Strongly Extended Superradiance in Diamond Meta-Materials

世纪材料的技术应用，例如用于电子和机械传感器的半导体，依赖于对其性质的经典或半经典理解。在最近和新兴的研究中，科学家和工程师试图利用原子，材料和光的量子特性来提高测量灵敏度，推进通信技术，并开发可扩展到大量的量子计算方法。光或光子与原子的相互作用是量子信息和量子计算实验的基础，随着时间的推移，量子信息和纳米光学领域已经融合在一起，展示了各种光-物质相互作用。然而，对于大多数系统，这些相互作用仅限于相对少量的原子和相对于光波长的小空间范围。这个项目将联合收割机结合许多桌面原子实验中相对大的原子密度和量子纳米级平台的可扩展性。该小组最近展示了一组超材料，制造具有奇异特性的复合材料，具有在某些波长下折射率为零的特殊特性。 研究团队将利用其在纳米级光学方面的专业知识，探索这些材料的可调特性如何增强原子-光相互作用，并为量子信息处理和计算的新应用打开大门。该小组与行业合作伙伴密切合作，以有效地将学术界的基本见解转化为商业应用。该项目将在两个方面为该小组的教育和推广工作做出贡献：首先，这些新型超材料将被用作教育平台，以展示超材料和量子光学的奇异材料特性和有趣的物理现象;其次，这项工作将直接涉及许多不同层次的学生，提供实践研究经验。超辐射是一种多体现象，其中原子彼此相干辐射，并且相长干涉的效应导致自发辐射率增加N倍，其中N是原子的数量。在大多数设置中，这种效应的关键要求是原子之间需要在一个波长内。如果原子不在一个波长内，那么在具有多于一维的大系统中，完美相干性的相位匹配条件变得越来越复杂。当可以在大于波长的区域中获得功率和衰减率的协同增强时，就会发生扩展超辐射。由于零折射率异向介质中没有空间相位超前，人们可以在零折射率异向介质中以低的辐射损耗获得全空间的完美超辐射。该小组将使用超材料平台在高度扩展的二维样本中实现许多原子的超辐射。该项目引入了一个超材料平台，允许非常大的合作自发辐射增强，并为可扩展的量子信息过程的潜在变革性应用打开了大门。它将为亚线宽微激光器，低退相干量子信息过程和可扩展量子存储器的广泛应用奠定基础。

20th century technological applications of materials, such as semiconductors used in electronics and mechanical sensors, rely on a classical or semi-classical understanding of their properties. In more recent and emerging research, scientists and engineers seek to exploit the quantum properties of atoms, materials, and light to increase measurement sensitivity, advance communications technologies, and develop approaches to quantum computation that are scalable to large numbers. Interactions of light, or photons, with atoms serve as the foundation for quantum information and quantum computation experiments, and over time the fields of quantum information and nanoscale optics have merged together to demonstrate a variety of light-matter interactions. However, for most systems these interactions are limited to relatively small numbers of atoms and over small spatial extents relative to wavelengths of light. This project will combine the relatively large density of atoms in many tabletop atomic experiments with the scalability of quantum nanoscale platforms. The group has recently demonstrated a set of metamaterials, fabricated composite materials with exotic properties, with the special property of having zero refractive index at certain wavelengths. The research team will use its expertise in nanoscale optics to explore how the tunable properties of these materials can enhance atom-light interactions and open the door to new applications in quantum information processing and computing. The group collaborates closely with industry partners in order to efficiently transfer fundamental insights from academia into commercial applications. This project will contribute to the group's effort on education and outreach in two aspects: first, these novel metamaterials will be used as a platform in education to demonstrate the exotic material properties and interesting physical phenomena of metamaterials and quantum optics; second, this work will directly involve students at many different levels, providing hands-on research experience. Superradiance is a many-body phenomenon in which atoms radiate coherently with one another, and the effect of constructive interference leads to an N-fold increase in the spontaneous emission rate, where N is the number of atoms. The key requirement for this effect in most setups is that the atoms need to be within one wavelength from one another. If the atoms are not within a wavelength, the phase matching conditions for perfect coherence become increasingly complex in large systems with more than one dimension. Extended superradiance occurs when it is possible to obtain cooperative enhancement both in power and in decay rate in regions greater than a wavelength. Because of the lack of spatial phase advance in zero-index metamaterials, one can obtain perfect superradiance throughout space with low radiative loss in zero-index metamaterials. The group will use the metamaterial platform to achieve superradiance of many atoms in a highly extended two-dimensional sample. The project introduces a metamaterial platform that permits very large cooperative spontaneous emission enhancement and opens the door to potentially transformative applications to scalable quantum information processes. It will lay the groundwork for a wide range of applications in sub-linewidth microlasers, low-decoherence quantum information processes, and scalable quantum memories.