Affiliation: Institute for Quantum Computing/University of Waterloo & the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Talk: July 1, 2019

Many-body quantum electrodynamics (QED) with atoms and photons: A new platform for quantum optics

An exciting frontier in quantum information science is the creation and manipulation of quantum systems that are built and controlled quanta by quanta. In this context, there is an active research worldwide to achieve strong and coherent coupling between light and matter as the building block of complex quantum systems. Despite the range of physical behaviours accessible by these QED systems, the low-energy description is inherently masked by mean fields or renormalization groups

In contrast, I describe our comprehensive theory/experiment program towards synthetic quantum matter, where highly-correlated Rydberg quantum material is strongly coupled to quantized optical cavity fields. We call this new domain of quantum optics, “many-body quantum electrodynamics,” where locally gauged quantum materials are entirely driven by quantum optical fluctuations. I describe our initial laboratory effort towards stabilizing a 2D U(1) quantum spin liquid and the observation of cavity-mediated multiparticle plaquette dynamics, corresponding to an emergent visonic topological defect excitation, for the magnetic flux of the compact dynamical gauge field.

From a broader perspective, our work towards many-body QED will open exhilarating opportunities in atomic and condensed matter physics, and quantum information science to explore the consequential features of macroscopic universes living within strongly-correlated systems, and to help answer some of the most profound questions in physics and computer science — from Baryonic asymmetry, to quantum gravity, and to the quantum Church-Turing thesis. We believe that many-body QED is an essential endeavour for our very instinct to explore genuinely surprising phenomena arising from highly-entangled quantum matter, by light.