Brendan Saxberg’s PhD Thesis Defense 

11:00 am–1:00 pm

Please Join us:

Brendan Saxberg's PhD Thesis Defense 

Wednesday, November 16,2022 at 11:00 AM CDT


CREATING COMPRESSIBLE MANY-BODY STATES OF LIGHT THROUGH ADIABATIC TUNING OF DISORDER

Creating a desired many-body state within large quantum systems is a common desire among several related fields, ranging from quantum information science to many-body physics and quantum metrology. In this work we demonstrate state preparation using a low-complexity technique by combining two common methods: step-by-step assembly and adiabatic evolution, to create low-entropy quantum many-body fluids of light. These fluid-like states of light are generated on our Bose-Hubbard chain of flux-tunable transmon qubits. By tuning the on-site energies of each qubit we start in a disordered lattice where the eigenstates are known and localized to single sites (qubits). We create individual excitations, then adiabatically remove the disorder allowing quantum fluctuations to melt the localized photons into a fluid. We first benchmark this lattice melting technique by building and characterizing arbitrary single particle-in-a-box states, then assemble multi-particle strongly correlated fluids. Inter-site entanglement measurements indicate that the particles in the fluid delocalize, while two-body density correlation measurements demonstrate that they also avoid one another, revealing Friedel oscillations characteristic of a Tonks-Girardeau gas. This work opens new possibilities for preparation of topological and otherwise exotic phases of synthetic matter.    


Committee Members:
Jon Simon (Chair)
David Schuster
Heinrich Jaeger

Michael Levin
 

Event Type

Thesis Defense

Nov 16