Quantum Coherence by Design

Next Generation Quantum Systems. Our goal in this area is to discover and create ultracoherent, tailorable qubits and quantum emitters with desirable properties for QIS applications. We have made significant recent progress in this thrust through the creation of single-electron-charge qubits on noble gas surfaces, rare-earth ion memory qubits, and optically active defects in low-dimensional semiconductors. Future work in this area will build on those results with new capabilities for in situ, deterministic defect creation at the atomic scale, in conjunction with electron- and tunneling-based microscopies.

Control of Coherence. The goal of this area is to understand and exploit the relationships between atomic-scale local structure, engineered environments, and quantum coherent response to realize advanced functionality within quantum systems. Progress in this thrust so far has demonstrated strong coupling between superconducting circuits and mechanical structures as well as creation of quantum light sources through the engineering of strain, volume, interfacial and symmetry-constrained exciton traps in 2D materials, enabled by Machine Learning (ML)-accelerated analytical methods for sparse-photon experiments. Building on these results in the future, we will use in situ methods to structurally manipulate and dynamically drive qubits in photo-active systems to optimize qubit performance and predict low-T performance and stability from room-temperature characterization data.

Quantum Transduction. The grand challenge of this thrust is to achieve low-dissipation frequency conversion encoding quantum information across microwave-to-optical wavelengths, necessary to achieve robust quantum technologies for distributed communication, sensing, and computation. Recent activity at the CNM in this area has focused on the creation of high-Q/low-volume phononic and photonic structures that efficiently amplify low-emission transitions and optimize hybrid system design of cavity optomechanics. Future work includes plans to feed Advanced Photon Source Upgrade (APS-U)-enabled synchrotron defect microscopy forward into photonic structure positioning as well as generating data sets for advanced cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) simulations of noise and dissipation.