Publications

We propose a novel approach to probe new fundamental interactions using isotope shift spectroscopy in atomic clock transitions. As a concrete toy example we focus on the Higgs boson couplings to the building blocks of matter: the electron and the up and down quarks. We show that the attractive Higgs force between nuclei and their bound electrons, which is poorly constrained, might induce effects that are larger than the current experimental sensitivities. More generically, we discuss how new interactions between the electron and the neutrons, mediated via light new degrees of freedom, may lead to measurable nonlinearities in a King plot comparison between isotope shifts of two different transitions. Given state-of-the-art accuracy in frequency comparison, isotope shifts have the potential to be measured with sub-Hz accuracy, thus potentially enabling the improvement of current limits on new fundamental interactions. A candidate atomic system for this measurement requires two different clock transitions and four zero nuclear spin isotopes. We identify several systems that satisfy this requirement and also briefly discuss existing measurements. We consider the size of the effect related to the Higgs force and the requirements for it to produce an observable signal.

An ensemble of atoms in a steady state, whether or not in thermal equilibrium, has a well-defined energy distribution. Since the energy of single atoms within the ensemble cannot be individually measured, energy distributions are typically inferred from statistical averages. Here, we show how to measure the energy of a single atom in a single experimental realization (single shot). The energy distribution of the atom over many experimental realizations can thus be readily and directly obtained. We apply this method to a single ion trapped in a linear Paul trap for which the energy measurement in a single shot is applicable from 10 K x k(B) and above. Our energy measurement agrees within 5% to a different thermometry method which requires extensive averaging. Apart from the total energy, we also show that the motion of the ion in different trap modes can be distinguished. We believe that this method will have profound implications on single-particle chemistry and collision experiments.

We report on the measurement of the contribution of the magnetic-dipole hyperfine interaction to the tensor polarizaility of the electronic ground state in Rb-87. This contribution was isolated by measuring the differential shift of the clock transition frequency in Rb-87 atoms that were optically trapped in the focus of an intense CO2 laser beam. By comparing to previous tensor polarizability measurements in Rb-87, the contribution of the interaction with the nuclear electric-quadrupole moment was isolated as well. Our measurement will enable better estimation of blackbody shifts in Rb atomic clocks. The methods reported here are applicable for future spectroscopic studies of atoms and molecules under strong quasistatic fields.

We present a simple tomographic protocol, for two-qubit systems, that relies on a single discriminatory transition and no direct spatially selective imaging. This scheme exploits excess micromotion in the trap to realize all operations required to prepare all input states and analyze all output states. We demonstrate a two-qubit entangling gate with a Bell state production fidelity of 0.981(6), and apply the above protocol to perform the first quantum process tomography of a Molmer-Sorensen entangling gate. We characterize its chi-process matrix, the simplest for an entanglement gate on a separable-states basis, and observe that our dominant source of error is accurately modeled by a quantum depolarization channel.

After measurement, a wave-function is postulated to collapse on a predetermined set of states-the measurement basis. Using quantum process tomography, we show how a measurement basis emerges in the evolution of the electronic spin of a single trapped atomic ion after spontaneous photon scattering and detection. This basis is determined by the excitation laser polarization and the direction along which the photon was detected. Quantum tomography of the combined spin-photon state reveals that although photon scattering entangles all superpositions of the measurement-basis states with the scattered photon polarization, the measurement-basis states themselves remain classically correlated with it. Our findings shed light on the process of quantum measurement in atom-photon interactions.

Quantum metrology(1) uses tools from quantum information science to improve measurement signal-to-noise ratios. The challenge is to increase sensitivity while reducing susceptibility to noise, tasks that are often in conflict. Lock-in measurement is a detection scheme designed to overcome this difficulty by spectrally separating signal from noise. Here we report on the implementation of a quantum analogue to the classical lock-in amplifier. All the lock-in operations-modulation, detection and mixing-are performed through the application of non-commuting quantum operators to the electronic spin state of a single, trapped Sr(+) ion. We significantly increase its sensitivity to external fields while extending phase coherence by three orders of magnitude, to more than one second. Using this technique, we measure frequency shifts with a sensitivity of 0.42 Hz Hz(-1/2) (corresponding to a magnetic field measurement sensitivity of 15 pT Hz(-1/2)), obtaining an uncertainty of less than 10 mHz (350 fT) after 3,720 seconds of averaging. These sensitivities are limited by quantum projection noise and improve on other single-spin probe technologies(2,3) by two orders of magnitude. Our reported sensitivity is sufficient for the measurement of parity non-conservation(4), as well as the detection of the magnetic field of a single electronic spin one micrometre from an ion detector with nanometre resolution. As a first application, we perform light shift spectroscopy of a narrow optical quadrupole transition. Finally, we emphasize that the quantum lock-in technique is generic and can potentially enhance the sensitivity of any quantum sensor.

We have measured motional heating rates of trapped atomic ions, a factor that can influence multi-ion quantum logic gate fidelities. Two simplified techniques were developed for this purpose: one relies on Raman sideband detection implemented with a single laser source, while the second is even simpler and is based on time-resolved fluorescence detection during Doppler recooling. We applied these methods to determine heating rates in a microfrabricated surface-electrode trap made of gold on fused quartz, which traps ions 40 mu m above its surface. Heating rates obtained from the two techniques were found to be in reasonable agreement. In addition, the trap gives rise to a heating rate of 300 +/- 30 s(-1) for a motional frequency of 5.25 MHz, substantially below the trend observed in other traps.