Browsing by Subject "STATES"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Detecting a Majorana-fermion zero mode using a quantum dot
    (Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, 2011-11-16) Liu, DE; Baranger, HU
    We propose an experimental setup for detecting a Majorana zero mode consisting of a spinless quantum dot coupled to the end of a p-wave superconducting nanowire. The Majorana bound state at the end of the wire strongly influences the conductance through the quantum dot: Driving the wire through the topological phase transition causes a sharp jump in the conductance by a factor of 1/2. In the topological phase, the zero-temperature peak value of the dot conductance (i.e., when the dot is on resonance and symmetrically coupled to the leads) is e2/2h. In contrast, if the wire is in its trivial phase, the conductance peak value is e2/h, or if a regular fermionic zero mode occurs on the end of the wire, the conductance is 0. The system can also be used to tune Flensberg's qubit system to the required degeneracy point. © 2011 American Physical Society.
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    Floquet Majorana fermions for topological qubits in superconducting devices and cold-atom systems.
    (Physical review letters, 2013-07) Liu, Dong E; Levchenko, Alex; Baranger, Harold U
    We develop an approach to realizing a topological phase transition and non-Abelian braiding statistics with dynamically induced Floquet Majorana fermions (FMFs). When the periodic driving potential does not break fermion parity conservation, FMFs can encode quantum information. Quasienergy analysis shows that a stable FMF zero mode and two other satellite modes exist in a wide parameter space with large quasienergy gaps, which prevents transitions to other Floquet states under adiabatic driving. We also show that in the asymptotic limit FMFs preserve non-Abelian braiding statistics and, thus, behave like their equilibrium counterparts.
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    Kondo effect and mesoscopic fluctuations
    (Pramana - Journal of Physics, 2011-11-01) Ullmo, D; Burdin, S; Liu, DE; Baranger, HU
    Two important themes in nanoscale physics in the last two decades are correlations between electrons and mesoscopic fluctuations. Here we review our recent work on the intersection of these two themes. The setting is the Kondo effect, a paradigmatic example of correlated electron physics, in a nanoscale system with mesoscopic fluctuations; in particular, we consider a small quantum dot coupled to a finite reservoir (which itself may be a large quantum dot). We discuss three aspects of this problem. First, in the high-temperature regime, we argue that a Kondo temperature TK which takes into account the mesoscopic fluctuations is a relevant concept: for instance, physical properties are universal functions of T/TK. Secondly, when the temperature is much less than the mean level spacing due to confinement, we characterize a natural cross-over from weak to strong coupling. This strong coupling regime is itself characterized by well-defined single-particle levels, as one can see from a Nozières Fermi-liquid theory argument. Finally, using a mean-field technique, we connect the mesoscopic fluctuations of the quasiparticles in the weak coupling regime to those at strong coupling. © Indian Academy of Sciences.
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    Particle Production in Ultrastrong-Coupling Waveguide QED
    (Physical Review A, 2018-10-08) Gheeraert, Nicolas; Zhang, Xin HH; Sépulcre, Théo; Bera, Soumya; Roch, Nicolas; Baranger, Harold U; Florens, Serge
    Understanding large-scale interacting quantum matter requires dealing with the huge number of quanta that are produced by scattering even a few particles against a complex quantum object. Prominent examples are found from high-energy cosmic ray showers, to the optical or electrical driving of degenerate Fermi gases. We tackle this challenge in the context of many-body quantum optics, as motivated by the recent developments of circuit quantum electrodynamics at ultrastrong coupling. The issue of particle production is addressed quantitatively with a simple yet powerful concept rooted in the quantum superposition principle of multimode coherent states. This key idea is illustrated by the study of multiphoton emission from a single two-level artificial atom coupled to a high impedance waveguide, driven by a nearly monochromatic coherent tone. We find surprisingly that the off-resonant inelastic emission line shape is dominated by broadband particle production, due to the large phase space associated with contributions that do not conserve the number of excitations. Such frequency conversion processes produce striking signatures in time correlation measurements, which can be tested experimentally in quantum waveguides. These ideas open new directions for the simulation of a variety of physical systems, from polaron dynamics in solids to complex superconducting quantum architectures.
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    Stabilizing spin coherence through environmental entanglement in strongly dissipative quantum systems
    (Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, 2014-03-18) Bera, S; Florens, S; Baranger, HU; Roch, N; Nazir, A; Chin, AW
    The key feature of a quantum spin coupled to a harmonic bath - a model dissipative quantum system - is competition between oscillator potential energy and spin tunneling rate. We show that these opposing tendencies cause environmental entanglement through superpositions of adiabatic and antiadiabatic oscillator states, which then stabilizes the spin coherence against strong dissipation. This insight motivates a fast-converging variational coherent-state expansion for the many-body ground state of the spin-boson model, which we substantiate via numerical quantum tomography. © 2014 American Physical Society.