Yutaka Tabuchi

Hybridizing ferromagnetic magnons and microwave photons in the quantum limit.

We demonstrate large normal-mode splitting between a magnetostatic mode (the Kittel mode) in a ferromagnetic sphere of yttrium iron garnet and a microwave cavity mode. Strong coupling is achieved in the quantum regime where the average number of thermally or externally excited magnons and photons is less than one. We also confirm that the coupling strength is proportional to the square root of the number of spins. A nonmonotonic temperature dependence of the Kittel-mode linewidth is observed below 1 K and is attributed to the dissipation due to the coupling with a bath of two-level systems.

Coherent coupling between a ferromagnetic magnon and a superconducting qubit

Making hybrid quantum information systems Different physical implementations of qubits—quantum bits—each have their pros and cons. An appealing idea is to combine them into hybrid architectures, taking advantage of their respective strengths. Tabuchi et al. placed a ferromagnetic sphere and a superconducting qubit in a cavity and used an electromagnetic mode of the cavity as the mediator between the two. They achieved strong coupling between a collective magnetic mode of the sphere and the qubit. Viennot et al. coupled a single spin in a double quantum dot to photons in a cavity. Both approaches hold promise for future applications. Science, this issue pp. 405 and 408 A collective mode of a ferromagnetic sphere is strongly coupled to a qubit in a cavity. Rigidity of an ordered phase in condensed matter results in collective excitation modes spatially extending to macroscopic dimensions. A magnon is a quantum of such collective excitation modes in ordered spin systems. Here, we demonstrate the coherent coupling between a single-magnon excitation in a millimeter-sized ferromagnetic sphere and a superconducting qubit, with the interaction mediated by the virtual photon excitation in a microwave cavity. We obtain the coupling strength far exceeding the damping rates, thus bringing the hybrid system into the strong coupling regime. Furthermore, we use a parametric drive to realize a tunable magnon-qubit coupling scheme. Our approach provides a versatile tool for quantum control and measurement of the magnon excitations and may lead to advances in quantum information processing.

Bidirectional conversion between microwave and light via ferromagnetic magnons

Coherent conversion of microwave and optical photons in the single quantum level can significantly expand our ability to process signals in various fields. Efficient up-conversion of a feeble signal in the microwave domain to the optical domain will lead to quantum-noise-limited microwave amplifiers. Coherent exchange between optical photons and microwave photons will also be a stepping stone to realize long-distance quantum communication. Here we demonstrate bidirectional and coherent conversion between microwave and light using collective spin excitations in a ferromagnet. The converter consists of two harmonic oscillator modes, a microwave cavity mode and a magnetostatic mode called the Kittel mode, where microwave photons and magnons in the respective modes are strongly coupled and hybridized. An itinerant microwave field and a traveling optical field can be coupled through the hybrid system, where the microwave field is coupled to the hybrid system through the cavity mode, while the optical field addresses the hybrid system through the Kittel mode via Faraday and inverse Faraday effects. The conversion efficiency is theoretically analyzed and experimentally evaluated. The possible schemes for improving the efficiency are also discussed.

Cavity Optomagnonics with Spin-Orbit Coupled Photons.

We experimentally implement a system of cavity optomagnonics, where a sphere of ferromagnetic material supports whispering gallery modes (WGMs) for photons and the magnetostatic mode for magnons. We observe pronounced nonreciprocity and asymmetry in the sideband signals generated by the magnon-induced Brillouin scattering of light. The spin-orbit coupled nature of the WGM photons, their geometrical birefringence, and the time-reversal symmetry breaking in the magnon dynamics impose the angular-momentum selection rules in the scattering process and account for the observed phenomena. The unique features of the system may find interesting applications at the crossroad between quantum optics and spintronics.

All-optical observation and reconstruction of spin wave dispersion

To know the properties of a particle or a wave, one should measure how its energy changes with its momentum. The relation between them is called the dispersion relation, which encodes essential information of the kinetics. In a magnet, the wave motion of atomic spins serves as an elementary excitation, called a spin wave, and behaves like a fictitious particle. Although the dispersion relation of spin waves governs many of the magnetic properties, observation of their entire dispersion is one of the challenges today. Spin waves whose dispersion is dominated by magnetostatic interaction are called pure-magnetostatic waves, which are still missing despite of their practical importance. Here, we report observation of the band dispersion relation of pure-magnetostatic waves by developing a table-top all-optical spectroscopy named spin-wave tomography. The result unmasks characteristics of pure-magnetostatic waves. We also demonstrate time-resolved measurements, which reveal coherent energy transfer between spin waves and lattice vibrations.

Quantum magnonics: The magnon meets the superconducting qubit

Abstract The techniques of microwave quantum optics are applied to collective spin excitations in a macroscopic sphere of a ferromagnetic insulator. We demonstrate, in the single-magnon limit, strong coupling between a magnetostatic mode in the sphere and a microwave cavity mode. Moreover, we introduce a superconducting qubit in the cavity and couple the qubit with the magnon excitation via the virtual photon excitation. We observe the magnon–vacuum-induced Rabi splitting. The hybrid quantum system enables generation and characterization of non-classical quantum states of magnons.

Information-to-work conversion by Maxwell’s demon in a superconducting circuit quantum electrodynamical system

Information thermodynamics bridges information theory and statistical physics by connecting information content and entropy production through measurement and feedback control. Maxwell’s demon is a hypothetical character that uses information about a system to reduce its entropy. Here we realize a Maxwell’s demon acting on a superconducting quantum circuit. We implement quantum non-demolition projective measurement and feedback operation of a qubit and verify the generalized integral fluctuation theorem. We also evaluate the conversion efficiency from information gain to work in the feedback protocol. Our experiment constitutes a step toward experimental studies of quantum information thermodynamics in artificially made quantum machines.Maxwell’s demon is a hypothetical character that uses information about a system to reduce its entropy, highlighting the link between information and thermodynamic entropies. Here the authors experimentally realise a Maxwells demon controlling a quantum system and explore how it affects thermodynamic laws.

Resolving quanta of collective spin excitations in a millimeter-sized ferromagnet

Dany Lachance-Quirion, 2, ∗ Yutaka Tabuchi, Seiichiro Ishino, Atsushi Noguchi, Toyofumi Ishikawa, Rekishu Yamazaki, and Yasunobu Nakamura 3, † Institut quantique and Département de Physique, Université de Sherbrooke, J1K 2R1, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), The University of Tokyo, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), RIKEN, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan (Dated: October 4 2016)Quanta of collective spin excitations are observed in a ferromagnet by measurements of a superconducting quantum bit. Combining different physical systems in hybrid quantum circuits opens up novel possibilities for quantum technologies. In quantum magnonics, quanta of collective excitation modes in a ferromagnet, called magnons, interact coherently with qubits to access quantum phenomena of magnonics. We use this architecture to probe the quanta of collective spin excitations in a millimeter-sized ferromagnetic crystal. More specifically, we resolve magnon number states through spectroscopic measurements of a superconducting qubit with the hybrid system in the strong dispersive regime. This enables us to detect a change in the magnetic moment of the ferromagnet equivalent to a single spin flipped among more than 1019 spins. Our demonstration highlights the strength of hybrid quantum systems to provide powerful tools for quantum sensing and quantum information processing.

Ground state cooling of a quantum electromechanical system with a silicon nitride membrane in a 3D loop-gap cavity

Cavity electro-(opto-)mechanics gives us a quantum tool to access mechanical modes in a massive object. Here we develop a quantum electromechanical system in which a vibrational mode of a SiN x membrane are coupled to a three-dimensional loop-gap superconducting microwave cavity. The tight confinement of the electric field across a mechanically compliant narrow-gap capacitor realizes the quantum strong coupling regime under a red-sideband pump field and the quantum ground state cooling of the mechanical mode. We also demonstrate strong coupling between two mechanical modes, which is induced by two-tone parametric drives and mediated by a virtual photon in the cavity.

Qubit-assisted transduction for a detection of surface acoustic waves near the quantum limit

We demonstrate ultrasensitive measurement of fluctuations in a surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) resonator using a hybrid quantum system consisting of the SAW resonator, a microwave (MW) resonator, and a superconducting qubit. The nonlinearity of the driven qubit induces parametric coupling, which up-converts the excitation in the SAW resonator to that in the MW resonator. Thermal fluctuations of the SAW resonator near the quantum limit are observed in the noise spectroscopy in the MW domain.