This article reviews theoretical methods developed in the last decade to understand cavity quantum electrodynamics in the ultrastrong-coupling regime, where the strength of the light-matter interaction becomes comparable to the photon frequency. Along with profound modifications of fundamental quantum optical effects giving rise to a rich phenomenology, this regime introduces significant theoretical challenges. One of the most important is the break-down of the rotating-wave approximation which neglects all non-resonant terms in light-matter interaction Hamiltonians. Consequently, a large part of the quantum optical theoretical framework has to be revisited in order to accurately account for all interaction terms in this regime. We give in this article a broad overview of the recent progress, ranging from analytical estimate of ground-state properties to proper derivations of master equations and computation of photodetection signals. For each aspect of the theory, the basic principles of the methods are illustrated on paradigmatic models such as quantum Rabi and spin-boson models. In this spirit, most of the article is devoted to effective models, relevant for the various experimental platforms in which the ultrastrong coupling has been reached, such as semiconductor microcavities and superconducting circuits. The validity of these models is discussed in the last part of the article, where we address recent debates on fundamental issues related to gauge invariance in the ultrastrong-coupling regime.
Ultrastrongly coupled quantum hardware may increase the speed of quantum state processing in distributed architectures, allowing to approach fault-tolerant threshold. We show that circuit QED architectures in the ultrastrong coupling regime, which has been recently demonstrated with superconductors, may show substantial speedup for a class of adiabatic protocols resilient to the main source of errors, namely the interplay of dynamical Casimir effect and cavity losses.
We developed a theory of electron scattering by a short-range repulsive potential in a cavity. In the regime of ultrastrong electron coupling to the cavity electromagnetic field, the vacuum fluctuations of the field result in the dynamical stabilization of a quasistationary polariton state confined in the core of the repulsive potential. When the energy of a free electron coincides with the energy of the confined state, the extremely efficient resonant nonelastic scattering of the electron accompanied by emission of a cavity photon appears. This effect is discussed as a basis for possible free…
Dynamically probing systems of ultrastrongly coupled light and matter by advanced coherent control has been recently proposed as a unique tool for detecting peculiar quantum features of this regime. Coherence allows in principle on-demand conversion of virtual photons dressing the entangled eigenstates of the system to real ones, with unitary efficiency and remarkable robustness. Here we study this effect in the presence of decoherence, showing that also in far from ideal regimes is it possible to probe such peculiar features.
Ultrastrong coupling between light and matter has, in the past decade, transitioned from theoretical idea to experimental reality. It is a new regime of quantum light-matter interaction, going beyond weak and strong coupling to make the coupling strength comparable to the transition frequencies in the system. The achievement of weak and strong coupling has led to increased control of quantum systems and applications like lasers, quantum sensing, and quantum information processing. Here we review the theory of quantum systems with ultrastrong coupling, which includes entangled ground states wit…
We explore the nonlinear response of tailor-cut light-matter hybrid states in a novel regime, where both the Rabi frequency induced by a coherent driving field and the vacuum Rabi frequency set by a cavity field are comparable to the carrier frequency of light. In this previously unexplored strong-field limit of ultrastrong coupling, subcycle pump-probe and multi-wave mixing nonlinearities between different polariton states violate the normal-mode approximation while ultrastrong coupling remains intact, as confirmed by our mean-field model. We expect such custom-cut nonlinearities of hybridize…
We present a circuit-QED scheme which allows to reach the ultrastrong coupling regime of a nondipolar interaction between a single qubit and a quantum resonator. We show that the system Hamiltonian is well approximated by a two-photon quantum Rabi model and propose a simple scattering experiment to probe its fundamental properties. In particular, we identify a driving scheme that reveals the change in selection rules characterizing the breakdown of the rotating-wave approximation and the transition from strong to ultrastrong two-photon interactions. Finally, we show that a frequency crowding i…
Ultrastrong coupling may allow faster operations for the development of quantum technologies at the expenses of increased sensitivity to new kind of intrinsic errors. We study state transfer in superconducting circuit QED architectures in the ultrastrong coupling regime. Using optimal control methods we find a protocol resilient to the main source of errors, coming from the interplay of the dynamical Casimir effect with cavity losses.
We propose the simulation of quantum-optical systems in the ultrastrong-coupling regime using a variational quantum algorithm. More precisely, we introduce a short-depth variational form to prepare the groundstate of the multimode Dicke model on a quantum processor and present proof-of-principle results obtained via cloud access to an IBM device. We moreover provide an algorithm for characterizing the groundstate by Wigner state tomography. Our work is a first step towards digital quantum simulation of quantum-optical systems with potential applications to the spin-boson, Kondo and Jahn-Teller…
In organic photodiodes (OPDs) light is absorbed by excitons, which dissociate to generate photocurrent. Here, we demonstrate a novel type of OPD in which light is absorbed by polaritons, hybrid light-matter states. We demonstrate polariton OPDs operating in the ultra-strong coupling regime at visible and infrared wavelengths. These devices can be engineered to show narrow responsivity with a very weak angle-dependence. More importantly, they can be tuned to operate in a spectral range outside that of the bare exciton absorption. Remarkably, we show that the responsivity of a polariton OPD can …
Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Institut de Physique et Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg（斯特拉斯堡大学）；Universidad Autónoma de Madrid（马德里自治大学）；ESPCI Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université（巴黎高等物理化工大学）；Laboratoire de Physique et d’Étude des Matériaux, LPEM, UMR 8213（物质物理与研究所）
Exotic quantum vacuum phenomena are predicted in cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) systems with ultrastrong light-matter interactions. Their ground states are predicted to be vacuum squeezed states with suppressed quantum fluctuations. The source of such phenomena are antiresonant terms in the Hamiltonian, yet antiresonant interactions are typically negligible compared to resonant interactions in light-matter systems. We report an unusual coupled matter-matter system of magnons that can simulate a unique cavity QED Hamiltonian with coupling strengths that are easily tunable into the ultrast…
The dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) manifests itself in the ultrastrong matter-field coupling (USC) regime, as a consequence of the nonadiabatic change of some parameters of a system. We show that the DCE is a fundamental limitation for standard quantum protocols based on quantum Rabi oscillations, implying that new schemes are required to implement high-fidelity ultrafast quantum gates. Our results are illustrated by means of a paradigmatic quantum communication protocol, i.e., quantum state transfer.
We develop a rigorous theoretical framework for interaction-induced phenomena in the waveguide quantum electrodynamics (QED) driven by mechanical oscillations of the qubits. Specifically, we predict that the simplest set-up of two qubits, harmonically trapped over an optical waveguide, enables the ultrastrong coupling regime of the quantum optomechanical interaction. Moreover, the combination of the inherent open nature of the system and the strong optomechanical coupling leads to emerging parity-time (\PT) symmetry, quite unexpected for a purely quantum system without artificially engineered …
We study the thermodynamic properties of a system of two-level dipoles that are coupled ultrastrongly to a single cavity mode. By using exact numerical and approximate analytical methods, we evaluate the free energy of this system at arbitrary interaction strengths and discuss strong-coupling modifications of derivative quantities such as the specific heat or the electric susceptibility. From this analysis we identify the lowest-order cavity-induced corrections to those quantities in the collective ultrastrong coupling regime and show that for even stronger interactions the presence of a singl…
Reply to Comment on "System-environment coupling derived by Maxwell's boundary conditions from the weak to the ultrastrong light-matter-coupling regime"
正如Simone De Liberato [arXiv：1307.5615]所提到的，当我们假设金属薄镜并在从常用的系统-环境耦合哈密顿量开始的方法之外进行重整化时，我们当然可以解决其结果与我们论文[Phys. Rev. A 88，013814（2013），arXiv：1301.3960]主要讨论中的可靠方法所得结果的差异。虽然建议的方法是目前适用于特定的情况下，检查其有效性后，我们的可靠，但繁琐的方法，我们建议从系统环境耦合哈密顿量适当的限制和腔场的损失的机制确定。这种方法原则上适用于任何腔结构，并且我们不面临评论中出现的重整化问题。
We identify universal properties of the low-energy subspace of a wide class of quantum optical models in the ultrastrong coupling limit, where the coupling strength dominates over all other energy scales in the system. We show that the symmetry of the light-matter interaction is at the origin of a two-fold degeneracy in the spectrum. We prove analytically this result for bounded Hamiltonians and extend it to a class of models with unbounded operators. As a consequence, we show that the emergence of superradiant phases previously investigated in the context of critical phenomena, is a general p…
Two-Polariton Blockade via Ultrastrong Light-Matter Coupling
Hunan Normal University（湖南师范大学）；Hunan First Normal University（湖南第一师范学院）；RIKEN（理化学研究所）；Adam Mickiewicz University（亚当·密茨凯维奇大学）；University of Michigan（密歇根大学）；National University of Defense Technology（国防科技大学）
Decoupling ultrastrong Rabi splitting from quantum vacuum dressing in a chiral cavity
College of Physical Sciences and Engineering, University Mohammed VI Polytechnic（物理科学与工程学院，穆罕默德六世polytechnic大学）；Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Tübingen（理论物理研究所，蒂宾根大学）；Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich（于利希超级计算中心，于利希研究中心）；Department of Chemistry, Princeton University（化学系，普林斯顿大学）
We propose a protocol for bosonic binomial-code nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation in a system composed of an artificial atom ultrastrongly coupled to a cavity resonator. In our protocol, the binomial codes, formed by superpositions of Fock states, can greatly save physical resources to correct errors in quantum computation. We apply to the system strong driving fields designed by shortcuts-to-adiabatic methods. This reduces the gate time to tens of nanoseconds. Decoherence of the system accumulated over time can be effectively reduced by such a fast evolution. Noise induced by control…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that light and matter can mix together to an extreme degree, and previously uncharted regimes of light-matter interactions are currently being explored in a variety of settings. The so-called ultrastrong coupling (USC) regime is established when the light-matter interaction energy is a comparable fraction of the bare frequencies of the uncoupled systems. Furthermore, when the interaction strengths become larger than the bare frequencies, the deep-strong coupling (DSC) regime emerges. This article reviews advances in the field of the USC and DSC regimes, in …
Time-dependent light-matter interactions are a widespread means by which to describe controllable experimental operations. They can be viewed as an approximation in which a third system - the control system - is treated as external within the Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that this results in non-equivalence between gauges. We provide a physical example in which each different non-equivalent model coincides with a gauge-invariant description applied in a different experimental situation. The qualitative final-time predictions obtained from these models, including entanglement and photon number, …
We discuss the properties of bound states in finite-bandwidth waveguide QED beyond the Rotating Wave Approximation or excitation number conserving light-matter coupling models. Therefore, we extend the \emph{standard} calculations to a broader range of light-matter strengths, in particular, in the so-called ultrastrong coupling regime. We do this using the Polaron technique. Our main results are as follows. We compute the spontaneous emission rate, which is renormalized as compared to the Fermi Golden Rule formula. We generalise the existence criteria for bound states, their properties and the…
Ultrastrong-coupling between two-level systems and radiation is important for both fundamental and applied quantum electrodynamics (QED). Such regimes are identified by the breakdown of the rotating-wave approximation, which applied to the quantum Rabi model (QRM) yields the apparently less fundamental Jaynes-Cummings model (JCM). We show that when truncating the material system to two levels, each gauge gives a different description whose predictions vary significantly for ultrastrong-coupling. QRMs are obtained through specific gauge choices, but so too is a JCM without needing the rotating-…
Nonlinear Diamagnetic Interactions in Ultrastrongly Coupled 2D Electrons
Rice University（莱斯大学）；Mohammed VI Polytechnic University（穆罕默德六世 polytechnic 大学）；Chung-Ang University（中央大学）；Institute for Basic Science (IBS)（基础科学研究院）；Technische Universität Berlin（柏林工业大学）；Purdue University（普渡大学）
When the coupling rate between two quantum systems becomes as large as their characteristic frequencies, it induces dramatic effects on their dynamics and even on the nature of their ground state. The case of a qubit coupled to a harmonic oscillator in this ultrastrong coupling regime has been investigated theoretically and experimentally. Here, we explore the case of two harmonic oscillators in the ultrastrong coupling regime. Specifically, we realize an analog quantum simulation of this coupled system by dual frequency pumping a nonlinear superconducting circuit. The pump amplitudes directly…
A system of N two-level atoms cooperatively interacting with a photonic field can be described as a single giant atom coupled to the field with interaction strength ~N^0.5. This enhancement, known as Dicke cooperativity in quantum optics, has recently become an indispensable element in quantum information technology based on strong light-matter coupling. Here, we extend the coupling beyond the standard light-matter interaction paradigm, emulating Dicke cooperativity in a terahertz metasurface with N meta-atoms. Cooperative enhancement manifested in the form of matter-matter coupling, through t…
We theoretically investigate the effect of optical-force-mediated interactions onto the quantum dynamics of a pair of dielectric nanospheres optically trapped in two neighboring optical tweezers. Thanks to the interference between the tweezer beams and the elastically scattered light by the other nanosphere, the effective inter nanosphere coupling can reach the ultrastrong coupling regime. Experimentally accessible signatures of the entangled nature of the quantum ground state are highlighted, including entanglement witnesses based on position/momentum correlation functions and a sizable dynam…
We discuss the equilibrium and out of equilibrium dynamics of cavity QED in presence of dissipation beyond the standard perturbative treatment of losses. Using the dynamical polaron \emph{ansatz} and Matrix Product State simulations, we discuss the case where both light-matter $g$-coupling and system-bath interaction are in the ultrastrong coupling regime. We provide a critical $g$ for the onset of Rabi oscillations. Besides, we demonstrate that the qubit is \emph{dressed} by the cavity and dissipation. That such dressing governs the dynamics and, thus, it can be measured. Finally, we sketch a…
