UMOTA · Ultracold Molecules in Optical Trap Arrays
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-06-01 → 2020-06-14
- EU contribution
- €195,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Ultracold Molecules in Optical Trap Arrays
Quantum systems can be in superposition states. For example, the spin of one electron can be in three possible quantum states: up, down, or simultaneously up AND down. With each electron we add, the number of possible joint quantum states including superpositions doubles. Amazingly, the memory required to store the state of just a 35-electron system exceeds the total storage capacity of all computers worldwide. A normal computer is clearly incapable of simulating many-particle quantum systems, which exhibit remarkable phenomena, such as high-temperature superconductivity. As a result, very little is understood about these systems and simulating their properties is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. Richard Feynman identified this bottleneck in 1982 and suggested an elegant workaround: rather than using a normal computer, we should simulate complicated quantum systems using another, more controllable quantum system. It took until recently for technology to catch up and such quantum simulators are slowly being realized using photons, atoms, ions and superconducting circuits. Each of these has advantages, but struggle with simulation of collective many-body behaviour. Over the course of the UMOTA project I pursued Feynman’s idea by designing and constructing a new and unique apparatus for quantum simulation with ultracold polar molecules. Unlike the systems used so far, polar molecules interact over long distances through their electric dipole moments, facilitating simulation of systems with long-range interactions. The new experiment will allow me to confine laser cooled polar molecules to the sites of a configurable optical tweezer array and entangle the molecules via their dipole-dipole interactions. I will be able to implement a two-molecule quantum gate, which is the basic building block of my quantum simulator, and also of a quantum computer. In the future, the system will be able to mimic up to 49 interacting electrons and solve problems intractable to classical computers.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Classical computers quickly hit the brick wall when asked to model the behavior of interacting quantum systems. For example, calculating the time evolution of a quantum system consisting of only 40 interacting spin-½ particles is believed to be fundamentally impossible on a classical computer. Fortunately, the direct investigation of such systems is coming into the reach of today’s most powerful quantum simulators. In this approach, a controllable quantum system is used to model the behavior of other less accessible systems of interest. I plan to make a versatile, reconfigurable array of strongly-polar Calcium Monofluoride (CaF) molecules, and investigate its utility as a scalable quantum simulator. These ultracold molecules have long lifetimes and interact over large distances via their strong electric and magnetic dipole moments. They can thus be used to investigate a wide range of many-body quantum phenomena and are promising candidates for the simulation of lattice spin models, which are omnipresent in condensed matter physics.In the Center for Cold Matter at Imperial College London, CaF has recently been magneto-optically trapped and laser-cooled to a record-breaking temperature of 50µK. As an MSCA fellow I will build upon these results. I will develop techniques to confine a single CaF molecule in an optical tweezer trap, then assemble a controllable array of molecules using multiple tweezer traps, and finally investigate the entangling dipole-dipole interaction between two neighboring molecules by coherent microwave control. These experiments will take place in a complexity regime where results can still be numerically simulated and will thus serve as benchmark tests of a future scalable quantum simulator.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE · LondonCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union