The generation of photons from the vacuum by means of the movement of a mirror is known as the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE). In general, this phenomenon is effectively described by a field with time-dependent boundary conditions. Alternatively, we consider a microscopic model of the DCE capable of reproducing the effect with no time-dependent boundary conditions. Besides the field, such a model comprises a subsystem modeling the mirror's internal structure. In this work, we study the most straightforward system for the mirror: a qubit moving in a cavity and coupled to one of the bosonic modes. We find that under certain conditions on the qubit's movement that do not depend on its physical properties, a large number of photons may be generated without changing the qubit state, as should be expected for a microscopic model of the mirror.
We explore the interplay between acceleration radiation and the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) in the field of superconducting quantum technologies, analyzing the generation of entanglement between two qubits by means of the DCE in several states of qubit motion. We show that the correlated absorption and emission of photons is crucial for entanglement, which in some cases can be linked to the notion of simultaneity in special relativity.
We establish a general relation between dispersion forces. First, based on QED in causal media, leading-order perturbation theory is used to express both the single-atom Casimir-Polder and the two-atom van der Waals potentials in terms of the atomic polarizabilities and the Green tensor for the body-assisted electromagnetic field. Endowed with this geometry-independent framework, we then employ the Born expansion of the Green tensor together with the Clausius-Mosotti relation to prove that the macroscopic Casimir-Polder potential of an atom in the presence of dielectric bodies is due to an inf…
Based on the photon-exciton Hamiltonian a microscopic theory of the Casimir problem for dielectrics is developed. Using well-known many-body techniques we derive a perturbation expansion for the energy which is free from divergences. In the continuum limit we turn off the interaction at a distance smaller than a cut-off distance $a$ to keep the energy finite. We will show that the macroscopic theory of the Casimir effect with hard boundary conditions is not well defined because it ignores the finite distance between the atoms, hence is including infinite self-energy contributions. Nevertheless…
We present an entirely microscopic calculation of the Casimir force $f(d)$ between two metallic plates in the limit of large separation $d$. The models of metals consist of mobile quantum charges in thermal equilibrium with the photon field at positive temperature $T$. Fluctuations of all degrees of freedom, matter and field, are treated according to the principles of quantum electrodynamics and statistical physics without recourse to approximations or intermediate assumptions. Our main result is the correctness of the asymptotic universal formula $ f(d) \sim -\frac{ζ(3) \kB T}{8πd^3}$, $d\to\…
We consider the nonstationary circuit QED architecture, where a single artificial two-level atom interacts with a cavity field mode under external modulation of one or more system parameters. Two different approaches are employed to study the effects of Markovian dissipation on modulation-induced transitions between the atom-field dressed states: the standard master equation of Quantum Optics and the recently formulated dressed-picture master equation. We estimate the associated transition rates and show that photon generation from vacuum ("dynamical Casimir effect", DCE) and coherent photon a…
We develop a microscopic toy model for Cavity dynamical Casimir effect (DCE), namely, the photon generation from vacuum due to a nonstationary dielectric slab in a fixed single mode cavity. We represent the slab by $N\gg 1$ noninteracting two-level atoms coupled to the field via the standard dipole interaction. We show that the DCE is contained implicitly in the light-matter interaction Hamiltonian when its parameters are externally prescribed functions of time. We also predict several new phenomena, such as saturation of the photon growth due to effective Kerr nonlinearity, generation of pair…
The Casimir energy of a dilute homogeneous nonmagnetic dielectric ball at zero temperature is derived analytically within a microscopic realistic model of dielectrics for an arbitrary physically possible frequency dispersion of dielectric permittivity. Divergences are absent in calculations, a minimum interatomic distance is a physical cut-off. Casimir surface force is proved to be attractive. A physical definition of the Casimir energy is discussed.
We consider the Casimir-Polder interaction energy between a metallic nanoparticle and a metallic plate, as well as the Casimir interaction energy between two macroscopic metal plates, in terms of the many-body dispersion interactions between their constituents. Expressions for two- and three-body dispersion interactions between the microscopic parts of a real metal are first obtained, both in the retarded and non-retarded limits. These expressions are then used to evaluate, a compare each other, the overall two- and three-body contributions to the macroscopic Casimir-Polder and Casimir force, …
We consider an atom in its ground state undergoing a non-relativistic oscillation in free space. The interaction with the electromagnetic quantum vacuum leads to two effects to leading order in perturbation theory. When the mechanical frequency is larger than the atomic transition frequency, the dominant effect is the motion-induced transition to an excited state with the emission of a photon carrying the excess energy. We compute the angular distribution of emitted photons and the excitation rate. On the other hand, when the mechanical frequency is smaller than the transition frequency, the l…
The antidynamical Casimir effect (ADCE) is a term coined to designate the coherent annihilation of excitations due to resonant external perturbation of system parameters, allowing for extraction of quantum work from nonvacuum states of some field. Originally proposed for a two-level atom (qubit) coupled to a single cavity mode in the context of nonstationary quantum Rabi model, it suffered from very low transition rate and correspondingly narrow resonance linewidth. In this paper we show analytically and numerically that the ADCE rate can be increased by at least one order of magnitude by repl…
The scenario of a single-mode cavity with harmonically modulated frequency is revisited in the presence of strongly detuned qubit or cyclic qutrit. It is found that when the qubit frequency is close to $3ν$ there is a peak in the photon generation rate via four-photon transitions for the modulation frequency $4ν$, where $ν$ is the average cavity frequency. Effective five-photon processes can occur for the modulation frequency $5ν$ in the presence of a cyclic qutrit, and the corresponding transition rates exhibit series of peaks. Closed analytical description is derived for the unitary evolutio…
The moving-mirror problem is microscopically formulated without invoking the external boundary conditions. The moving mirrors are described by the quantized matter field interacting with the photon field, forming dynamical cavity polaritons: photons in the cavity are dressed by electrons in the moving mirrors. The effective Hamiltonian for the polariton is derived, and corrections to the results based on the external boundary conditions are discussed.
By means of two simple examples: phase and amplitude damping, the impact of decoherence on the dynamical Casimir effect is investigated. Even without dissipating energy (i.e., pure phase damping), the amount of created particles can be diminished significantly via the coupling to the environment (reservoir theory) inducing decoherence. For a simple microscopic model, it is demonstrated that spontaneous decays within the medium generate those problems -- Rabi oscillations are far more advantageous in that respect. These findings are particularly relevant in view of a recently proposed experimen…
We provide a quantum model for the recent experiment coupling a tardigrade to superconducting qubits. A number of different perspectives are discussed with the emphasis placed on quantum entanglement between different subsystems involved in the description.
The archetypal one-qubit noisy channels ---depolarizing, phase-damping and amplitude-damping channels--- describe both Markovian and non-Markovian evolution. Simple microscopic models for the depolarizing channel, both classical and quantum, are considered. Microscopic models which describe phase damping and amplitude damping channels are briefly reviewed.
In this paper we discuss the computation of Casimir energy on a quantum computer. The Casimir energy is an ideal quantity to calculate on a quantum computer as near term hybrid classical quantum algorithms exist to calculate the ground state energy and the Casimir energy gives physical implications for this quantity in a variety of settings. Depending on boundary conditions and whether the field is bosonic or fermionic we illustrate how the Casimir energy calculation can be set up on a quantum computer and calculated using the Variational Quantum Eigensolver algorithm with IBM QISKit. We compa…
This article presents microscopic derivation of the Kraus operators for (the generalized) amplitude and phase damping process. Derivation is based on the recently developed method [Andersson et al, J. Mod.Opt. 54, 1695 (2007)] which concerns finite dimensional systems (e.g. qubit). The form of these operators is usually estimated without insight into the microscopic details of the dynamics. The behavior of the qubit dynamics is simulated and depicted via Bloch sphere change.
Milz and Strunz ({\it J. Phys. A}: {\bf{48}} [2015] 035306) recently studied the probabilities that two-qubit and qubit-qutrit states, randomly generated with respect to Hilbert-Schmidt (Euclidean/flat) measure, are separable. They concluded that in both cases, the separability probabilities (apparently exactly $\frac{8}{33}$ in the two-qubit scenario) hold {\it constant} over the Bloch radii ($r$) of the single-qubit subsystems, jumping to 1 at the pure state boundaries ($r=1$). Here, firstly, we present evidence that in the qubit-qutrit case, the separability probability is uniformly distrib…
We address the long-standing controversy regarding the correct description of the electromagnetic energy-momentum tensor in media and its consequences for the Casimir force. The latter being due to the zero-point momentum of the electromagnetic field, competing approaches based on the Abraham or Maxwell stress tensor lead to different predictions. We consider the test scenario of two colloidal spherical particles submerged in a dielectric medium and use three criteria to distinguish the two approaches: we show that the Abraham stress tensor, and not the Maxwell stress tensor, leads to a Casimi…
We consider the interaction of a qubit with a single mode of the quantized electromagnetic field and show that, in the ultrastrong coupling regime and when the qubit-field interaction is switched on abruptly, the dynamical Casimir effect leads to the generation of a variety of exotic states of the field, which cannot be simply described as squeezed states. Such effect also appears when initially both the qubit and the field are in their ground state. The non-classicality of the obtained exotic states is characterized by means of a parameter based on the volume of the negative part of the Wigne…
Quantum Optomechanics with Imperfect Mirrors and Casimir-Polder Effect of Atoms with Different Dynamic Polarizabilities: A Unified Treatment via a Microscopic Model
University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）；Joint Quantum Institute and Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics, University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学联合量子研究所与马里兰基础物理中心）
Quantum resources, such as entanglement, steering, and Bell nonlocality, are evaluated for three coupled qubits in the steady-state configuration. We employ the phenomenological master equation and the microscopic master equation to probe such quantum resources, which provide very different results depending on the system configuration. In particular, steering and Bell nonlocality are null within the phenomenological model, while they reach considerable values within the microscopic model. These results show that the phenomenological approach is not able to capture all quantum resources of the…
We theoretically study the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE), i.e., parametric amplification of a quantum vacuum, in an optomechanical cavity interacting with a photonic crystal, which is considered to be an ideal system to study the microscopic dissipation effect on the DCE. Starting from a total Hamiltonian including the photonic band system as well as the optomechanical cavity, we have derived an effective Floquet-Liouvillian by applying the Floquet method and Brillouin-Wigner-Feshbach projection method. The microscopic dissipation effect is rigorously taken into account in terms of the energy…
We proposed a scheme to demonstrate macroscopic quantum jumps in a superconducting phase qubit coupled to a microscopic two-level system in the Josephson tunnel junction. Irradiated with suitable microwaves, the Rabi oscillations of the qubit exhibit signatures of quantum jumps: a random telegraph signal with long intervals of intense macroscopic quantum tunneling events (bright periods) interrupted by the complete absence of tunneling events (dark periods). An analytical model was developed to describe the width of the dark periods quantitatively. The numerical simulations indicate that our a…
We analyze the introduction of dissipative effects in the study of the dynamical Casimir effect. We consider a toy model for an electromagnetic cavity that contains a semiconducting thin shell, which is irradiated with short laser pulses in order to produce periodic oscillations of its conductivity. The coupling between the quantum field in the cavity and the microscopic degrees of freedom of the shell induces dissipation and noise in the dynamics of the field. We argue that the photon creation process should be described in terms of a damped oscillator with nonlocal dissipation and colored no…
We investigate how the dynamical Casimir effect can entangle quantum systems in different coupling regimes of circuit quantum electrodynamics, and show the robustness of such entanglement generation against dissipative effects with current technology. We consider two qubit-resonator systems, which are coupled by a SQUID driven with an external magnetic field, and explore the entire range of coupling regimes between each qubit and its respective resonator. In this scheme, we derive a semianalytic explanation for the entanglement generation between both superconducting qubits when they are coupl…
We show two examples in which the dynamical Casimir effect can be achieved by modulating the Kerr or higher order nonlinearities. In the first case the cavity field is coupled to an arbitrary number of qubits or an harmonic oscillator via the dipole interaction. In the second case, the modulation of the nonlinearities is accompanied by the off-resonance modulation of the cavity frequency. We present the analytic description of the phenomenon and supplement it with numeric simulations, demonstrating that photons can be created from vacuum and the resulting hyper-Poissonian photon statistics is …
We show that the physics underlying the dynamical Casimir effect may generate multipartite quantum correlations. To achieve it, we propose a circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) scenario involving superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), cavities, and superconducting qubits, also called artificial atoms. Our results predict the generation of highly entangled states for two and three superconducting qubits in different geometric configurations with realistic parameters. This proposal paves the way for a scalable method of multipartite entanglement generation in cavity networks t…
We report the observation of quantum jumps between macroscopic quantum states in a superconducting phase qubit coupled to the two-level systems in the Josephson tunnel junction, and all key features of quantum jumps are confirmed in the experiments. Moreover, quantum jumps can be used to calibrate such two-level systems, which are believed to be one of the main decoherence sources in Josephson devices.
Dynamical Casimir effect of the optomechanical cavity interacting with one-dimensional photonic crystal is theoretically investigated in terms of the complex spectral analysis of Floquet-Liouvillian in the symplectic-Floquet space. The quantum vacuum fluctuation of the intra-cavity mode is parametrically amplified by a periodic motion of the mirror boundary, and the amplified photons are spontaneously emitted to the photonic band. We have derived the non-Hermitian effective Floquet-Liouvillian from the total system Liouvillian with the use of the Brillouin-Wigner-Feshbach projection method in …
Casimir-type forces, such as those between two neutral conducting plates, or between a sphere, atom or molecule and a plate have been widely studied and are becoming of increasing significance, for example, in nanotechnology. A key challenge is to better understand, from a fundamental microscopic approach, why the Casimir force is in some circumstances attractive and in others repulsive. Here, we study the Casimir-Polder forces experienced by small quantum systems such as atoms or molecules in an optical cavity. In order to make the problem more tractable, we work in a 1+1 dimensional setting,…
A path-integral approach to the quantization of the electromagnetic field in a linearly amplifying magnetodielectric medium is presented. Two continua of inverted harmonic oscillators are used to describe the polarizability and magnetizability of the amplifying medium. The causal susceptibilities of the amplifying medium, with negative imaginary parts in finite frequency intervals, are identified and their relation to microscopic coupling functions are determined. By carefully relating the two-point functions of the field theory to the optical Green functions, we calculate the Casimir energy a…
Tunneling of bosonic qubits under local dephasing through microscopic approach
Università degli Studi di Palermo（巴勒莫大学）；IMDEA Networks Institute（IMDEA网络研究所）；Università degli Studi di Milano（米兰大学）；Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Milano（意大利国家核物理研究所米兰分部）；University of Turku（图尔库大学）
A "microscopic" justification of the "symmetric damping" model of a quantum oscillator with time-dependent frequency and time-dependent damping is given. This model is used to predict results of experiments on simulating the dynamical Casimir effect in a cavity with a photo-excited semiconductor mirror. It is shown that the most general bilinear time-dependent coupling of a selected oscillator (field mode) to a bath of harmonic oscillators results in two equal friction coefficients for the both quadratures, provided all the coupling coefficients are proportional to a single arbitrary function …
The effect of instantaneous spectral diffusion (ISD) on gate operations in rare-earth-ion-doped crystals is an important question to answer for the future of rare-earth quantum computing. Here we present a microscopic modeling that highlights the stochastic nature of the phenomenon, and use it to investigate ISD errors on single-qubit gate operations. Furthermore, we present a method to estimate the total error from many different error sources by only studying subsystems containing one error source at a time. This allows us to estimate the total ISD error from all non-qubit dopants in the vic…
We propose a method to measure the quantum state of a single mode of the electromagnetic field. The method is based on the interaction of the field with a probe qubit. The qubit polarizations along coordinate axes are functions of the interaction time and from their Fourier transform we can in general fully reconstruct pure states of the field and obtain partial information in the case of mixed states. The method is illustrated by several examples, including the superposition of Fock states, coherent states, and exotic states generated by the dynamical Casimir effect.
We investigate analytically and numerically the nonstationary circuit QED setup in which $N$ independent qubits interact with a single mode of the Electromagnetic field confined in a resonator. We consider the harmonic time modulation of some parameter (atomic transition frequency or the atom-field coupling strength) and derive the unitary dynamics up to the second order in the modulation depth for $N=1$ and $N\gg 1$. It is shown that all the resonant phenomena that occur for modulation frequencies $\sim 2ω_{0}$ (where $ω_{0}$ is the cavity frequency) also occur for the halved frequencies. How…
We study the fundamental limitations of cooling to absolute zero for a qubit, interacting with a single mode of the electromagnetic field. Our results show that the dynamical Casimir effect, which is unavoidable in any finite-time thermodynamic cycle, forbids the attainability of the absolute zero of temperature, even in the limit of an infinite number of cycles.
We present a study of atom-wall interactions in non-relativistic quantum electrodynamics by functional integral methods. The Feynman-Kac path integral representation is generalized to the case when the particle interacts with a radiation field, providing an additional effective potential that contains all the interactions induced by the field. We show how one can retrieve the standard van der Waals, Casimir-Polder and classical Lifshiftz forces in this formalism for an atom in its ground state. Moreover, when electrostatic interactions are screened in the medium, we find low temperature correc…
Casimir-Polder interactions cause energy and momentum exchange between microscopic and macroscopic bodies, a process mediated by quantum fluctuations in the coupled matter-electromagnetic field system. The dynamics of such effects are yet to be experimentally investigated due to the dominance of static effects at currently attainable atomic velocities. However, Y. Guo and Z. Jacob [\textit{Opt. Express}, 22:26193-26202, 2014] have proposed a non-static two-plate set-up where quantum fluctuation mediated effects have a strong velocity-dependent resonance, leading to a giant friction force on th…
We propose a scheme to clarify the coupling nature between superconducting Josephson qubits andmicroscopic two-level systems. Although dominant interest in studying two-level systems was in phase qubits previously, we find that the sensitivity of the generally used spectral method in phase qubits is not sufficient to evaluate the exact form of the coupling. On the contrary, our numerical calculation shows that the coupling strength changes remarkably with the flux bias for a flux qubit, providing a useful tool to investigate the coupling mechanism between the two-level systems and qubits.
Engineering Nonclassical States via the Dynamical Casimir Effect
Università degli Studi dell’Insubria（因苏布里亚大学）；INFN, Sezione di Milano（意大利国家核物理研究所米兰分部）；Università di Pavia（帕维亚大学）；INFN, Sezione di Pavia（意大利国家核物理研究所帕维亚分部）；Università di Catania（卡塔尼亚大学）；INFN, Sezione di Catania（意大利国家核物理研究所卡塔尼亚分部）
We demonstrate experimentally the creation and measurement of an entangled state between a microscopic two level system and a macroscopic superconducting resonator where their indirect interaction is mediated by an artificial atom, a superconducting persistent current qubit (PCQB). We show that the microscopic two level system, formed by a defect in an oxide layer, exhibits an order of magnitude longer dephasing time than the PCQB, while the dephasing time of the entangled states between the microscopic two level system and macroscopic superconducting resonator is significantly longer than the…
Zero-point energy is generally known to be unphysical. Casimir effect, however, is often presented as a counterexample, giving rise to a conceptual confusion. To resolve the confusion we study foundational aspects of Casimir effect at a qualitative level, but also at a quantitative level within a simple toy model with only 3 degrees of freedom. In particular, we point out that Casimir vacuum is not a state without photons, and not a ground state for a Hamiltonian that can describe Casimir force. Instead, Casimir vacuum can be related to the photon vacuum by a non-trivial Bogoliubov transformat…
Non-Local and Non-Markovian Effects of a Microscopic Two-Level Defect in Superconducting Quantum Circuits
Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences（北京量子信息科学研究院）；Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Science（中国科学院物理研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）
We use the microscopic derivation of the Jaynes-Cummings model master equation under field losses to study the dynamics of initial field states beyond the single-excitation manifold. We show that field-qubit detuning, as well as finite temperature, modify the effective decay rate in the model using entropy measures, like qubit-field purity and von Neumann entropy of the field, for initial Fock states. For initial semi-classical states of the field, we show that the microscopic approach, in phase space, provides an evolution to thermal equilibrium that is smoother than the one provided by the s…
We consider the dissipative single-qubit circuit QED architecture in which the atomic transition frequency undergoes a weak external time-modulation. For sinusoidal modulation with linearly varying frequency we derive effective Hamiltonians that resemble the Landau-Zener problem of finite duration associated to a two- or multi-level systems. The corresponding off-diagonal coupling coefficients originate either from the rotating or the counter-rotating terms in the Rabi Hamiltonian, depending on the values of the modulation frequency. It is demonstrated that in the dissipation less case one can…
Several experiments have shown qubit coherence decay of the form $\mathrm{exp}[-(t/T_2)^α]$ due to environmental charge-noise fluctuations. We present a microscopic description for temperature dependences of the parameters $T_2$ and $α$. Our description is appropriate to qubits in semiconductors interacting with spurious two-level charge fluctuators coupled to a thermal bath. We find distinct power-law dependences of $T_2$ and $α$ on temperature depending on the nature of the interaction of the fluctuators with the associated bath. We consider fluctuator dynamics induced by first- and second-o…
The microscopic theory of the Casimir effect in the dielectric is studied in the framework when absorption is realized via a reservoir modeled by a set of oscillators with continuously distributed frquencies with the aim to see if the effects depend on the form of interaction with the reservoir. A simple case of the one-dimensional dielectric between two metallic plates is considered. Two possible models are investigated, the direct interaction of the electromagnetic field with the reservoir and indirect interaction via an intermediate oscillator imitating the atom. It is found that with the s…
An integrated photonic approach for complex quantum state generation through dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) is demonstrated. This approach provides a scheme to realize multipartite high-dimensional entangled states in the microwave (MW) and terahertz (THz) regimes, through the modulation in a MW-resonator coupled to an optical microresonator supporting temporal optical solitons. The states at the MW-resonator evolve from the ground state, realizing real-photons from the virtual photons at the ground state. The periodic modulation of the MW-resonator through a Kerr-induced refractive index chan…
Despite mounting evidence that materials imperfections are a major obstacle to practical applications of superconducting qubits, connections between microscopic material properties and qubit coherence are poorly understood. Here, we perform measurements of transmon qubit relaxation times $T_1$ in parallel with spectroscopy and microscopy of the thin polycrystalline niobium films used in qubit fabrication. By comparing results for films deposited using three techniques, we reveal correlations between $T_1$ and grain size, enhanced oxygen diffusion along grain boundaries, and the concentration o…
