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Researchers experimentally demonstrate a new type of laser
Release time:
2023-11-17
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Researchers experimentally demonstrate a new type of laser
Society is now using lasers everywhere: doctors use them to correct vision, cashiers scan your goods, and quantum scientists control the qubits of future quantum computers. For most applications, current lasers are bulky and energy-inefficient, but quantum scientists need lasers that can operate at very low temperatures and at very small scales. For more than 40 years, they have been searching for microwave lasers that are efficient and accurate, and will not be disturbed in very cold environments under quantum technology operating conditions.
A team of researchers under the leadership of Leo Kouwenhoven of Delft University of Technology has studied an on-chip microwave laser based on the fundamental properties of superconductivity, with the AC Josephson effect. Their embedded interrupts a small part of the superconducting Josephson junction, placed on a carefully designed on-chip cavity. Such a device could open up many applications, and microwave radiation with minimal power consumption is the key to this technology, such as the realization of a scalable quantum computer control system.
The scientists published their findings in the latest issue of the journal Science.
Lasers have unique characteristics, the ability to emit fully synchronized coherent light. This means that the line width (corresponding to the color) is very narrow. A typical laser consists of a large number of emitters (atoms, molecules or semiconductor carriers). These regular lasers are generally inefficient and lose a significant amount of heat during the lasing process. This makes them difficult to operate in low-temperature environments, such as when operating quantum computers.
superconducting josson junction
In 1911, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered that some materials at very low temperatures transition to a superconducting state, allowing current to flow without any energy loss. One of the most important applications is the superconducting Josephson effect: if a very short barrier interrupts a piece of superconductor, electron transport will pass through the superconducting material in that channel with non-quantum mechanical laws. In addition, they conducted this experiment at a very specific frequency, which can be varied by an externally applied DC voltage. Thus, the Josephson junction is a perfect calender (frequency) converter.
Josephson junction laser
QuTech scientists coupled such a single Josephson junction to achieve a high quality factor in a microcavity the size of an ant. The Josephson junction behaves like a single atom, while the cavity can be seen as two mirrors of microwave light. When a small DC voltage is applied to this Josephson junction, it emits microwave photons at the resonant frequency of the cavity. The photons bounce back and forth between the two superconducting mirrors and force the Josephson junction to emit more photons, which are synchronized with the photons in the cavity.
By cooling the device down to ultra-low temperatures (<1 Kelvin) and applying a small DC voltage to the Josephson junction, the researchers observed the coherent beam output by the microwave photon emission laser. Since the laser on the chip is made entirely of superconductors, it is more energy-efficient and stable than previously proven semiconductor lasers. It runs on less than picowatts of power, which is 100 billion times lighter than an electric lamp.
low loss quantum control
Coherent microwave light sources with high quality efficiency are essential in the design of future quantum computers. Microwave pulses are used to read out and transmit information, correct errors, and access and control individual quantum components. Although current microwave sources are expensive and inefficient, the Josephson junction manufactured by QuTech serves as a highly efficient laser source and is an easy to control and modify chip solution.
The team extended their design using tunable Josephson junctions, which are fabricated from nanowires that allow rapid control of microwave emission from multiple quantum components. In the future, such devices may produce so-called "amplitude-compressed" light with smaller intensity fluctuations than conventional lasers, which is essential for most quantum communication protocols. This work marks an important step in the control of large quantum computing systems.
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