Early experiments with transiting circular Rydberg atoms in a superconducting resonator laid the foundations of modern cavity and circuit quantum electrodynamics, and helped explore the defining features of quantum mechanics such as entanglement. Whereas ultracold atoms and superconducting circuits have since taken rather independent paths in the exploration of new physics, taking advantage of their complementary strengths in an integrated system enables access to fundamentally new parameter regimes and device capabilities. Here we report on such a system, coupling an ensemble of cold Rb atoms simultaneously to an, as far as we are aware, first-of-its-kind optically accessible, three-dimensional superconducting resonator and a vibration-suppressed optical cavity in a cryogenic (5 K) environment. To demonstrate the capabilities of this platform, and with an eye towards quantum networking, we leverage the strong coupling between Rydberg atoms and the superconducting resonator to implement a quantum-enabled millimetre wave (mmwave) photon to optical photon transducer. We measured an internal conversion efficiency of 58(11)%, a conversion bandwidth of 360(20) kHz and added thermal noise of 0.6 photons, in agreement with a parameter-free theory. Extensions of this technique will allow near-unity efficiency transduction in both the mmwave and microwave regimes. More broadly, our results open a new field of hybrid mmwave/optical quantum science, with prospects for operation deep in the strong coupling regime for efficient generation of metrologically or computationally useful entangled states and quantum simulation/computation with strong non-local interactions.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05740-2 | DOI Listing |
ACS Nano
January 2025
School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia.
Van der Waals electrode integration is a promising strategy to create nearly perfect interfaces between metals and 2D materials, with advantages such as eliminating Fermi-level pinning and reducing contact resistance. However, the lack of a simple, generalizable pick-and-place transfer technology has greatly hampered the wide use of this technique. We demonstrate the pick-and-place transfer of prefabricated electrodes from reusable polished hydrogenated diamond substrates without the use of any sacrificial layers due to the inherent low-energy and dangling-bond-free nature of the hydrogenated diamond surface.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
CNR Nanotec, Institute of Nanotechnology, via Monteroni, 73100, Lecce, Italy.
Macroscopic coherence in quantum fluids allows the observation of interference effects in their wavefunctions, and enables applications such as superconducting quantum interference devices based on Josephson tunneling. The Josephson effect manifests in both fermionic and bosonic systems, and has been well studied in superfluid helium and atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. In exciton-polariton condensates-that offer a path to integrated semiconductor platforms-creating weak links in ring geometries has so far remained challenging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNano Lett
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Material challenges are the key issue in Majorana research, where surface disorder constrains device performance. Here, we tackle this challenge by embedding PbTe nanowires within a lattice-constant-matched crystal. The wire edges are shaped by self-organized growth instead of lithography, resulting in nearly atomically flat facets along both cross-sectional and longitudinal directions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdv Mater
January 2025
Faculty of Science and Engineering, Aoyama Gakuin University, 5-10-1 Fuchinobe, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, 252-5258, Japan.
Twistronics, a novel engineering approach involving the alignment of van der Waals (vdW) integrated two-dimensional materials at specific angles, has recently attracted significant attention. Novel nontrivial phenomena have been demonstrated in twisted vdW junctions (the so-called magic angle), such as unconventional superconductivity, topological phases, and magnetism. However, there have been only few reports on integrated vdW layers with large twist angles θ, such as twisted interfacial Josephson junctions using high-temperature superconductors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, Beijing, 100093, China.
Due to the sulfur's atoms' propensity to form molecules and/or polymeric chains of various sizes and configuration, elemental sulfur possesses more allotropes and polymorphs than any other element at ambient conditions. This variability of the starting building blocks is partially responsible for its rich and fascinating phase diagram, with pressure and temperature changing the states of sulfur from insulating molecular rings and chains to semiconducting low- and high-density amorphous configurations to incommensurate superconducting metallic atomic phase. Here, using a fast compression technique, we demonstrate that the rapid pressurisation of liquid sulfur can effectively break the molecular ring structure, forming a glassy polymeric state of pure-chain molecules (Am-S).
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