SWITCHABLE QUANTUM BUFFER FOR TRANSPARENT OPTICAL QUANTUM NETWORK
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Abstract We report a fiber loop quantum buffer based on a low-loss 2 × 2 switch and a unit delay made of a fiber delay line. We characterize the device by using a two-photon polarization entangled state in which one photon of the entangled photon pair is stored and retrieved at a repetition rate up to 78 kHz. The device, which enables integer multiples of a unit delay, can store the qubit state in a unit of fiber delay line up to 5.4 km and the number of loop round-trips up to 3. Furthermore, we configure the device with other active elements to realize integer multiplier and divider of a unit delay of a qubit. The quantum state tomography is performed on the retrieved photon and its entangled photon. We obtain a state fidelity > 94 % with a maximum storage time of 52 s with an insertion loss of 5.56 dB. To further characterize the storing and retrieving processes of the device, we perform entanglement-assisted quantum process tomography on the buffered qubit state. The process fidelity of the device is > 0.98. Our result implies that the device preserves the superposition and entanglement of a qubit state from a two-photon polarization-entangled state. This is a significant step towards facilitating applications in optical asynchronous transfer mode based quantum networks.
This report summarizes the results from DE-SC0022395, a phase 1 SBIR award to investigate the feasibility of designing a commercial quantum memory using gradient echo techniques for storage. The authors conclude that the technology has several key limitations which would present significant barriers to practical commercialization for quantum networking.
High-performance quantum memories are an essential component for regulating temporal events in quantum networks. As a component in quantum-repeaters, they have the potential to support the distribution of entanglement beyond the physical limitations of fiber loss. This will enable key applications such as quantum key distribution, network-enhanced quantum sensing, and distributed quantum computing. Here, we present a quantum memory engineered to meet real-world deployment and scaling challenges. The memory technology utilizes a warm rubidium vapor as the storage medium, and operates at room temperature, without the need for vacuum- and/or cryogenic- support. Here, we demonstrate performance specifications of high-fidelity retrieval (95%) and low operation error (10 –2 ) at a storage time of 160 µs for single-photon level quantum memory operations. We further show a substantially improved storage time (with classical-level light) of up to 1ms by suppressing atomic diffusions. The device is housed in an enclosure with a standard 2U rackmount form factor, and can robustly operate on a day scale in a noisy environment. This result marks an important step toward implementing quantum networks in the field.
NEMO 3-D has been developed for the simulation of electronic structure in self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots on GaAs substrates. Typical self-assembled quantum dots in that material system contain about 0.5 to 1 million atoms. Effects of strain by the surrounding GaAs buffer modify the electronic structure inside the quantum dot significantly and a large GaAs buffer must be included in the strain and electronic structure.
The effects of substrate misorientation off the (001) plane and of background impurities on electron transport in MBE-grown GaAs/AlGaAs modulation-doped superlattice-buffered quantum-well structures were investigated. Low-field transport data were obtained on GaAs/AlGaAs structures grown on substrates oriented 0, 2, 4, and 6.5 deg off the (001) plane towards either (111)A or (111)B. It is shown that the low-field two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) mobility is a function of the angle and direction of the substrate orientation, and that the 2DEG mobility is a function of the direction of the applied electric field in the GaAs quantum well. The anisotropy in the 2DEG mobility is also a function of the tilt angle and tilt azimuth direction of the substrate from the (001) plane. In addition, it is shown that the amount of interface scattering from the inverted interface is a sensitive function of the amount of background impurities in the MBE machine.
Anisotropic electron transport has been observed in GaAs modulation-doped quantum wells grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on a thick (001) Al(0.3)Ga(0.7)As buffer grown at 620 C. Thicker quantum wells (150, 200, and 300 A) show progressively less anisotropy, which vanishes for a 300-A quantum well. The degree of anisotropy is also reduced or eliminated by suspending growth of the Al(0.3)Ga(0.7)As for a period of 300 s prior to growing the GaAs quantum well. Growing the Al(0.3)Ga(0.7)As buffer at higher temperatures (680 C) also reduces the degree of anisotropy. Higher two-dimensional electron gas sheet densities result in less anisotropy.The anisotropy is eliminated by replacing the thick Al(0.3)Ga(0.7)As buffer with a periodic multilayer structure comprising 15 A of GaAs and 200 A of Al(0.3)Ga(0.7)As. The degree of anisotropy is related to the thickness and growth parameters of the Al(0.3)Ga(0.7)As layer grown just prior to the growth of the GaAs.
Alzheimer's disease has long been associated with the aggregation of amyloid beta peptides (Aβ42) into macroscale plaques, although specific neurodegenerative agents have not been definitively identified. Much evidence has pointed to the soluble nanoscale oligomers that form early in the Aβ42 aggregation pathway, but there is little understanding of these structures, their mechanisms of formation, or how they grow into plaques. Here, we show that a solvatochromic fluorophore with near-infrared (NIR) emission can track synthetic Aβ42 aggregation through environment-sensitive spectral shifts from the earliest time points through plaque formation. This azide-functionalized phosphine oxide azetidine rhodol (Phazr-N3) shows large polarity-dependent changes in fluorescence emission, with maxima shifting from 630 nm in toluene to 703 nm in aqueous buffer, and a maximum quantum yield of 62%. Upon induction of Aβ42 aggregation, we observe immediate solvatochromic changes in Phazr-N3 fluorescence, with multiple apparent phases over 12 h, and which culminate before the onset of any major fluorescence changes of conformation-specific aggregation fluorophore thioflavin T. Solution anisotropy measurements show a low micromolar affinity of Phazr-N3 for disordered, free Aβ42 in solution, and real-time measurements are consistent with rapid liquid-liquid phase separation and slow dehydration of the growing aggregate. Spectral imaging of synthetic plaques stained in the presence of live cells and lipid-binding protein albumin shows over 4000-fold Phazr-N3 fluorescence intensity above background under no-wash conditions, and over 100-fold intensity above coplated microglial cells or a large excess of albumin. This use of a solvatochromic probe with structure-independent binding to free Aβ42 offers real-time, minimally invasive insight into the full Aβ42 aggregation pathway.
The Stakeholder Tool for Assessing Radioactive Transportation (START) is a web-based geospatial decision-support tool being developed by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Integrated Waste Management (IWM) to support federal interim storage for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and associated transportation. START provides many functions for the IWM program including: serving as a communications tool for conveying geospatial data and information, an options analysis tool for exploring potential transport modes and routes for transporting SNF from nuclear power plants to future federal interim storage facilities, an emergency response planning tool for Tribes and States to identify training needs along potential SNF transport corridors, an environmental analysis tool for estimating potential radiation dose exposure from incident-free and incident-case SNF transport conditions, and a systems analysis support tool providing route-related inputs for system throughput analysis. As part of the START development process, a verification and validation (V&V) effort is being undertaken. In the initial V&V phase, several outputs of the START tool were checked such as the total distance, population and population densities within the buffer zone, and incident free dose. The V&V process is fluid as it will be utilized after each version change to ensure that the core functionalities of the tool are maintained and the results are consistent with the previous versions. Efforts have also been put into developing scripts to aid in the process of automating certain sections of the V&V work. As some of the V&V efforts use Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI) tools upon which the START framework is built, the START data were compared against outputs from tools like Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS) for buffer zone populations and route lengths to ensure independence of the V&V process. Good agreement was observed between the START results and the independent V&V studies with the majority of the differences falling between 1% and 5% for populations within the buffer zone and route distance. This presentation describes the development and design of the START tool, V&V methods employed for various metrics of interest and their respective results, and future plans.
The photovoltaic characteristics of n(+)/p/p(+) homojunction InP solar cells fabricated by organometallic vapor-phase epitaxy (OMVPE) are described. The cells are characterized by I-V, C-V and quantum efficiency measurements, and simulations are used to obtain various device and material parameters. The I-V characteristics show a high recombination rate in the depletion region; this is shown to be independent of the impurity used. It is shown that cadmium is easier to use as an acceptor for the p base and p(+) buffer and is therefore beneficial. The high quantum efficiency of 98 percent at long wavelengths measured in these cells indicates a very good collection efficiency in the base. The short-wavelength quantum efficiency is poor, indicating a high surface recombination.
Peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) vapor was photolyzed at 248 nm, and the NO2 photoproduct was detected by laser-induced fluorescence. The quantum yield for the production of NO2 from PAN photolysis was determined by comparison to HNO3 photolysis data taken under identical experimental conditions. The average of data collected over a range of total pressures, precursor concentrations, and buffer gases was 0.83 +/- 0.09 for the NO2 quantum yield, where the statistical uncertainty is 2 standard deviations.
The convergence of electron and hole ground states of a dome-shaped InGaAs quantum dot as a function of the size of the surrounding buffer is explored.
The throughput of conventional and quantum network connections is an important performance metric, which is typically specified by bits per second (bps) and entangled quntum bits per second (ebps), respectively. It is measured over practical quantum network connections using specialized methods, and estimated using analytical bounds for which extensive theory has been developed. For practical connections, however, these two quantities have often been hard to correlate due to the lack of measurements and estimates derived under well-characterized common conditions. They both differ significantly from the conventional network throughput of TCP which employs buffers and loss recovery mechanisms. We describe a conventional-quantum testbed that enables the comparison of these two quantities both qualitatively and quantitatively. The bps and ebps throughput is measured over fiber connections of lengths over 75 kilometers, which show that the former decreases significantly slower with distance than the latter and in a qualitatively different way. The analytic capacity estimates of ebps are derived using approximations based on light intensity measurements, and they decrease more rapidly with distance than the measured ebps throughput. These results provide qualitative insights into the conventional transport mechanisms based on buffers, and the conditions used in deriving the analytical ebps capacity estimates.
Current techniques for growth of device-quality GaAs on silicon substrates enables fabrication of silicon-based version of photodiode-coupled spatial light modulator. Monolithic photodiode-coupled light-modulator array constructed on silicon substrate by growing InAs/GaAs multiple-quantum-wells over silicon PIN diode layer. Intermediate GaAs buffer layer confines attice-misfit dislocations to vicinity of silicon. Use of silicon makes available wider range of auxiliary on-chip signal-processing circuitry for coding and decoding of data, addition or subtraction of brightness levels, spatial reformatting, and rescaling.
Distributed quantum computing (DQC) is a scalable way to build a large-scale quantum computing system while the error-prone nonlocal communication between DQC nodes may heavily degrade the fidelity of the distributed quantum program and thus demands specific compiler optimizations. Previous compilers on DQC communication optimization either assumes unlimited communication resource or a few communication qubits due to the hardware limitation. The former compilers may not be efficient when interfacing with communication-resource-constrained DQC hardware while the latter compilers lose the opportunities of optimizing collective communication and routing concurrent communication as they unnecessarily couple limited communication qubits with the implementation of expensive inter-node operations. In this paper, we invent the communication buffer, a communication facility consisting of idle qubits in each compute node, to decouple the execution of inter-node quantum operations from communication qubits: communication qubits are devoted to generating inter-node entanglement while internode operations are conducted in the communication buffer. The communication buffer provides an intermediate layer for inter-node communication and paves the way for collective communication optimization. We then propose QuComm, a buffer-based compiler framework that first performs smart buffer allocation according to communication characteristics of the distributed quantum program and then optimizes and collectively routes inter-node quantum operations. Experimental results on a hierarchical DQC system show that the proposed QuComm can reduce the most expensive inter-node communication request and the latency of various distributed quantum programs by 50.4% and 47.6% on average, respectively.
Extensive research efforts of strained germanium (Ge) are currently underway due to its unique properties, namely, (i) possibility of band gap and strain engineering to achieve a direct band gap, thus exhibiting superior radiative properties, and (ii) higher electron and hole mobilities than Si for upcoming technology nodes. Realizing lasing structures is vital to leveraging the benefits of tensile-strained Ge (ε-Ge). Here, we use a combination of different analytical tools to elucidate the effect of the underlying InGaAs/InAlAs and InGaAs overlaying heterostructures on the material quality and strain state of ε-Ge grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Using X-ray analysis, we show the constancy of tensile strain in sub-50 nm ε-Ge in a quantum-well (QW) heterostructure. Further, effective carrier lifetime using photoconductive decay as a function of buffer type exhibited a high (low) defect-limited carrier lifetime of ~68 ns (~13 ns) in 0.61% (0.66%) ε-Ge grown on an InGaAs (InAlAs) buffer. These results correspond well with the measured surface roughness of 1.289 nm (6.303 nm), consistent with the surface effect of the ε-Ge/III–V heterointerface. Furthermore, a reasonably high effective lifetime of ~78 ns is demonstrated in a QW of ~30 nm 1.6% ε-Ge, a moderate reduction from ~99 ns in uncapped ε-Ge, alluding to the surface effect of the overlying heterointerface. Thus, the above results highlight the prime quality of ε-Ge that can be achieved via III–V heteroepitaxy and paves a path for integrated Ge photonics.
A high-performance MODFET structure grown by MBE with the incorporation of a single quantum well In(0.15)Ga(0.85)As layer for the transport of two-dimensional electron gas has been critically examined for its thermal stability at 80 K and low-frequency noise form 0.01 to 10 to the 8th Hz. Experimental results indicate that the behavior of this device in both these respects is much superior when compared with the same behavior of conventional MODFETs. A maximum low-field carrier mobility of 29,000 sq cm/s at 80 K and an average carrier saturation velocity of 2 x 10 to the 7th cm/s at 300 K in a 1-micron gate device clearly indicate that the quality of the pseudomorphic quantum well (InGaAs) layer is either comparable or better than that of the usual GaAs buffer layer. The deep level spectra, obtained through photo-FET measurements, and the low-frequency noise spectra at different temperatures obtained for the new pseudomorphic and conventional MODFET's have clearly indicated that contributions from various deep levels present in the new structure are significantly reduced.
Quantum thermometry plays a critical role in the development of low-temperature sensors and quantum information platforms. Here, in this work, we propose and analyze a hybrid circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture in which a superconducting qubit is dispersively coupled to two distinct bosonic modes: one initialized in a weak coherent state as a phase reference and information buffer and the other coupled to a thermal environment. We show that the qubit serves as a sensitive readout of the probe mode, mapping the interplay between thermal and coherent photon-number fluctuations onto measurable dephasing. This coherence-mediated mechanism enables improved sensitivity to thermal energy fluctuations in the sub-millikelvin regime through Ramsey interferometry. We derive analytic expressions for the probe coherence envelope, compute the quantum Fisher information for temperature estimation, and demonstrate numerically that the presence of a coherent reference enhances the qubit's sensitivity to small changes in thermal photon occupancy. Our results establish a coherence-enabled approach to thermometry and provide a scalable platform for future calorimetric sensing in high-energy physics and quantum metrology.