Rice team was one of the first to make a Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995 when it prompted atoms to form a gas at ultracold temperatures in which all the atoms lose their individual identities and behave as a single unit.

The Kono team is working toward something similar, but with electrons that are strongly coupled, or “dressed,” with light. Qi Zhang, a former graduate student in Kono’s group and lead author of the paper, designed and constructed an extremely high-quality cavity to contain an ultrathin layer of gallium arsenide, a material they’ve used to study superfluorescence. By tuning the material with a magnetic field to resonate with a certain state of light in the cavity, they prompted the formation of polaritons that act in a collective manner.

“This is a nonlinear optical study of a two-dimensional electronic material,” said Zhang, who based his Ph.D. thesis on the work. “When you use light to probe a material’s electronic structure, you’re usually looking for light absorption or reflection or scattering to see what’s happening in the material. That light is just a weak probe and the process is called linear optics.

A method created at Rice University closes the gap between light and matter and may help advance technologies like quantum computers and communications. The lab designed and built a high-quality cavity to contain an ultrathin layer of gallium arsenide. By tuning the material with a magnetic field to resonate with a certain state of light in the cavity, they prompted the formation of polaritons that act in a collective manner. Click on the image for a larger version. Illustration by Qi Zhang

“Nonlinear optics means light does something to the material,” he said. “Light is not a small perturbation anymore; it couples strongly with the material. As you change the coupling strength, things change in the material. What we’re doing is the extreme case of nonlinear optics, where the light and matter are coupled so strongly that we don’t have light and matter anymore. We have something in between, called a polariton.”

The researchers employed a parameter known as vacuum Rabi splitting to measure the strength of the light-matter coupling. “In more than 99 percent of previous studies of light-matter coupling in cavities, this value is a negligibly small fraction of the photon energy of the light used,” said Xinwei Li, a co-author and graduate student in Kono’s group. “In our study, vacuum Rabi splitting is as large as 10 percent of the photon energy. That puts us in the so-called ultrastrong coupling regime.

“This is an important regime because, eventually, if the vacuum Rabi splitting becomes larger than the photon energy, the matter goes into a new ground state. That means we can induce a phase transition, which is an important element in condensed matter physics,” he said.

Phase transitions are transitions between states of matter, like ice to water to vapor. The specific transition Kono’s team is looking for is the superradiant phase transition in which the polaritons go into an ordered state with macroscopic coherence.

Rice graduate student Xinwei Li, left, and Professor Junichiro Kono. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Kono said the amount of terahertz light put into the cavity is very weak. “What we depend on is the vacuum fluctuation. Vacuum, in a classical sense, is an empty space. There’s nothing. But in a quantum sense, a vacuum is full of fluctuating photons, having so-called zero-point energy. These vacuum photons are actually what we are using to resonantly excite electrons in our cavity.

“This general subject is what’s known as cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED),” Kono said. “In cavity QED, the cavity enhances the light so that matter in the cavity resonantly interacts with the vacuum field. What is unique about solid-state cavity QED is that the light typically interacts with this huge number of electrons, which behave like a single gigantic atom.”

He said solid-state cavity QED is also key for applications that involve quantum information processing, like quantum computers. “The light-matter interface is important because that’s where so-called light-matter entanglement occurs. That way, the quantum information of matter can be transferred to light and light can be sent somewhere.

“For improving the utility of cavity QED in quantum information, the stronger the light-matter coupling, the better, and it has to use a scalable, solid-state system instead of atomic or molecular systems,” he said. “That’s what we’ve achieved here.”

The high-quality gallium arsenide materials used in the study were synthesized via molecular beam epitaxy by John Reno of Sandia National Laboratories and John Watson and Michael Manfra of Purdue University, all co-authors of the paper. Weil Pan of Sandia National Laboratories and Rice graduate student Minhan Lou, who participated in sample preparation and transport and terahertz measurements, are also co-authors.

Zhang is now the Alexei Abrikosov Postdoctoral Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory. Kono is a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering, of physics and astronomy and of materials science and nanoengineering. Li received a “Best First-Year Research Award” from Rice’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for his work on the project.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Lockheed Martin Corp. and the W.M. Keck Foundation.

- See more at: http://news.rice.edu/2016/08/22/light-and-matter-merge-in-quantum-coupling-2/#sthash.PW4Qrxie.dpuf