We study quantum enhancement of transport in open systems in the presence of disorder and dephasing. Quantum coherence effects may significantly enhance transport in open systems even in the deep classical regime (where the decoherence rate is greater than the inter-site hopping amplitude), as long as the disorder is sufficiently strong. When the strengths of disorder and dephasing are fixed, there is an optimal opening strength at which the coherent transport enhancement is optimized. Analytic results are obtained in two simple paradigmatic tight-binding models of large systems: the linear chain and the fully connected network. The physical behavior is also reflected in the FMO photosynthetic complex, which may be viewed as intermediate between these paradigmatic models.
new defect-assisted mechanism of multiphonon intraband carrier relaxation in semiconductor quantum dots, where the carrier is found in a coherent superposition of the initial, final, and defect states, is proposed. It is shown that this mechanism is capable of explaining the observed trends in temperature dependences of the intraband relaxation rates for PbSe and CdSe colloidal nanocrystal quantum dots.
We study cotunneling in a double junction Coulomb blockade device under the influence of time dependent potentials. It is shown that the ac-bias leads to photon assisted cotunneling which in some cases may dominate the transport. We derive a general non-perturbative expression for the tunneling current in the presence of oscillating potentials and give a perturbative expression for the photon assisted cotunneling current.
Single-photon emitters in solid-state systems are important building blocks for scalable quantum technologies. Recently, quantum light emitters have been discovered in the wide-gap van der Waals insulator hBN. These color centers have attracted considerable attention due to their quantum performance at elevated temperatures and wide range of transition energies. Here, we demonstrate coherent state manipulation of a single hBN color center with ultrafast laser pulses and investigate in our joint experiment-theory study the coupling between the electronic system and phonons. We demonstrate that …
Quantum coherence of superposed states, especially of entangled states, is indispensable for many quantum technologies. However, it is vulnerable to environmental noises, posing a fundamental challenge in solid-state systems including spin qubits. Here we show a scheme of entanglement engineering where pure dephasing assists the generation of quantum entanglement at distant sites in a chain of electron spins confined in semiconductor quantum dots. One party of an entangled spin pair, prepared at a single site, is transferred to the next site and then adiabatically swapped with a third spin usi…
We present a cavity piezo-optomechanical system where microwave and optical degrees of freedom are coupled through an ultra-high frequency mechanical resonator. By utilizing the coherence among the three interacting modes, we demonstrate optical amplification, coherent absorption and a more general asymmetric Fano resonance. The strong piezoelectric drive further allows access to the large-amplitude-induced optomechanical nonlinearity, with which optical transparency at higher harmonics through multi-phonon scattering is demonstrated.
Understanding the interplay between a quantum system and its environment lies at the heart of quantum science and its applications. To-date most efforts have focused on circumventing decoherence induced by the environment by either protecting the system from the associated noise or by manipulating the environment directly. Recently, parallel efforts using the environment as a resource have emerged, which could enable dissipation-driven quantum computation and coupling of distant quantum bits. Here, we realize the optical control of a semiconductor quantum-dot spin by relying on its interaction…
We study the interplay between charge transport and light-matter interactions in a confined geometry, by considering an open, mesoscopic chain of two-orbital systems resonantly coupled to a single bosonic mode close to its vacuum state. We introduce and benchmark different methods based on self-consistent solutions of non-equilibrium Green's functions and numerical simulations of the quantum master equation, and derive both analytical and numerical results. It is shown that in the dissipative regime where the cavity photon decay rate is the largest parameter, the light-matter coupling is respo…
We report on electron transport through an artificial molecule formed by two tunnel coupled quantum dots, which are laterally confined in a two-dimensional electron system of an Al$_x$Ga$_{1-x}$As/GaAs heterostructure. Coherent molecular states in the coupled dots are probed by photon-assisted tunneling (PAT). Above 10 GHz, we observe clear PAT as a result of the resonance between the microwave photons and the molecular states. Below 8 GHz, a pronounced superposition of phonon- and photon-assisted tunneling is observed. Coherent superposition of molecular states persists under excitation of ac…
Schrödinger cat states are useful for many applications, ranging from quantum information processing to high-precision measurements. In this paper we propose a conceptually new method for creating such cat states, based on photon-assisted Landau-Zener-Stückelberg interferometry in a hybrid system consisting of a qubit coupled to a photon cavity. We show that by initializing the qubit in one of its basis states, performing three consecutive sweeps of the qubit energy splitting across the 1-photon resonance, and finally projecting the qubit to the same basis state, the parity of the photon field…
Recently, several studies have investigated synchronization in quantum-mechanical limit-cycle oscillators. However, the quantum nature of these systems remained partially hidden, since the dynamics of the oscillator's phase was overdamped and therefore incoherent. We show that there exist regimes of underdamped and even quantum-coherent phase motion, opening up new possibilities to study quantum synchronization dynamics. To this end, we investigate the Van der Pol oscillator (a paradigm for a self-oscillating system) synchronized to an external drive. We derive an effective quantum model which…
Environmental noise usually hinders the efficiency of charge transport through coherent quantum systems; an exception is dephasing-assisted transport (DAT). We show that linear triple quantum dots in a transport configuration and subjected to pure dephasing exhibit DAT if the coupling to the drain reservoir exceeds a threshold. DAT occurs for arbitrarily weak dephasing and the enhancement can be directly controlled by the coupling to the drain. Moreover, for specific settings, the enhanced current is accompanied by a reduction in relative shot noise. We identify the quantum Zeno effect and lon…
Via the numerical analysis on the intraband dynamics of optically excited semiconductor superlattices, we find that time-integrated squared THz emission signals can be used for probing both dynamic localization and multi-photon resonance in the coherent regime. Competition effect between dynamic localization and photon-assisted transport has also been discussed.
One of the new discoveries in quantum biology is the role of Environment Assisted Quantum Transport (ENAQT) in excitonic transport processes. In disordered quantum systems transport is most efficient when the environment just destroys quantum interferences responsible for localization, but the coupling does not drive the system to fully classical thermal diffusion yet. This poised realm between the pure quantum and the semi-classical domains has not been considered in other biological transport processes, such as charge transport through organic molecules. Binding in receptor-ligand complexes …
We have studied the Fano resonance in photon-assisted transport in a quantum dot and calculated both the coherent current and spectral density of shot noise. It is predicted, for the first time, that the shape of Fano profile will also appear in satellite peaks. It is found that the variations of Fano profiles with the strengths of nonresonant transmissions are not synchronous in absorption and emission sidebands. The effect of interference on photon-assisted pumped current has been also investigated. We further predict the current and spectral density of shot noise as a function of the phase,…
We demonstrate quantum bath engineering for a superconducting artificial atom coupled to a microwave cavity. By tailoring the spectrum of microwave photon shot noise in the cavity, we create a dissipative environment that autonomously relaxes the atom to an arbitrarily specified coherent superposition of the ground and excited states. In the presence of background thermal excitations, this mechanism increases the state purity and effectively cools the dressed atom state to a low temperature.
We study the quantum noise of electronic current in a double barrier system with a single resonant level. In the framework of the Landauer formalism we treat the double barrier as a quantum coherent scattering region that can exchange photons with a coupled electric field, e.g. a laser beam or a periodic ac-bias voltage. As a consequence of the manyfold parameters that are involved in this system, a complicated step-like structure arises in the non-symmetrized current-current auto correlation spectrum and a peak-like structure in the cross correlation spectrum with and without harmonic ac-driv…
We develop a non-Markovian full counting statistics formalism taking into account both the sequential tunneling and cotunneling based on the exact particle number resolved time-convolutionless master equation and the Rayleigh-Schrödinger perturbation theory. Then, we study the influences of the quantum coherence and the cotunneling assisted sequential tunneling processes on the non-Markovian full counting statistics of electron tunneling through an open quantum system, which consists of a side-coupled double-quantum-dot molecule weakly coupled to two electron reservoirs. We demonstrate that in…
Recent double-slit interference experiments have demonstrated the possibility of probing the phase of the complex transmission coefficient of a quantum dot via the Aharonov-Bohm effect. We propose an extension of these experiments: an ac voltage imposed on the side gate with the concomitant photonic sidebands leads to additional structure both in the amplitude and in the phase of the Aharonov-Bohm signal. Observation of these effects would be a definitive proof of coherent absorption and reemission of photons from the ac source.
While valleys (energy extrema) are present in all band structures of solids, their preeminent role in determining exciton resonances and dynamics in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) is unique. Using two-dimensional coherent electronic spectroscopy, we find that exciton decoherence occurs on a much faster time scale in MoSe$_2$ bilayers than that in the monolayers. We further identify two population relaxation channels in the bilayer, a coherent and an incoherent one. Our microscopic model reveals that phonon-emission processes facilitate scattering events from the $K$ va…
In this review we focus on electronic transport through semiconductor nanostructures which are driven by ac fields. Along the review we describe the available experimental information on different nanostructures, like resonant tunneling diodes, superlattices or quantum dots, together with the theoretical tools needed to describe the observed features. These theoretical tools such as, for instance, the Floquet formalism, the non-equilibrium Green's function technique or the density matrix technique, are suitable for tackling with photon-assisted transport problems where the interplay of differe…
Longitudinal or transverse magnetic fields applied on a crystal of Mn12-ac allows to observe independent tunnel transitions between m=-S+p and m=S-n-p (n=6-10, p=0-2 in longitudinal field and n=p=0 in transverse field). We observe a smooth transition (in longitudinal) from coherent ground-state to thermally activated tunneling. Furthermore two ground-state relaxation regimes showing a crossover between quantum spin relaxation far from equilibrium and near equilibrium, when the environment destroys multimolecule correlations. Finally, we stress that the complete Hamiltonian of Mn12 should conta…
